Quote:
It's ok to sometimes express yourself irrationally. To dream, or write or sing. It's not harming others. But when you ascribe reality to those things, when you begin to believe that the nice story of the man who built an ark to save all the animals was real and that it has some relevance to how you get on in society, you can't expect to be taken any more seriously than the guy who thinks he's the reincarnated spirit of Napoleon.
|
I couldn't agree more. But Napoleon might be an OK guy - I've enjoyed the company of many people who's ideas were frankly barmy. But they were all people who responded to human things in a human way. Belief doesn't turn someone into something else, it's just the narrative they use to explain their life. If you make friends with a nut-job book-bashing Baptist fundamentalist, you're still friends - just as if you make friends with an equally nut-job sado-masochist with a castration fetish and a face full of piercings. Both of them will react to your friendship in the same way. Yes both of them will be laughable and absurd at different times, but then, so are we all.