He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others — the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.

- Jonathan Safran Foer, “Everything is illuminated”

Meaning is defined by at least three points: the personal, the factual, and the resonance between them. (Source)

Although some groups are both working for social change and providing social services, there are many more groups providing social services that are not working for social change. In fact, many social service agencies maybe intentionally or inadvertently working to maintain the status quo. After all, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) wouldn’t exist without a lot of people in desperate straits. The NPIC provides jobs; it provides opportunities for professional development. It enables those who do the work to feel good about what we do and about our ability to help individuals survive in the system. It gives a patina of caring and concern to the ruling class which funds the work.

Paul Kivel

Happiness is our potential, the product of a mind that’s allowed to think as it needs to, that has enough of what it requires, that is free of the terrible weight of bullying and humiliation. As children, we tolerate working conditions that we’d find intolerable as adults: the constant exposure of our attainment to a hostile audience; the motivation by threat instead of encouragement (and big threats, too: if you don’t do this, you’ll ruin your whole future life…); the social world in which you’re mocked and teased, your most embarrassing desires exposed, your new-formed body held up for the kind of scrutiny that would destroy an adult. Often, during childhood, this comes with physical threats, too—being pushed and shoved on the playground, punched and kicked. The eternal menace that something more savage is waiting around the corner on your way home. Imagine how that would feel to you as an adult: that perpetual threat to your bodily integrity and your mental wellbeing. We would never stand for it, but we did as children because it was expected of us and we didn’t know any better. - Wintering : the power of rest and retreat in difficult times / Katherine May

The history of charity and the development of what we now sometimes call the third sector […] is the history of the powerful distracting from their power by giving back to the less fortunate. This relationship has created a trap for today’s non-profit workers who enter a field hoping to do good while also making a living, one that has been shaped by the fact that for centuries it was performed by people who didn’t need a wage. Like other caring fields, non-profit work was structured as women’s work - in this case, work for wealthy women looking for something to do with their time - and that expectation continues to configure the work that people do in this sector. - Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe

(…) the NPIC (Non-Profit Industrial Complex) contributes to a mode of organizing that is ultimately unsustainable. To radically change society we must build mass movements that can topple systems of domination, such as capitalism. However, the NPIC encourages us to think of social justice organizing as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However, a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid. By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by millions. - The Revolution Will Not Be Funded