Word: directs
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Should we define such “service” broadly, as all actions that benefit others or society, whether they are direct or not, whether they are selfless or not? Or should we define it narrowly, as only those actions that help others directly and are performed selflessly? Can meaningful distinctions be made among the myriad forms and definitions of services that Harvard students and graduates will adopt...
...this, there lies a spectrum: At one end service in a form that is direct, local, and pure; at the other, service in a form that is indirect, broad, and clouded by questions of sincerity and ambition (direct service at one end, business at the other, with political work somewhere in between). The most direct service tends to be the least glamorous, the lowest paying, and the least pursued; the least direct tends to be the most glamorous, the highest paying, and the most widely applied for in the rush of fall recruiting season...
It’s easy to draw the simple distinction that direct, selfless service is good and that all else is bad; I’ve been guilty of drawing such distinctions myself. But as I prepare to enter the world I would hope to improve, I can’t deny that while the world needs labor organizers, it also needs businessmen who understand that well-paid workers with health care plans are productive workers, just as while the world needs public school teachers, it also needs politicians who will not sell out their constituents at the drop...
Those who pursue politics and direct service might argue that this line of thinking lets those who choose business or finance careers over more obviously service-oriented careers off too easily. But letting them off too easily would be to expect nothing more of them than an unfeeling pursuit of the bottom line. Whether or not we are adequately serving our nation and world is not a question conclusively answered at the career fair; it’s a question that must be asked and answered every day in every career...
Those who pursue politics or direct service are not unquestionably virtuous (or, at any rate, not unquestionably successful in maximizing the good they can do), nor are those who pursue business unquestionably craven. When it comes to serving our country and our kind, what matters most may not be the paths we choose, but the principles to which we adhere...