My personal philosophy on civic engagement can be described by three things: my roots in Christian service, the Parable of the Babies in the River, and the Parable of the Starfish. My views on civic engagement began as very simple concepts: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus 19:18, and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Matthew 7:12. Being raised in the church with a family that valued public service, I spent much of my time in my community trying to help others. I struggled with the idea of whether I was helping others truly because I wanted to or because it boosted my ego. I thought that any service, no matter how small the scale, was worthwhile.
My philosophy shifted upon entering Duke. The KISS FOCUS cluster introduced me to the parables of the river and the starfish, which added a layer of critical thought engagement with my desire to help others. Below are my paraphrases of each parable.
The Parable of the Babies in the River
One day, a woman saw babies floating down a river towards a waterfall. She immediately stopped what she was doing to save each baby from the fate of falling, taking each baby one-by-one out of the river onto the bank. This continued for an unbearably long time. The woman then saw another woman racing down the river bank. She asked her, “Why are you not stopping to help me save the babies?”, and the woman replied, “Because I am trying to stop whoever is throwing the babies into the river.”
The Parable of the Starfish
A little girl was walking on the beach when she saw a starfish drying out in the sand, unable to swim back to water. She threw the starfish into the ocean to save it and kept walking. She came upon more and more dried starfish, and she spent her afternoon tossing them back into the ocean. An old woman who had been watching her for hours approached her and asked, “Why are you wasting your time throwing individual starfish into the ocean? It is not going to make a difference because there will be many starfish that you cannot throw into the ocean before you go home.” The young girl stopped, pointed to the starfish she had just thrown, and said, “It made a difference for that one.”
These parables are often referenced by Duke students when discussing whether to accept jobs that approach civic engagement systemically or at a grassroots level. There is a culture at Duke of encouraging people to change the system. While this is positive, it has the unintended consequence of making many students feel guilty for wanting to partake in grassroots efforts because they feel that they could be doing more. When I first heard these parables, my upbringing led me to identify with the child throwing the individual starfish back into the ocean. However, after engaging with service in an academic context, I now believe that the most change for public good can occur when fixing root causes, like running up the river to stop the babies from being thrown in. The way that I approach service now is intentional and methodical. I want to spend the majority of my life trying to change the systems that cause injustice, as I feel the resources I have been given through Duke and my background afford me to help solve big issues. Yet, I am also considerate of the individual babies in the river. I believe that, to fully better the civic engagement, there need to be people working both grassroots and systemic efforts. I believe that there should be no guilt associated with pursuing either path to civic engagement, and I am working on finding my individual preference for which path I should choose.
