Jackanackanory

So it's been an interesting weekend. I've had some good discussions and thoughts and all sorts. Overall, I can't complain. On Thursday I had a big discussion with a guy who is strongly atheist and science relient, and uses words like "empirical" in too many sentences. He's an intelligent guy, but if he thinks he's a free-thinker, he's naive. He's just following the crowd of ease without challenging himself with the truth. But anyway, the discussion was about morality and what is right and wrong, and then it moved on to where morality came from and it suddenly hit me... so many people are confusing what is morally right and wrong with what is socially permitted. There is an assumption that whatever society decides is right or wrong, IS right or wrong. But that's getting morality confused with permissiveness. Which is a tad naive. I mean, how can we allow the norms of society to dictate what is right and wrong, or what is good and what is evil, when we live in a society where a person can trip over in the street and sue the council for his own clumsiness. Is that "moral"? No, not in my lifetime son.

And then tonight, I was having a discussion with someone about Opera and then about Contemporary music, in the academic sense, and things like Berio. And there was talk about pretention and people who listen to music PURELY because it's hard to listen to, and who you get the impression they don't actually like it, but because, when they talk about it, they have to sound all intelligent in its defence, they cite it as a favourite, and this all stemmed from my friend disregarding Gemma Hayes as pop when she's clearly a musical genius. And so that was all good.

But then I went downstairs, and Dad was watching Stargate SG1 on SkyOne and Mam was listening to The Archers. And it made me smile. There's no pretention in my family!