I often complain about Big Government and people who don’t know me well might think I’m just a doomer and an anarchist who doesn’t have any real answers. However, deep down I truly am an optimist and I do see a lot of good in the world at the grass-roots level. I am often looking for solutions or alternatives that might help make the world a better place and today I want to share a little story about a real world example of how I think society could function a bit better...and that’s without an overbearing government inserting itself into every aspect of our lives and making us all dependent on it.
I live in a small town which has only 1 school – a Primary School - which both my kids attend. My wife is like-minded to me in many ways and she’s been getting involved as a volunteer for the schools Parents and Citizens Association – as many parents do when they aren’t too busy trying to hold down 3 jobs. Burn-Out for the P & C volunteer parents is a real problem and the attrition rate is fairly high. Every year the school has an Open Day where parents and grandparents are invited to come along, get involved and see what the kids are doing in class. The kids put on a bit of a show and it’s a very family friendly and community oriented day. There are always a lot of warm fuzzy moments even for those prone to cynicism like I am.
In the past it’s been a pretty intense day of logistical support and co-ordination for the P & C as they’ve got to put on food for a thousand odd people and manage fundraising activities as well. This year my wife (bless her cotton socks) put her hand up to take a lead role in organizing the P & C involvement and she had the inspiration to reach out for help from some of the other active volunteer groups locally.
She went along to the local Country Womens Association meeting and pitched to them the idea of running the schools Cake Stall, then followed it up by reaching out to the local Rotary Club to see if they would do our Sausage Sizzle. These are also both completely volunteer based local community organizations with members of an older demographic. In our small town they likely have members who are grandparents of the kids at school and they may have even attended the school themselves 40 or 50 years ago. Regardless of their history or connections, these groups understand the value of supporting the local school and the importance of the new generation coming through.
Both of these Voluntarist Organisations answered the call for help with aplomb and came along to the schools Open Day working mostly autonomously and doing the things that they do so well. Between the CWA, Rotary and the P & C these groups provided outstanding support for the Open Day and the event went off without a hitch. I thought it was an excellent example of how genuinely benevolent Voluntarist Organisations could Mesh together for a shared value while still maintaining their own autonomy and identity. It was brilliant to see such genuine Goodwill being expressed by real people in the real world.
It’s left me wondering if this is really all we need to do to make Big Government redundant? Most regular people do have some virtue and I think we could make a slight cultural adjustment to effect big change if we just took some ownership of the problems and challenges that we all face. Maybe instead of Donating Money or paying Taxes to organizations which send it off to some Centralized Bureaucratic Blob while we hope it reaches its intended destination, people could donate a bit of Time instead and be on the coalface of positive outcomes like the one I’ve described here. I wouldn’t have such a problem with people Virtue Signaling all the time if they were ACTUALLY doing stuff for their local communities instead of just talking about it. Is that too much to ask?