guilty delights

One of my guilty delights is to listen to people I disagree with explain their points.

I don't mean people who think that Harry Potter wasn't a milestone in modern English literature, or who think that Nutella isn't the food of the gods. People on both sides of those sorts of arguments, and the people in between, tend to have picked their sides with a high awareness of subjectivity. Plus, these are the points that aren't exactly life and death.

I like listening to people whose points of view are utterly unfathomable, and which they believe is something of cosmological importance. In Paris today, there is a huge anti-gay marriage protest, a social issue that some people interpret as an attack on traditional values. These people are so angry about this issue, that they have caused huge disruption to the city's public transport, prioritising the exciting,sexy social issues above the mundane but vital to-ing and fro-ing of everyday life. I think it's a wonderful micro-example of the problem with the anti-gay marriage argument on the whole; the protesters are so angry, so caught up with a subject that is ultimately so inconsequential to their individual lives, that they forget the basic, vital stuff of life. No matter what your political views, I think we can all agree we need to think about the simple business of food and travel, before we think about the complicated matter of segregating and dehumanising other people over some arbitrary fear you have. In fact, I think we can all say that preserving a communal sense of respect and compassion, is more important than your personal opinion.

There is something so fascinating about people who are so dead set for or against something, who have a level of certainty about something when I have Cartesian crises every other week. 

To some extent I understand, I have some of the map that led them to decide, rather than discover, their conclusions. Take, for example, the pyramid UFO believers. I understand the desire to believe in magic. At the grand old age of 25, I occasionally wish my heart out that there were mysteries like I thought there were when I was a child. As great as this time period is, with the high life expectancy, no smallpox etc, I can't deny  I sometimes feel the wind goes out of my sails when I remember none of the worlds I constructed in my head will ever be real.  

So I get it, when people say there is life on other planets, benign and wise, or brutal and imperialistic. I understand why some people whisper softly about crystals and energy and chakras. Because when the hard reality is hit, we don't want to admit it. We want to tunnel a way out of the cruelty and monotony. We don't want chemotherapy to be the only possible cure for cancer. We want to hope, to believe there is something someone else knows that will fix it. If you are all alone on earth, a loser, a joke, you hope that there will be something from another place, another world that will distract you, that will convince there's more to this awful place.