{"id":302,"date":"2015-12-07T01:09:23","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T01:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jick.net\/wordpress\/?p=302"},"modified":"2015-12-07T01:09:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T01:09:23","slug":"no-one-elses-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"No One Else’s Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Chapter 3 of “Life, The Universe and Everything<\/em>“, Douglas Adams immortalized the idea of the “Somebody Else’s Problem” field, which makes things invisible. We all tend to look at the world of politics and war through an S.E.P. field.\u00a0 This has to stop.<\/p>\n

Consider the problem of Islamic terrorism: most non-Muslims feel that it is the responsibility of the majority of sensible, peaceful, moderate Muslims to “do something about” those who perform hate crimes against innocent civilians in the name of Islam.\u00a0 And yet when a Muslim woman is violently attacked by “patriotic Canadians” for the crime of wearing a veil over her face, we dismiss this as an act of deranged idiots — not something we’d<\/em> do, not something we<\/em> condone, so not our problem. But it is<\/em> our problem.<\/p>\n

Conversely, when sects of fanatic Christians raise money to bring on Armageddon, or disrupt the funerals of soldiers, most Christians dismiss them as “wingnuts — not real<\/em> Christians” and hence\u00a0 S.E.P.\u00a0 Wrong!\u00a0 When people who call themselves the same thing you call yourself do something despicable, you have three ethical choices: convince them to stop, have them officially expelled from said tribe, or withdraw from the tribe yourself.\u00a0 The collective is<\/em> responsible for the acts of its individual members, and vice versa<\/em>.\u00a0 That’s the social contract.<\/p>\n

I know, it’s hard enough monitoring our own behavior without worrying about that of others; but in today’s world it is not enough to simply “set a good example”.\u00a0 Each of us has a responsibility<\/em> to engage those we regard as “deranged”, find out why<\/em> they think the way they do, and try to talk them out of it.\u00a0 We may not succeed, but we must try; otherwise nothing will halt the condensation of a diverse society into mutually hostile pools of like-minded individuals reinforcing each other’s prejudices.<\/p>\n

Talk to your enemy<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s no one else’s problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Chapter 3 of “Life, The Universe and Everything“, Douglas Adams immortalized the idea of the “Somebody Else’s Problem” field, which makes things invisible. We all tend to look at the world of politics and war through an S.E.P. field.\u00a0 This has to stop. Consider the problem of Islamic terrorism:Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"gutentor_comment":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}