“Societal problems are now personal; personal problems are now societal.”
When I was a kid — which wasn’t that long ago, given that I just turned 30 in January — I recall hearing a popular phrase on the playground: “Mind your own business.” MYOB reared its head whenever somebody threatened to rat out a fellow student for anything from harmless roughhousing to juvenile delinquency. The phrase is sometimes attributed to the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a rough translation of which states: ” … make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”
Unfortunately, the phrase “mind your own business” has lost all meaning. After all, you don’t get to mind your own business in America today. If you’re a religious business owner, the government can force you to serve a same-sex wedding and cover your employees’ abortion-inclusive health care plan. If you’re a landowner, the government can simply seize your property and hand it over to another private party in order to increase tax revenue. If you’re an entrepreneur, the thicket of government intervention weighing you down, from minimum wage to tax regulation, stifles innovation and stymies creativity.
Today, Americans are only told to mind our own business when we’re not, in fact, engaging in business. Concerned about the societal fallout from sexual promiscuity? Mind your own business. Worried about the rise of single motherhood? Mind your own business. Upset about an epidemic of young people seemingly willing to trade the responsibilities of adulthood for an infantilized freedom? Mind your own business.
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