This is not a "niche" blog. This is everything that makes me, me - or at least the bits I write down. There's no such thing as a "niche" person.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The world has not been designed to my specifications

Went over to Asda yesterday to buy some lunch (why is it that you can buy a French baton loaf and a piece of reduced-because-nearly-out-of-date Brie for 72p but people still buy cheese sandwiches for four times the amount?) and felt annoyed at a group of people who were dawdling along speaking a language that I didn't recognise. Just for a moment I caught myself feeling like they ought to be speaking English, and then I felt guilty for not embracing a diverse and vibrant multicultural society and acting like some kind of Daily Mail hatepig. But thinking about it later, it occured to me that a lot of the things that I don't like are a reflection of how I feel the world ought to be; secretly I'd quite like the world to be filled with people who have similar attitudes and behaviour to me (and I tend to feel uncomfortable or unhappy with people from very different social and cultural backgrounds). There are lots of things that I feel negatively about, not because they're intrinsically bad, but just because I wouldn't do them. I'm not sure that this is anything more that the rather profundity-free thought that "There are some things I don't like because I don't like them"; on the other hand I suspect that it's worth examining some of my prejudices, to see if they fit with a wider (Christian) worldview: I don't like graphic depictions of violence (generally violence perpetuates rather than solves problems, repeated exposure desensitises people), but on the other hand I don't like smelly people (I'd quite like them to wash for my benefit, I dislike them rather than the poverty/low self esteem that is causing them to be smelly in the first place).

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