Ben blogs: Intelligent Discourse

The basis of friendship for most people is trust. In my case though, the bases of friendship are conversation and competition. The competition part is fairly easy to grasp - Im into sports and despite my physical shortcomings I would like to think I would still make a worthy opponent for anyone I usually play against. It doesn’t stop there, I’m also extremely game when it comes to word games (Scrabble, Boggle, Word Factory anyone?) and trivia contests. This part is very easy to fulfill. How hard is it to get beaten by yours truly every single time? *tornadoes* *cyclones* *hurricanes* hehe

Intelligent discourse is a totally different thing. My dad has always been critical of me because I rarely go out of my way to talk to people to check on how they’re doing. Give me someone who could talk to me about the current issues of the world (the AIDS pandemic, stem cell research, same sex marriage, the Israel-Lebanon conflict etc) and I would be gushing with words for hours and hours. Unfortunately, not all people could do this - or fake it.

I’m amazed that after so long, I’ve only kept one friend who has specifically been evasive of intelligent discourse. Why does this person keep me from starting discussions that were routing to me? Actually, I still don’t know even up to now. I was reminded of this when he warned me against discussing the Muhammad Danish comic strip snafu with him. You see, there is a level of bigotry and xenophobia that shrouds the shallow philosophy of this individual.

And yet I keep this person as a friend. Jeez. No use, eh? I might have to redefine what friendship is.