{"id":54,"date":"2009-06-19T18:00:45","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T18:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html"},"modified":"2009-06-19T18:00:45","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T18:00:45","slug":"iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html","title":{"rendered":"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I was out of town for a couple of days, and apparently while
\nI was away, Iran went (more) insane<\/a>, and North Korea decided Hawaii might make a nice Fourth of
\nJuly nuclear missile target<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Greeeaat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe I should have stayed away another week or so, or not tuned
\nback in to current events once I got home. But I just can’t do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Call me a news junkie, but when big events take place on the
\nworld stage, I’m glued to the TV. During the Tiananmen Sq<\/a> protests, I clutched my couch cushion to my chest, riveted by the
\nimages on my screen. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I wept for days, aghast at the suffering of my countrymen.
\nAnd during 9\/11… well, I was in NYC for that, so I didn’t need my TV to tell me
\nvast and terrible events were afoot.<\/span><\/p>\n

But despite the great empathy I have felt during these and
\nother tragedies, like the deadly 2004 tsunami<\/a>, the actions I have taken have been limited to donating
\nsmall sums of money (just what I could afford) or other goods to relief efforts
\nlike the Red Cross<\/a> or Mercy Corps<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m wondering if I have an ethical obligation to do more.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I say I care, if I get up in arms about the suffering of
\nothers, if the repressive politics of a far-away regime fire me up, do I have a
\nmoral responsibility to take an action to stand behind my beliefs? If I don’t,
\nam I a)<\/span> an ass, and\/or b)<\/span> a hypocrite?<\/span><\/p>\n

And if action is warranted, what sort? How far does my
\nobligation towards my fellow man (and woman) go? Do I join Greenpeace<\/a>, PETA<\/a>, the IRA, the Army, the priesthood, Doctors Without Borders<\/a>, the Peace Corps<\/a> or the NRA<\/a>? If I believe Iranian women deserve a greater voice in
\ntheir government<\/a> but don’t want to get shot joining a protest, what should I
\ndo?<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess what I’m asking is, can I let myself off the hook
\nfor being afraid to commit to a cause, and if not, how can I (safely, and a
\nstep at a time) get involved? <\/span><\/p>\n

What do *you* do when you’re passionate about
\nworld events?<\/span><\/span> (And don’t say create a Facebook<\/a> group…)<\/span><\/p>\n

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

I was out of town for a couple of days, and apparently while I was away, Iran went (more) insane, and North Korea decided Hawaii might make a nice Fourth of July nuclear missile target.  Greeeaat. Maybe I should have stayed away another week or so, or not tuned back in to current events once I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-current-events","category-ethics-policy","category-political-ethics"],"yoast_head":"\nIran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was out of town for a couple of days, and apparently while I was away, Iran went (more) insane, and North Korea decided Hawaii might make a nice Fourth of July nuclear missile target.  Greeeaat. Maybe I should have stayed away another week or so, or not tuned back in to current events once I…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-19T18:00:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hfields\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand? - Everyday Ethics","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand? - Everyday Ethics","og_description":"I was out of town for a couple of days, and apparently while I was away, Iran went (more) insane, and North Korea decided Hawaii might make a nice Fourth of July nuclear missile target.  Greeeaat. Maybe I should have stayed away another week or so, or not tuned back in to current events once I…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html","og_site_name":"Everyday Ethics","article_published_time":"2009-06-19T18:00:45+00:00","author":"hfields","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html","name":"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand? - Everyday Ethics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-19T18:00:45+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-19T18:00:45+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0c57c1fc9d645425d6205fa4f058146f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/iran-and-north-korea-in-the-news-does-caring-oblige-us-to-take-a-stand.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Iran and North Korea In the News: Does Caring Oblige Us To Take a Stand?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/","name":"Everyday Ethics","description":"Moral Ethics Blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0c57c1fc9d645425d6205fa4f058146f","name":"hfields","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/77b\/77bd98aa35acd21a3a7a209185ad8b6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/77b\/77bd98aa35acd21a3a7a209185ad8b6cx96.jpg","caption":"hfields"},"description":"Hillary Fields is a born-and-bred New Yorker, brought up on the not-so-mean streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side. She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}