Public Servant vs. Citizen

Entering public service should be an altruistic act. After all, when you do you contract and obligate to serve the public. That is why politicians are also, and rightly so, referred to as public servants.

Citizen cynicism enters the picture when public servants are proven or suspected to serve none but themselves--or their contributors--in varying degrees.

An argument can be made for placing altruism and cynicism at the opposite end of a wide spectrum, and that the path from cynicism to altruism is long and hard to navigate.

Ideally--and I'm not talking la-la-land here--a Government should be altruistic--should exist purely to serve its citizens--though it rarely does only that.

And as ideally, citizens should not be cynical; they should trust their government to have his or her best at heart, and they should take an active part in either helping them carry out this obligation or seeing to it that they do.

The point is, that without mutual trust, without altruism on the part of the governor, and without trust and engagement on the part of the governed, government and society to the degree these elements go missing become a parody, a fraud, really, a sham.

The good news is that the digital portals now forged to and from government do invite more active citizen participation, and are again making possible the true government our forefathers envisioned, lived, and died for.