If you do not believe in destiny, then boy / girl do I have a story for you. So, I’ve been trying to get out of a conference presentation for some time now. First, I said that I don’t have enough time to whittle my paper down to the required length. Then, I got a sinus infection (when one’s nose got constantly broken, this is a result; kids, don’t let your noses get broken. A public service announcement by Omar). Then I started doubting myself and convincing myself that no one cared about my work and that my day would be better spent tending my date palms.

Collective guilt is one of those pernicious concepts, a tool to spur the individual to action by implicating him/her in crimes committed by others with whom they share certain characteristics. For example, some Americans ascribe collective guilt to Muslims for terrorism, some on the radical Left ascribe collective guilt to whites for systematic decimation of Native Americans. In an insightful comment, Sitaram mentioned how a society shares collective responsibility for atrocities committed by it. When one sees a society as a seperate entity aside from the sum of its individuals, perhaps it makes some sense. Although I would like to believe in the agency of the individual to affect the collective, the fact of the matter is that any single individual only has agency to act, but there is no guarantee of results. Thus, one fact that ancestors of a society committed atrocities should not stain the current society, even if it benefited from said atrocities. If one segment of a society committs an atrocity, can we really hold thier country-mates responsible for it?