Reader forum—Leading in public service: Choice, learning, and commitment
✍ Scribed by Joe Sarcone
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2009
- Weight
- 48 KB
- Volume
- 29
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1093-6092
- DOI
- 10.1002/lia.1288
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
n a world where human suffering is inherent and indiscriminate, each of us has a choice: we can work to alleviate human suffering, we can ignore it, or we can contribute to it. During the long-running civil war in Mozambique, stories were heard in the refugee camps of atrocities being committed by the Mozambican National Resistance, RENAMO. It was said that mothers were being forced to kill their infants or see the rest of their children murdered. At the same time, Mozambican refugees were making their way across the border to desperately impoverished areas of Malawi, where they were received and cared for by Malawians who had little themselves. These actions offer an extreme contrast but illustrate the point about choice. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it most eloquently: "Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?"
Once chosen, the path of creative altruism can take many forms, and for some it is public service. In the