The Brave Pedestrian

Again, I think I’m setting myself up as a target for much anger and derision, though that is not the effect I wish to have on people. What I state here is an honest opinion… please believe that much at least! I grew up studying in a convent school, and I have no saffron agenda. I am not a Shiv Sena or BJP supporter. Our current situation — a sort of unbridled quest of modernity, never mind the past and the experiences of the past — is brought about by  a system of education that was largely evolved by Christian missionaries living in the colonies.   While the stated objective was to bring the “ignorant savages” to the light of reason by teaching them “reading writing and arithmetic.”, the underlying objective was to distance them from their own culture, and render their minds ripe for proselytizing.  Even if unproselytised, they deeply embraced the white Christian worldview, which was nine tenths of their faith.  Our children continued to be bred in the care o...

OK, I expect to draw some serious flak for this post… but here goes, anyway. Our relationship with entities is as complex as it is with other human beings and other species. We exploit and are exploited by, derive sustenance from and give sustenance to, large numbers of entities all the time. But they, not we, are the prime movers of our relationship. For millennia, they have shaped our future by selectively breeding us, whispering (so to speak) ideas into our little heads, nudging  homo erectus  to become man-the-toolmaker, and then man-the-wordsmith and finally man-who-inhabits-the-world-of-ideas. Humans today live and swim in ideas the way fish live in water. Ideas are their home, their natural habitat and the means of their continued existence. Rabbits cannot live without their intestinal flora, and humans cannot live without their ‘cranial fauna’. Rabbits are rodents whose lives depend so heavily on harbouring the right sort of intestinal bacteria, that at the time of we...