We used to reward people for serving humanity by making them feel good about public service and being a citizen and neighbour. That was a thing people around me had growing up and many of my family dedicated their life to public service professions (teaching, city administration, etc.) on that basis. And this was common among the middle class generally. You could have a reasonable lifelong profession and a good retirement doing this.

Cynicism has washed that away. And people openly disparage public servants and get resentful of people who still manage to pull a living in this way.