Article: Plutocracy Ignores Purpose

Every action properly done is an act of public service no matter how high or how lowly the actor. Every action is significant and every single person is critically important. For even the vagrant on the street has the power to ruin your day or end your life.

In practical terms, this means that any task can be done in one-way or the other. Any job, any work, can be done by using the power of that effort solely for one's own benefit or by looking out for the benefit that job's real purpose has for others: whether it is President of the United States or garbage collector. True service is achieved when any job unites power and purpose in benefit to the public.

A foster parent, who raises a child who has lost his or her parents to drugs, or mental illness, does our whole society a service when this work is done well. The garbage man, who searches through filth to find a lost and cherished wedding ring, performs a service to our whole society, not merely the recipient of the ring. The fireman who runs into a burning building to rescue injured occupants or even to save property does our whole society a service.

These listed tasks are only a few of the many that could be pointed out. This is so because there are teachers, nurses, daycare providers, laborers, policeman, janitors, librarians, and more whose tasks are essential to the quality of our lives. None of these tasks will generate immense wealth. But the lack of wealth-generation does not and should not make these individuals insignificant.

People who do their work for the benefit of others do so out of an ethic of love. It is love, not from an emotional outburst, but love because they measure the excellence of the work done in terms of its benefit to others, instead of the benefit to themselves. The simple refrain is: "I'm glad I could help."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said --.our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men."

Making wealth is only one type of work among many others. It does not constitute a basis for rule. It is not even more essential than any other type of work. That wealth is power goes almost without saying. But power without purpose is merely misguided power. And there is no purpose in action that only benefits the few. If an action does not benefit all, it is not motivated by purpose. Every single person has a purpose. No one is insignificant.

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