{"id":6844,"date":"2013-09-04T16:06:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T20:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=6844"},"modified":"2013-09-04T16:06:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T20:06:22","slug":"problematica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/09\/problematica.html","title":{"rendered":"problematica –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"problematica\"<\/a>This thingie is a problem, for scientists. A sedentary, plant-like animal. Cambrian era, so not a really pressing<\/em> problem. But a good metaphor. I know!\u00a0 I know! Soooo many things are…<\/p>\n

So I just learned that there is a whole category of these weird things that don’t fit: problematica. <\/em><\/a>Really. Thingies (that’s what we call them at my house) that defy categorisation. This is my life, folks.<\/p>\n

Ask me what I think on anything more complex than breakfast, and the old heart\/head kick into boxing. Or is that kick-boxing…? At any rate, take the current situation with Syria. I don’t want the US to be the world’s cops. The engaged Buddhist in me, however, notes (as a friend has) that we shouldn’t stand by idly & shrug when someone offs more than 100,000 human beings.<\/p>\n

And then my head kicks in again, and I wonder why we only seem to care about the Middle East…? Could it be that pesky fuel stuff? When Rwanda was imploding, we stood by. It took a major political upheaval to get help for the Bosnians, who were massacred by the Serbs. Sudan, Congo…There’s a long list of folks we didn’t rescue.<\/p>\n

In other words? Syria isn’t easily categorised as help\/ don’t help. It’s messy. Problematica, you might call it. And I think just knowing that even scientists — dealing with objects long dead — can’t figure out which box is for what, is a huge relief. If you study this stuff all your life, and still go off on whether it’s a plant or an animal (and yes, I know it’s not as easy as it sounds), then I can relax about so many of the moral questions that vex an engaged Buddhist.<\/p>\n

Whew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This thingie is a problem, for scientists. A sedentary, plant-like animal. Cambrian era, so not a really pressing problem. But a good metaphor. I know!\u00a0 I know! Soooo many things are… So I just learned that there is a whole category of these weird things that don’t fit: problematica. Really. Thingies (that’s what we call…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[621,601],"tags":[11,1181,1187,262,1326,622,1318],"class_list":["post-6844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judging","category-science","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-judging","tag-problematica","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"\nproblematica - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This thingie is a problem, for scientists. 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