By Dominic

When KKT was first brought up, I had no idea what it was or what the purpose was. Eat dinner with strangers? What was this, some sort of forced friend-building exercise? I already had friends, I didn’t need to waste a Sunday night to make more. That was my first mistake of the night, my last would be buying two pies instead of just one.

When Barnabas and I first arrived at the address we actually passed it, twice. I was expecting Jared to live somewhere way off campus, maybe some remote village or something. As it turned out, he lived just down the road from Cherry! When Jared invited us in I was greeted by the heavy aroma of southern cooking. Jared had prepared homemade Chicken and Dumpling soup for us alongside some southern style green beans.

I was instantly taken away by just how neat his apartment was. Not only that, but Jared was extremely kind, and inviting; he even had music playing on Pandora and candles lit. The reason that this stuck me was because I’ve been in my friends apartments before, but they never felt like a home, just a larger dorm. As the night moved on, and the small talk began, I found out Jared was an English major here at WKU and that he would be soon graduating as a senior. Shortly there after I met his roommate Emma, who was a student at WKU but now works at a candle shop.  She mentioned that she’s now interested in transferring to a school in Oklahoma. I made the mistake of asking which one and she proceeded to rattle off the various colleges available in Oklahoma while I, with zero geographical knowledge of Oklahoma, nodded continuously like an idiot. I don’t think she noticed.

Once we got to eating the real conversations began. I asked a question I often use to get to know people, “If you could have dinner with three people who would they be?”. I got a wide variety of answers ranging from Burt Reynolds to Jesus to Hitler interestingly enough. The excuse for Hitler was that he was one of the ambitious men of his time, and it would be interesting to figure out where that drive came from. While personally,Hitler doesn’t sound like the ideal dinner date, It made me realize something. In class we discussed briefly that people have more and more homogenized their piers, that “cliques” whether they be high school friends of coworkers, tend to become less and less diverse with people searching for friends with similar traits as themselves. Now, here I was, sitting with three people that I wouldn’t have ever eaten dinner with were it not for this project, and I had a thought. It’s not because of some preconceived notion of who I am supposed to socialize with that I wouldn’t have dinner with these people, it was instead because each of our friend groups was made up, primarily, of people like each of us.  Yet, I found myself really enjoying the evening, especially as I got to learn more about Barnabas, who shared what life in Korea is like when compared to life in America. I find it amazing to think that someone from across the planet, who grew up speaking a different language, reading different books, learning different customs could sit down with three strangers from the other side of the world and carry on a conversation that interests everyone involved.

If I could take away any major thought relating to Honors 251 it would be that Homogeneity is the downfall of democracy. As demonstrated in our class, it’s the variation on opinion, the disagreement on key points that gives perspective you wouldn’t otherwise have on a given subject.  To end on a bit of a cliche note, there is a quote a friend of mine told me last week; “Two people can illustrate crudity to you.
The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone.
The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one.”

-Idries Shah

To me that quote speak to the matter of perspective in democracy. That the first made is crude due to lack of knowledge, the second is a crude man for demonstrating a lack of wisdom in when to use his knowledge. Without diversity, or at least a diversity of thought, democracy cannot flourish, only regress. That is my take away from my KKT project, an experience I was uneasy about going it, but so thankful for looking back.