I drove my ISTp friend to a team dinner. He just got back from a trip around Europe (lucky bastard) and was good catching up with him. At about 11:30pm he asked if i wanted to have a beer and we ended up talking till about 4:30am haha.

One thing we talked about was Religeon. His family is very religous and he feels very split because he doesn't believe in god but has also seen how happy it has made his family. He talked about how he is interested in how christianity has shaped history such as wars and the institution of marriage, but also how it has shaped good things such as our ethics and values etc.

We also talked about conspiracy theories. He believes 911 was orchestrated. I disagreed so we talked about that in depth. I suggested that while individual points may be in question such as building 7 falling down or whatever, i said that on the whole i didn't think the whole conspiracy worked . Also we talked about how information can be manipulated and how these conspiracy websites are typically linked to other conspiracies which are unlikely. Another ISTp friend i have also believes in the 9/11 deal.

We talked about the environment and global warming, and he believes that it is not really caused by humans. I said i think that the general scientific concensus these days is that it is definately caused by humans. I said that even though i am talking about saving the environment though, i dont do anything about it. Therin lies the problem, even i am too much of a consumer / asshole to change and i would like to think im probablly more caring than many lol. I said that one day in 60 years our grandkids will ask what a cheetah is and we will say they are something that used to exist once. We talked about environmental hegemony (keeping a combination of power / consent) over people to influence change etc.

We talked about peak oil and how reading all those websites scares the urine out of me. Again though its very hard to see the whole truth of the situation (if opec are doctoring their reports etc). Its also possible that new sciences will get hard to reach oil or oil shale will be viable etc etc.

Then his crazy room mate came out and was talking about how "The mark of the beast" suggests that at the end of the world everyone will be marked / identified or something like that. He said that microchips are likely to be implanted in our hands etc to use as tracking / identification / using money. I agree this is possibly the way the world / technology is going. He suggested that when this type of control eventually occurs the christians will have to resist or they may burn in hell (resist the mark of satans control). Interesting theory.

Anyway this is probablly boring as hell to anyone reading this. I feel like ass because he smokes and i smoked quite a few cigarettes and my head hurts now because i dont smoke

The most amazing thing that i noticed though is that while talking about our conflicting viewpoints we didn't argue even once. It was simply a civil exchange of information and there just didn't seem to be any angst there. I think that is a strong indicator of duality, that kind of acceptance.