# Why Should I PERSONALLY Care About Politics?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-personally-care-about-politics/967573>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 7, 2022, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-personally-care-about-politics/967573 "2022-07-07T19:21:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2022, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-i-personally-care-about-politics/967573/3 "2022-07-07T19:34:20Z")

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I took an adult education course years back. For a writing assignment, I decided to interview a couple of Buddhist monks.

In one interview, we were chatting about some of the [**Buddhist hermits**](https://www.kyotojournal.org/conversations/alone-with-your-self-the-hermit-experience) still in existence around the world.

I mentioned that they “weren’t really a part of the solution, now were they ?”

The monk I was interviewing replied, “Maybe not. But they are _definitely_ not part of the problem.”

For those with absolutely no interest in politics, if they can do a _fair_ job of ‘not being a part of the problem,’ then there’s a case to be made that … that’s enough.

But it takes a pretty fair understanding of at least a few societal things to reasonably gauge whether or not one _is_ a ‘part of the problem.’

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