In my struggles to find work, dealing with health issues, and other things, I have been trying everything I can to position myself to be a solution to problems in life, rather than a problem.  I have done years of unpaid work, trying to get an organization to promote abstract strategy games going, and had marginal success.  It exists, but ends up not being that large, with minimal involvement.  I had been willing to bend over backwards, change everything if need be, and accomodate, but things scattered.  In this, companies that even sold certain games had NO time to do anything with their games.

I have looked to get an employment support group off the ground, including working with several other groups, to produce win-win situations.  With one group, fighting for changes in the student loan situation, I asked if they would work with other groups and the answers have come back, "No..." and a story follows that they have people scamming them to get a list of people who they would then pitch things to.  I try to explain what I am working on, and no reply back.

I contact local and federal government people, say I want to be of help, and nothing.  I also see if I can ask for help, and nothing there.  Where I am has observed no one with any clue on what to do to create jobs in the area.  There is no sense of community, and no innovation.

Ok, maybe I lack interpersonal skills, but I have a feeling it is an increasingly common problem with humans, and not just me.  What does it take to get people to work together and produce win-win situations?   Think of the congresswoman shooting now.  Would there be ANY chance that people will look beyond an attempt to grab power, and seek their own ends, using this?

I sit and wait here, looking to be part of the solution.  Anyone else out there care to be also?  You know, an ability to have more people work together without doing it at the cost of one member of the group?

From the way you're describing it, it sounds like you keep trying to either deal with an existing organization as an independant person, or launch a new organization yourself. Maybe it would be easier to join an existing organization? Institutions are used to having individuals join them, only dealing with other established institutions. If an individual comes to them as says they want to work with them, but not really join them, then they aren't going to be interested.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting things.

All the same, there is evidence that US society is losing what is called "social capital." Robert Putnam wrote an influential book on the subject called Bowling Alone:

http://www.bowlingalone.com/

Greed

Wether it's greed for money, power, status, possesions, resources etc etc humans are greedy. Add that to our fundamental insanity and you have your answer - we're human. It is in our nature to satisfy ourselves and shaft everyone else.

Modern technology along with the increased work loads and the disappearing separation of work and private life because of it. Greed and self interest are too obvious to blame, but are major factors nonetheless.

From what I have studied, as modern technology has lessened the need for face-to-face contact, individuals have become reserved to the point of barely knowing their neighbor and not even knowing their neighbor's name 2 doors down. As a consequence of increasing modern technology, not even a person's home is safe from work. It used to be you could screen your calls and leave it up to the answering machine. Nowadays, if your work calls you, you screen it, and they leave you a message, they can email you or text message you along with giving you a berating when you don't answer because their cell phone indicated down to the second which time they called you and how many times they called again.

This pertains to you because the people you meet to "help" feel themselves overworked and don't want to take on another project when their 9 to 5 job on paper is in reality an 8 am to 6 or 7 pm job. Then we get into the nitty gritty of them thinking What does this person want?, What is their angle?, Are they a spy from one of our competitors here to get access then leave? and on.

If you don't make your intentions clear up front with a business plan and sell yourself, then you will see the same results time and time again. As for asking the Government if you can help them, they are thinking the same thing along with If we give this guy a chance when will he expect to be paid for his "help?" Many jobs in Government are not applied for. Hell, I know a few friends from college who got their $70k/year Government job by interning, going to political rallies, organizing for political candidates, and on.

If you come in innocuous and polite just wanting to "help," you set off red flags right away. While you spend your time selling your "help," they are sitting back thinking What is the ulterior motive here? If I accept this help, then how far down the line will this person be asking to be paid?

My advice is to go in guns blazing with a business plan in a 3 ring binder (I would prefer actually binding to make it look more professional) and sell yourself to the organization as how your "help" would help increase their bottom line in some way. This entails doing your homework on the organization, getting to know who are the friends of the higher ups, becoming friends with the friends of the higher ups, knowing what hobbies the higher ups like to do, phone the higher ups, and plan a meeting centered around their hobbies.

I am going off too far into details most people do not have the time for. Likewise, the time spent to create a business plan for every organization you interview at is a job in of itself.

At the very least, go in confident, know the organization down to a tee, and sell yourself on how if hired you would help the organization increase their bottom line or if nonprofit or Government how they would better serve the population their mission calls to serve.

Greed and Xenophobia.

Ahh I do remember that book.  I believe I still own it.  It was part of researching the issue. 

In my case, I end up starting things, because I find that no one is in an area doing what I was looking to have done.  It would be a bit of "community organizer" work, where you ask people to come together to come up with answers for mutual benefit.  Areas I jump into are of need, because it looks like they are no answers, like figuring out how to make chess more popluar (and other mindsports) to impact society in a more positive manner.  And then my look to be able to address the unemployment issue.  I figured that if there were lack of answers, that people would then work together to come up with some of mutual benefit, but didn't seem that way.  Things I have run into have been...

With IAGO (abstract strategy games), I see there is a general belief that they can't grow the pool of players, so they decide they want to fight amongst themselves to grab what they can, and feel they put themselves at risk if they do so.  This was even as it was important to coordinate regarding things like the World Mindsports Games, regarding uniforms.  In that case, it felt like you wish someone would have at least the common decensy to come up with a rival organization to make IAGO pointless and obsolete, but no one does.  Oh, I could go on about war stories about people who think they have "the next chess" (these are some of the worst people I run into), who saw myself had one business partner for one game spend over $100 for a sign, and then his partner accuse me of forgery for a memo of understanding I had signed.  This same guy then asks about getting manpower at the county fair from IAGO, but then didn't want to have anything linked to IAGO.  I wonder if Midway sued them for using GIF images of Mortal Kombat characters.  I see a lack of belief combined with a fear of success. 

With the employment group thing, I had been looking to position from a vocation angle, so it is bigger picture.  I had seen individuals pop up, but not hang around, due to lack of answers.  No one wanted to stay together to come up with new ways for doing things.  With this one, i think on one has a clue on what to do, so everyone does their own business.

I will say I have had a bit more luck with CADERS.  I have embedded in the Game Room community, and riding things out, trying to server.  Willing to adapt as needed, but found I needed to be more of a driver with things, which I do.  Live and learn, but just pondering the homan nature thing here and how to do things better.  I do believe there is a room for a "PGA for Pacman" out there, or developing a class of player that plays a wide range of games of a similar tupe, to promote all the games.  The drive for change in the world would make such a player of interest.  And yes, generalists do exist.  I have one person who totally dominates in the area of retro videogames and NO ONE can seem to beat him.  Need to find more like this.

Well, I ponder on.

People don't want a win-win situation but an big WIn (for them) - lose situation...

It is just a small group that is community driven like you...

Welcome to the big world... Society need losers to work in the Wall Mart, to fight in the army etc;..

Conflicting interests obviously. People wants what is best for them and that is not always what is best for someone else.

Lack of perspective, greed, selfishness, stupidity etc.

I'll go with a more innocuous one, simply that our generally increasing quality of life (which may conflict with economic statistics), allows us to separate from others in ways that were previously impossible. Many people can telecommute (i could have done 90% of my work in my internship in Washington from my apartment there), and we have more ways to entertain ourselves and sustain ourselves, despite the fact that in many ways we're more interdependent than ever: for instance in food: a man with an apartment with zero capacity to grow or raise his own food can now order groceries from the grocery store, so he doesn't have to leave his home or interact with anyone to feed himself if he chooses not to

Now this is seperate from any divination of whether this is good or bad, or whether this plays into other political agendas (like, say, if this is an exploitative conspiracy on the part of big business to seperate us so that we are more susceptible), but its true that our increasing independence has weakened the effectiveness of social structures, like grass-roots political movements, for instance

One of the major theories of International Relations, the "Liberal" theory, pretty much runs with this. It theorizes that history moves forward such that increasing individuality on all levels of the international sphere (from the wealthy countries to the poor countries and in between) is going to fundamentally undermine the system of sovereign statehood that has been in place since the Peace of Westphalia. Much like how terrorism now has no boundaries, crime has no boundaries, business has no boundaries, the acts of people are becoming more and more independent of state structures, which have been shown to undermine their effectiveness.