While reading To Hell With Good Intentions, I felt extremely frustrated by the entire article. All of my beliefs about service were being challenged in this short article. It made me feel as though the work I have done was completely unwanted and unnecessary. I started to question why I serve over and over again. Illich believes we are a bunch of “do-gooder” volunteers from North America who believe it is our responsibility to share God’s blessings with our poorer fellow men. He continues to speak negatively about us by stating we sell our ideas of democracy to people in hopes they will profit from it as well.

For one, Illich’s views are completely biased, and he does not mention anything about how he could be wrong in his opinions. I have been studying science my entire college career, and the great thing about science is that it is always trying to prove itself wrong, only to improve and progress from it. Instead of offering way to improve the “do-gooder” volunteer system he dislikes so much, he bashes it completely. He thinks we shouldn’t be doing this type of work in other countries for several reasons. First off, he states that we pretentiously impose ourselves on other people. He believes that “the U.S. is fighting to protect and develop at least a minority who consume what the U.S. majority can afford.” Illich says Americans do this volunteer work to push our way of life on others in order to bring them the success Americans have in the United States. He strongly opposes our volunteerism because the people we are helping don’t want our help or need it. There is a reason our two worlds are different, and trying to push service on them is ruining their way of life and “creating disorder.” He is essentially saying Americans are full of it and love ourselves so much that we need others to be as successful as we are. Our service to them only emphasizes the gap between us while consistently put Americans on top.  

Although Illich does a lot of bad talking, he does make good points. I am sure there are people like Illich describes who go on these mission trips for the wrong reason and do a lot more harm than good. There are people who work in certain villages who are under-educated about the culture, economic problems, political systems, etc. He generalizes us all into one group of rich, self-centered, American kids who are trying to make themselves look better by going on mission trips to somehow “enlighten” people. However, we aren’t all like this. A weak part of Illich’s argument is that he generalizes all of this bad stuff to every group, every volunteer, and every person who tries to do good in a different country. He makes the argument simpler than it is. And as we have learned, service is far from simple.

Service is complex because it is more than just giving out some medicine. Doing service implies uneven relationships between two parties, usually with one being more powerful than the other. There would not be a need for service work if everyone were equal in opportunities and resources. Service is also complex because it is hard to determine how much help can one can possibly do. In Starfish Hurling and Community Service, Morton states, “It is never smart to intervene in an ecosystem without understanding how all of its parts are interrelated.” We can help people in clinics by providing resources they might not have had access to, but there are bigger problems within communities. It is hard to help without understanding why people are in certain poverty states, why the economic status of a country is what it is, how the political workings of the country are, etc. Many volunteers are far from understanding many of the issues at hand, and only the surface of these problems are addressed on these mission trips.

However, Morton offers advice to these service groups: “Stop hurling starfish.” We shouldn’t be going into any trip blindly. He says we should really focus on listening and learning about the environment we are going to work in. More knowledge means more effectiveness, which in the end means more people served and helped. This is the message I feel Illich was trying to get across apart from all the negative things he had to say about service trips. And I agree with this point.

Education is important. We would not be in school if we didn’t think it was. I believe it is important to start incorporating education into brigade programs to learn about the relationship between service, power, and privilege. We should be educating ourselves on the country we are going to and applying it to our trips. I believe this would benefit people who volunteer as well the people who are being served. We would understand them better, and it would just one step further in our service work by helping the whole person instead of just what’s on the surface.

During my Global Brigades trip, we did a lot of the work I described as helping the surface of problems. We opened up clinics, saw hundreds of patients, and gave out medicines. We helped families improve their homes by building them latrines, septic tanks, and giving them cement floors. However, we also showed compassion, gave hope, and loved every single person that visited us. We listened to their issues and provided a shoulder to lean on. We tried to understand their culture and their background, in hope only to serve them better. This is what I believe makes us different from the rich, narcissistic, American “do-gooder” volunteers described by Illich. We sometimes may only serve on the surface, but we always strive to serve better. We want to help these people in any way possible in hope they benefit and alleviate whatever struggles they may have.

Why should the desire to help people be a bad thing and criticized by people like Illich? Service is an inherently good thing. Whether you are helping your parents, a Nicaragua boy, or a homeless man in Chicago, you are providing service and that in itself is a good thing. We shouldn’t be criticized for doing good. We should be assessed for the way we approach doing service, and educate those who come after us. We can only progress from here, and in the end people will be helped more effectively. I only hope to improve myself as a more educated volunteer and brigade leader. As a result, I can show more love, be more compassionate, and bring more happiness to people, and that’s really all that matters.