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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. |
| | The Superiority of the Do-Gooder |
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The Superiority of the Do-Gooder |
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Introduction: The Desire to Do Good.
An Exercise in Introspection |
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> | Introduction: The Desire to Do Good. |
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Introspection that Leads to Clarity |
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> | Before the desire to join the Peace Corps or work in NGOs in Africa became a means to an end for many young people in the developed world. |
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Before what?
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Implications |
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> | Those activities were an end in themselves. Many people with ‘consciences’ performed these charitable acts because they despised what they often described as the consumptive nature of American culture. |
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This was the reason people joined the Peace Corps? I don't think the people I knew were despising the US, by and large, at all. How do we know that what you are telling us is accurate?
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> | In stepping into the roles of well builder in East Africa, or volunteer teacher in Nepal, they become better than the culture they despise. Undoubtedly, many performed these acts without thinking about the benefits conferred on them. However, for many others the feeling of elevation was intensified with the humidity and mosquitoes bites. |
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Again, I don't think this quite captures what the people I knew took away from their time in the Peace Corps. They were people living among people, so it was probably always a little more complex. And they weren't missionaries, who maybe had a better chance of elevation.
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< | Introduction: The Desire to Do Good. |
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> | The exhaustion felt after a day of hard work building houses in Uganda with imported lumber was a well-deserved one. Their day’s work has a dual purpose. To show the poor Africans how benevolent they are, but also to prove to people in the developed world that they are one of the few that can rise above the drudgery of material pursuits and lend themselves to others. |
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It's not what I think they thought it felt like to be them. More like something someone else thought about them without really expecting them to feel it that way. If we are going to construct an idea (which we are far into the essay without having been introduced to yet) on the basis of what people thought, shouldn't we have some sources to give the reader, accurately reflecting their own voices?
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< | Before the desire to join the Peace Corps or work in NGOs in Africa became a means to an end for many young people in the developed world. Those activities were an end in themselves. Many people with ‘consciences’ performed these charitable acts because they despised what they often described as the consumptive nature of American culture.
In stepping into the roles of well builder in East Africa, or volunteer teacher in Nepal, they become better than the culture they despise. Undoubtedly, many performed these acts without thinking about the benefits conferred on them. However, for many others the feeling of elevation was intensified with the humidity and mosquitoes bites.
The exhaustion felt after a day of hard work building houses in Uganda with imported lumber was a well-deserved one. Their day’s work has a dual purpose. To show the poor Africans how benevolent they are, but also to prove to people in the developed world that they are one of the few that can rise above the drudgery of material pursuits and lend themselves to others. |
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An Exercise in Introspection |
| | If the decision not to be ‘vulgarly ambitious’ is drawn from the desire to be a better person, then we must also find problematic the decision to be the kind of lawyer that is not a ‘corporate leech’ because he believes that he is superior to the corporate leech and the clients he defends for free. |
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This feels to me like something previously written about The Fall and transposed into this essay. We didn't get a clear sense at the outset what idea the essay intended to communicate, so when we wind up in a character explication it's hard to say whether we have strayed from the essay's point or not. But if we went through the line of the writing in order to conclude at the end that we shouldn't be "like" someone dislikable, we have gone too far to fetch it. |
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< | COMMENT (Henry Ross): Tonbara- Interesting piece. I realize you have limited space, but I'd like to know more about the implications of the attitude you describe and criticize. It's not just that Clamence's motives are unsavory, right? Isn't it, for example, that someone dies because Clamence won't put himself at risk to save someone jumping off the Pont Royal? That peace corps types won't do something good unless doing it happens to give them a feeling of superiority? That's not just a problem of conscience or motives--that's a problem of real-world effects. Finally, what are the implications for you? What do you take away from your idea about the kind of lawyer you want to be? I'm sure we could draw a few obvious conclusions, but I think there's a lot about you going lurking in here but going unsaid.
Comment (Tonbara Ekiyor): Thanks for the comments Henry. In my opinion, Clamence did not save the girl jumping into the Seine because there was no audience to appreciate his heroic acts. Although the fact that he did not try to save her haunts him for the rest of the book, it highlights the absurdity in the fact that he thinks of himself as a 'good' person but did not try to save the girl. What i'm trying to draw out is the need to examine one's motivation for pursuing particular life paths. But before I go on, i'd be interested to hear what you mean by chasing the feeling of superiority is a "problem of real world effects" .
COMMENT (ToddDensen): Thank you for writing this, it is an important lens to view our developing practices through. I do not doubt there are Clamences at Columbia. I think to myself often, if I want to do public interest work, then why did I come to Columbia? Is it because I was afraid to commit to it and wanted to leave option open? Is it because I knew I would do public service, but I wanted to prove how "smart" I was to others in my life, that I could get into this school? Or is it because the decision to do public interest from Columbia, where I could make a large salary if I desired, would seem all the more noble (Clamence personified)? Or is it that it is a slow process of discovery and I will make the choice of what to practice for other reasons? I do not know, but Clamence is a good story for checking ego and really understanding what our practices need to be for ourselves.
COMMENT (AlexWeiss): Awesome piece Tombara! To piggyback on Todd's thoughts -- perhaps we chose Columbia with the thought that it would open powerful public interest opportunities to us. Sometimes I think my biggest fear -- and perhaps this means I'm motivated by selfish reasons, perhaps not -- is that if I do go into public interest, I'll wind up in a job that doesn't feel as though I'm making a tangible impact on people's lives. If I'm going to make a difference, I want to make a big difference -- although I think that ties back into what you were saying, Tombara. Maybe that makes me a Clamence (I am obsessed with climbing mountains) -- although I don't think that a feeling of superiority over my clients is what I would be seeking; perhaps it's a competitive feeling of superiority over my peers in the profession; or maybe it's just a sense of purpose. In either event, I do agree that introspection is important; that doing good merely for a sense of superiority is destined to make you feel empty.
I haven't read The Fall, but I'm curious -- I would think that Clamence is haunted by his decision not to save the girl seems to imply he is genuinely good. Or at least a part of him is. Perhaps his subsequent turmoil is his splitting.
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