Friday 7 June 2013

People get too defensive...

We live in kind of a strange world. Yesterday somebody said to me "No offence if you're religious" after mocking religious people for believing in an invisible man who controls the world.

There is a certain culture these days which looks down upon and mocks religious people but at the same time is so afraid to offend anybody that they have to backtrack just in case. Maybe it's just British people being afraid of conflict or maybe it is a more general fear of retribution. There is a powerful theme of political correctness underpinning most social interactions (maybe you noticed). It almost seems like they're (the government, the illuminati, the skull and bones society, the masons, the gardeners, the hairdressers, the newscasters, the orang-utans and the bonobos) trying to whitewash everybody - to eliminate any difference between one culture and another, one way of life and another.

It seems to me to be a terrible shame that we are afraid to talk about this kind of thing. If I just meet somebody, typically the question I'm most interested in asking is "What is it like being you?" but even a question like this is laboured and weighed down by the fear of retribution, the fear of causing offence.

Sometimes, I like to imagine a perfectly safe place, where we can talk, not without emotion and not without fear, but with clearness of intention. Where you can understand why I am asking the questions and I can understand why you are answering them. The conversations are always useful, always interesting and always beneficial.



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