musings
Today's work lunch discussion was great, a healthy disagreement about war and politics and a great discussion of the extreme democracy in the US. Of course, as usual, our discussion trapsed off into a bunch of barely connected directions, but that is one of my favourite things about lunch with people from work - you never know where it might lead. I was able to talk about what I'd learned about in my recent class on Community of Christ Theology. Even Christianity in the US was democratized during the revolutionary years. With the belief in the free and equal rights of every person politically, came the corollaries that areas like law, medicine, and religion could be accessible to everyone too. What right did an educated elite have to tell people what was right and wrong, how to be healthy, and what and how to believe? The extreme of this is evident today in many ways, but most notably, in reality television. Reality TV is democracy in action - anyone, no matter who they are or where they're from, can be on TV (but only if they make it through the selection process). Well, our lunch discussion never quite made it into the realms of reality TV, but I never did get the chance to bring around our discussion about the war in Iraq at the end to our discussion of democratization in the beginning. The war in Iraq, according to Bush's speeches, is a religious crusade, and the religion they are crusading to promote is American-style Capitalist Democracy.

Now this is about as political as my blog gets. Usually I save this stuff for lunch table discussions at work and school. I really do like talking about this stuff though, and any chance I get I like to hear a variety of opinions. It's no fun if everyone agrees all the time! That's why I love our work conversations, because usually there is some healthy disagreement. When there isn't I am disappointed.