late night conversations

Last night was another late night: this time, talking to Clare and Francis until 5 am. Oh boy. Several interesting things came up though.

First, group dynamics. Our group is, as Clare puts it, "very clannish." We're like a family, everyone is loyal to each other, we move and operate as a group. This means that everyone is friends with everyone else, but also that people don't necessarily get close to everyone in the group--there are just too many. And then people end up feeling like they don't really know anyone, or that they're not as close to the others as they'd like. I don't know if this is just a side effect of having to spread limited amounts of energy and free time too thinly, or just because we are inherently defective as human beings and as a group. I personally have never felt too much of a problem with it, because I do have a few people within the group who I'm pretty close to, but apparently others have.

Second...the concept of living for others, and of being a "good person." Clare and I had this sort of mind puzzle a while back: imagine two worlds, one entirely populated by perfect practicing Christians (i.e. they all believe fully in Christianity, do their best to live according to God's word, and will never have reason to doubt), and the other populated by perfect atheists (i.e. all believe fully in logic and scientific reasoning and are never tempted by religion). Would either be as successful as our world today? Would they explode? Would they both be better? We imagined that the Christian world would tend towards a Communist-ish society, where the rich and poor gravitate towards a middle ground and everyone is on equal social and economic footing...would this lead to a homogenous and eventually stagnant society? It's interesting to think about because although Clare loves us all, no one in our group is really religious except her. And she believes that none of us are really "good people" in the sense that we are all ultimately selfish, and she thinks a world where everyone was Christian would be a great place. And we've talked about this a lot before, but for some reason, last night it resonated a little bit more with me. And as a result, I thought about the fact that I really do live entirely for myself, and maybe I should really care about other people more, not just in relation to myself but purely for their sake.

I don't know, just thoughts. The two streams above are connected, because Clare wants more Christian friends. Francis wants more friends period. And I....well, I guess I want more female friends. But I'm pretty happy where I am right now. As Clare puts it, I was fortunate enough to be born into the top whatever percent of the world, to be born smart and capable, to have everything handed to me on a platter, to be a cow munching happily!, and thus I find no difficulty in being happy. It's true. Despite my complaints (like the post two below), I am happy overall. I wonder if my personality and ability to be easily satisfied would be the same had I been born into a less fortunate situation.

wow that was incoherent.