TOD 12.03.07

Celebrities don’t matter. The box office take of a recent movie doesn’t matter. Sports results don’t matter. And, if we’re honest about it, the vast majority of politics doesn’t matter either. Even if you disagree with this statement, you’d have to agree that your opinion about these things matters even less than the things themselves. So why talk about such stuff? Well, there are two benefits.

The first is that it trains your mind so you’re mentally fit when you have to make a decision about something that actually does matter in your own life. Such discussions are a sort of mental weight training so your mind is strong when it counts. The second is that these topics offer a fertile soil out of which conversations and, therefore, relationships with other people can be grown. That said, it should be easy to see that such discussions become counterproductive either when they divide us from others or when the fun of mental exercise displaces the necessity of doing actual mental labor on our real responsibilities.

By definition, perversion is whenever something good is used contrary to its intended valid purpose.