Hi everyone,

I'm thinking about how much service I should do in the future, and how political I should get. It feels refreshing and like a relief to me that it might be better for the world if I actively stepped back from political action and just focused on "political" action that was simply service. Also, it occurred to me that I might not want to do service activities where I'm "not competitive"; I might not want to "shove out of the way," e.g., someone who would be willing to work with homeless people and exceptionally talented at it, and make it seem like "the quota is filled."

I'm thinking that my political actions will be limited to pro-human-rights and pro-economic-development and anti-poverty initiatives, globally. Since I understand how math-y research affects the world better than I understand how monetary donations impact the world, I might quite simply focus on publishing new ideas about economics and how to support human rights to comp.theory, once I am fully established and "doing fine" myself.

My service activities might involve simply donations to carefully selected non-profits; if I found a particular cause that had no adequate non-profit helping it, I might start one. I might also be willing to "shout on the internet" about local injustices wherever I may live--I'm thinking LA, I'll give it a try at least--and to try to lobby local officials and other relevant people to improve conditions, fight corruption, and support opportunity and happy/lucrative employment in my area that I live in.

I am just writing that because I'm thinking about what people "should" and "shouldn't" have to do to help the world, partly in light of my recent research. What should people ethically be able to say "no" to? What should people be compelled to do? One other thing I might do is speaking out about organizations and leaders who are claiming to do something but not following ethical guidelines; no one else will do it. I might also make myself available via email to talk to human rights victims globally, since no one else will do that, either. If the number of emails got overwhelming, I could easily hire a team of staff secretaries to help handle the load of emails.

Hopefully, I haven't forgotten any reasonable thing that I said I would stick to in the past; I'm trying to be less political, but more focused on human rights and keeping out of slavery, torture, internment camps, political prisoner situations, and other abusive situations. It is true that my experiences that I wished had never happened shaped my interest; nevertheless, as much as I hated the experience, I happily accept the "free eye-opener lesson" that came with it...I see how the world works much better now, and that is a component of what happened that I do like and that I did allow to influence my choice. I still think most people approach things like that wrong.

-Philip White (philipjwhite@yahoo.com)