It's 3am in South Africa but here where I sit in Dubai airport eating a species of hard white Middle-Eastern cheese that has been fashioned into the size and shape of a ping-pong ball and dusted with some kind of finely powdered herb, it's no particular time at all. In Dubai airport they have conquered time. It's like a vast casino except it doesn't make you feel grimy and nauseous - only a little sad. You can sit here for four or five hours as I've just done, at any time of day and night, and the quality of light will be the same, the density of the air will be the same, the flow of people will be constant and easy and regular. People have no biorhythms or circadian rhythms here - it's not night or day, just one long not unpleasant state of transit. The laws of time do not apply. I feel that if I just sit here eating this weird cheese forever I'll never grow older or fatter or sadder or wiser. It wouldn't be such a bad life; from time to time I'd see people I recognise and maybe they'd come over to say hello.There are two New Zealanders at the next table and they have been arguing for hours with remarkable stamina about the zombie apocalypse.Now I'm no stranger to long conversations about zombie end-times. I can passionately uphold both sides of whether or not a zombie can float, and I once spent three hours in Kigali airport defending the pretty hopeless position that during the apocalypse a mountain stronghold would be preferable to an island refuge, but these Kiwis have embraced a very technical dispute involving rates of entropy and how long it would take a closed ecosystem of zombies to eliminate itself. (One Kiwi: seven years; the other Kiwi: never). Adding zing to this dispute is that one Kiwi is a doctor and the other isn't, and Dr Kiwi is of the opinion that this makes him the undisputable authority on zombie biotics, a claim heartily disputed by the other guy.Their conversation is heated but I find it soothing. It always comforts me to contemplate a zombie apocalypse, where all our petty problems are dissolved and no one needs to worry about ratings downgrades or social media or how many people were in a stadium. But more than that, I enjoyed hearing two smart people argue with commitment and passion but without rancour. It's true that there's nothing much at stake here (except the survival of humanity), but I'd like to think that they'd argue this way even if it were about race or immigration or female James Bonds. Two people disagreeing and no one shouting or walking away: that's what civilisation looks like to me.Of course, even the most civilised disagreements can end violently. Consider the two Russian friends in the town of Irbit earlier this year, who quarrelled over whether poetry or prose is the superior literary genre. They weren't academics or writers, they were simply country folk with strong opinions about literature, which would warm me to the Russian character except the debate became heated and Mr Poetry resorted to practical criticism and stabbed Mr Prose to death.Just a few months before that, in a grocery store in southern Russia, another Russian shot his friend during a brouhaha over the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. "Reason is the source of morality!" "Don't be such a Kantian!" "You're a Kantian!"Obviously even between friends one shouldn't use the K-word, but there are still unanswered questions. Why a grocery shop? Does cabbage shopping make them bellicose and philosophical? Or were they at home swopping stinging aphorisms when one of them said, "Boris, this is getting out of hand. Most spontaneous acts of violence occur at home, so let's take this down to the grocery store where we can argue in safety. I'll bring this pistol for self-defence in case we bump into any militant poetry fans on the way."But unless you're Russian, debate is good. I was sad when the debate between Eusebius McKaiser and Zapiro was cancelled this week, because I think they're both good people and broadly on the same side, and with some thoughtful and open-hearted to-and-fro they might have understood each other a little better, and so might their supporters. The thought of two people talking face to face instead of sniping and defending in the media seemed a shockingly fresh idea. I suppose I still believe in the power of conversation instead of shouting, of argument instead of silencing. Maybe I still believe it's not too late for things to be better. Maybe I've been sitting in Dubai airport too long...