Iron Sharpening Iron

One of the things I love best about living with Mike is that we hang out in the apartment late, sometimes eat some food, and often get into deep philosophical and theological discussions. Oh, and of course discussions about girls. But I really enjoy them, and I feel like they tend to be very train for both of us. Although we of course share the same faith and the same values, oftentimes our perspectives on issues differ (this is of course natural since I'm an INTJ and he's an ENFP). But more often than not, our differing perspectives don't disagree but rather complement each other, and we're able to see an issue or a question more clearly because we've seen it from two different but agreeing angles. It's awesome. I feel like we're two young college bohemian ideologues, hammering out the way we see the world by bouncing ideas and philosophies off of each other. As Mike said, Plato would be proud of us. As the Bible said, "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17 (ESV)

But on a different note, sometimes these discussions can have rather amusing outcomes, or at least some hilarious moments. We were talking a lot about politics tonight, and we returned to a topic we had discussed earlier this summer about the idea of a monarchy. Mike was talking about how ideally, a monarchy is the best form of government, because the authority which is granted by the people is centered and centralized in one person, and there's no doubt about who's in control--Plato's ideal of a philosopher-king. I reiterated my point from our previous discussion, which was that although that works in theory, and a perfectly good person would make a perfectly good ruler, there are obviously no perfectly good people, and that's where the philosopher-king concept falls apart. People are imperfect and infallible, and as that one famous guy said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Apparently, in the same vein, the same guy also said, "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.") Which prompted Mike to concoct the following brilliant equation:

"Imperfect people plus power equals crap."

Another hilarious moment actually preceded our discussion, but I enjoyed it so much that I have to record it as well. We were sitting at the table in our living/dining room, and Mike noted that one of the lights in the ceiling fan above the table was out. I hadn't noticed this, so I reached up and unscrewed the light bulb to find that one of the filaments had broken so the light wasn't working. I asked Mike if he had any light bulbs of a similar shape (since it was one of those fancy, pointy light bulbs), and he replied, no, they had come with the apartment and been here when he moved in. So he suggested we complain to the management.

Me: So we can go out and buy a light bulb that looks like this....
Mike: ...or we can go raise bloody hell down there.

Hmm....