Sunday, February 07, 2021

Not my problem, why should I care?


There's a common worldview that can be illustrated as: "It doesn't matter to me so it shouldn't matter to anyone else."

I see this take pretty often.

Maybe that new legislation doesn't affect you. For this reason, you might not care.

I care if legislation affects you negatively even if it doesn't affect me at all.

If the legislation is good for me but violates your rights, then I'm still against it. Of course, I'm always against legislation, so that's not surprising.

But it also happens when people observe that someone else's hobby or interest is destroyed or hindered in some way. Such as, I kind of hate "sports", but it still bothers me that some women's sports participation is impacted when men, cosplaying as women, are allowed to play against women in supposedly "women-only" events. 

Personally, I wouldn't care if all sports of that sort went away; I only care at all because others care. If sex isn't going to be recognized as a real thing anymore (even though it still is real), then just eliminate sports sex categories and let people of similar ability compete with each other. I'm still not going to watch, but I care somewhat.

I have fallen into this way of looking at things before, though. 

When ground-based astronomers and astronomy hobbyists complained about the early, brightly reflective, Starlink satellites making bright streaks across their photos, I callously pointed out that ground-based astronomy is obsolete. I also mentioned that you can track when and where the satellites will pass, and so you don't have to complain about your astronomical photos being ruined. 

Saying ground-based astronomy was obsolete made some people go crazy at me, but an astronomy professor told me the same thing decades ago, so it's not just my opinion. But, I-- even being an enthusiast for astronomy-- wasn't affected by the issue, so I didn't feel that anyone else should care, either. But maybe I should, just to be consistent


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