A Challenge.
I’ve been thinking about something that my International Politics professor once told me. “When you first meet someone, try to refrain from talking about religion and politics. If you become friends with this person, put off these controversial conversations for as long as you can and see how well your friendship does without it”. That got me thinking about whether or not friendships are forged based on how we agree/disagree with people about controversial issues today. Do we naturally want people whom we agree with as friends? If that’s so, then are we even making the effort to really learn about all types of people?
Sure, a lot of us (me included) will say that we have friends that we agree with on some things, but disagree with on others. If you were to sit down with your friend and seriously map out your views on life, would this person have more things similar to your beliefs than not? Likely so. “Birds of a feather flock together”.
My own personal challenge (which you could take up if you want) is to take the advice of my professor and see how well a friendship goes without debates on abortion and god. I believe that a lot of people subconsciously (or consciously) push people away when they realise that they do not share the same views. Thus, I’m making a change in the way that I interact with people.
Tags: Miscellaneous |
July 8th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
This should be easy for me, seeing as I don’t really enjoy talking about politics and God, and most of my friends don’t really like talking about them either.
But what the hell, I’ll take up the chllenge.
July 11th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I try to follow that as much as I can. Friendships can last longer when you don’t have those types of debates.
July 11th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Most of my friends disagree with me politically and ethically. So I don’t see you point. We don’t really have shallow debates on abortion and such as they are really the symptoms of the problem not the idealistic root.
July 12th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I don’t really understand what you just said, Meesekiller.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Which part?
Okay let me assume you are confused on the Abortion issue. The root of abortion is the lack of responsibility by those who choose to have sex.
What is the primary purpose of sex? To make babies. So if you have sex you are taking the risk that you will either become pregnant or conceive a child.
What is an abortion then?
An abortion is the convenient way of dealing with a pregnancy. It cuts all ties of responsibility for the people what conceived the child.
Here is where everyone joins the debate, abortion is wrong because it kills the child or abortion is the only option a single-young mother has. And the baby wouldn’t have a good life anyway.
I believe that is an extremely shallow debate. The problem isn’t with the child it is with the people who conceived the child. So abortion is essentially a symptom of the gross irresponsibility of today’s society. If you want to end abortion then make people responsible. The best way to do this to make people fiscally responsible. The greatest travesty isn’t that abortion is say legal, the greatest travesty is that the government funds it! If you didn’t have free abortions it would be a lot harder to part with that cash…or it would give more incentive to not get pregnant in the first place.
This logic works for a lot of things. Why are Americans more fat? What because they can’t walk or be responsible for exercising and eating decently? Why are so many Americans in debt up to their eyeballs, because they don’t have the responsibility or willpower to wait till they have the money to buy something?
One of the things I see that goes on in American, and I’m sure goes on elsewhere is the lack of willingness to accept responsibility for actions done. If you can’t turn off the TV, if you can’t spend time with your own children, if you can’t live a reasonable responsible life that puts necessity before want…then that is your problem, not the government’s, not your neighbor’s, and not McDonald’s.
As a good friend of mine once said,”Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”