Sherry's speech came out in a jerky, halting rhythm when she told me, in an interview, that the issue of nuclear war was “not close to home”:

Sherry knew it was a problem, but did not want to know.

Volunteers strenuously insisted that all of their efforts were motivated by self-interest. Over and over, they repeated that all people, themselves included, get involved in community affairs only out of “self-interest,” “for their own children,” on issues that are “close to home” and “affect them personally.” In appearing self-interested, volunteers seemed at first glance to confirm the theory that people are “rational actors,” that is, people who will bestir them-selves to community action only when they think that time invested will be worth the personal payoff, and only when they cannot hitch a “free ride” to that personal payoff on someone else's back. But, as we heard in the last chapter, volunteers wanted to do more than live in a paradise engineered by someone else; they wanted to reassure themselves, through their own actions, that the world makes sense because good citizens really can make a difference on issues that matter. Volunteers were, above all, “moral” – in the sense of meaning-making – actors, rather than “rational” actors. The phrases “close to home” and “for the children” worked hard; they were pivotal in allowing volunteers to maintain that feeling that the world made sense.