Internationalists
When I hear news reports of events in far-off lands, I never know whether or not I can trust them. I get these little bursts of infotainment and they feed my apathetic tendencies. I don’t want to be apathetic. I want to know if I can help. Regularly I get the strong impression that in topical conversations we’re all just pooling our ignorance.
Today I had an idea (not dissimilar to some suggestions from Calvin Seerveld): each of us could choose one pet region or country or people-group and learn about it as a long-term project. This way when that country comes up in the news there’ll be one person near whose opinion will be worth hearing.
I choose Siberia.
7 responses to “Internationalists”
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Italy
New Zealand.
Yeah, “pooled ignorance” is definitely what happens at our smoko breaks at work. Everyone throws in their bit about the latest crisis, thinking they’re experts from One News or whatever last night. My comments, for better or worse, tend to be attempts to hold people back from silly extremes. The country idea is a great one—I choose Narnia.
Hey, what a great idea. For someone who seems to keep his eye on EVERY country in the world, try Jonathan Edelstein’s blog.
I’m sorry folks, I accidentally deleted a few of your comments in some over-zealous spam deletion. Won’t happen again.
Japan
i choose Lebanon