Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a new framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. To submit a question, email Sigal at sigal.samuel@vox.com or fill out this anonymous form. Either way, if we choose your question, it’ll be anonymized. Here’s this week’s question, condensed and edited for clarity:

I’m convinced that the fight against authoritarianism is the most important issue of our time. My family immigrated to America from an authoritarian country, and some of my relatives and I are astonished and horrified that the same thing is befalling the US.

There’s more that I could be doing to participate in the pro-democracy resistance. I’m in a public-facing (not government) job where I could shape my work in a way that draws more attention to Trump’s corruption and war on the American people. But I feel both like my work wouldn’t make much of a difference, and like I will be targeted and punished by the Trump administration for it, so what is the point?

With the path we’re on now, more and more Americans are going to be persecuted for doing things the administration doesn’t like, and I’m terrified of the potential consequences for myself and my colleagues. It’s a collective action problem, because no one person’s actions alone are going to stop Trump and Musk, yet if we all tell ourselves that the risk isn’t worth the gain to democracy, no one will do anything. How can I navigate this dilemma ethically, rationally, and without ruining my life?

Dear Rational Resistance,

Growing up in the Jewish community, my childhood was full of stories about the Holocaust. I heard horrifying stories, obviously, but also stories about inspiring people who resisted the Nazis — like the “Righteous Gentiles” who hid Jews in their homes at great personal risk. My child-mind obsessed over the question: If I were in their place, would I have had the same courage they did? Would I hide someone in my attic?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot since January 20. Not because I think today’s America is equal to Nazi Germany, but simply because a lot of us are wondering how far to stick our necks out right now. How do we navigate the tension between personal safety and moral responsibility? Is there something about living in extraordinary times that demands more from us, morally speaking, than we would normally risk?

I don’t think that the moral demandingness of the universe suddenly changes in times like these. Instead, I think times like these open our eyes to the reality that was there all along: We are not just atomized individuals, as Western modernity conditions us to think. We are interdependent. Our fates are connected to the fates of other people, so to truly look out for ourselves and our own family, we have to look out for the broader collective, too.

While a special minority of people are always tuned into this — Buddhist monks, say, or extreme do-gooders — most of us only see reality this way when tragedy........

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