It is clear that some of us are committed to lives of service, and others are not. I'm sure social scientists have identified myriad patterns to justify our quirky lives, without actually explaining them, much less identifying mechanisms underlying them. And that's just as well, given the magnitude of the task. I'd rather we spend our considerable cognitive surplus on other issues. Consider, for example, how much time we spend tweeting. And then trying to determine if twittering counts at literature. (If you think twit lit is, well, literature, I think you're an idiot. But I digress.) Never mind who's drinking which brand of beer in the White House. We're so absorbed with television and the Internet and who's screwing whom in the world of celebrities, we can't bother to focus on the inordinate suffering we're causing, to humans and other animals. Sixth great extinction, including our own species? Whatev. Solving those problems will simply have to wait until after I get a tattoo proclaiming my independence from mainstream culture.