thoughts…
Between Anthem and Conscience
Every year on August 15, back in my school in Pune, India, Independence Day followed the same script: the flagpole painted a fresh matte silver; Mr. Shinde, the PE Teacher, checking and rechecking the strategically tied halyard around the furled flag; the drumbeat echoing across the courtyard; the headmaster’s speech drifting into the sometimes misty,…
Coffee with a Presuppositionalist
Recently I find myself consuming atheism-focused content which, I’m afraid I can only describe as, masturbatory. I know I can get on with living without much need for support, knowledge, community or ideological validation for my atheism. But the excitement at finding ‘new’ others in various stages of the ‘old’ debate is in some strange…
The Tolerance Paradox
Tolerance is tricky when it comes to applying it to our daily living. As a humanist, I find myself struggling to keep my compass oriented toward goodness while trying to differentiate between ‘wanting’ good and ‘imposing’ it. There is also this incentive to check my moral outrage from aligning with bigots who can use my…
Coming Out As a Non-Believer
Coming out to our loved ones – and this is imperative – only whose feelings matter to us and who love us truly – is a difficult thing for most nonbelievers. For the rest of the world, our disbelief shouldn’t really generate much angst. But with loved ones, the act requires you to have clarity…
Oblivion
We humans are wired to be lazy. Evolutionarily, we conserve energy. Calories were expensive. Our nervous systems evolved to reward efficiency. We prefer shortcuts. We automate habits. We stick to routines. We resist change. We jump to conclusions. We use tools. We assume patterns. We adopt group opinions. We follow fashion. We avoid difficult conversations.…
The Singaporean Experiment
Singapore is by most measures a very successful country. It is an economic powerhouse ranking as one of the most open and globally competitive countries with strong financial and manufacturing sectors. It boasts one of the world’s highest GDPs per capita and strong economic stability across all social strata. It is a major player in…
No Harm, No Foul?
I’ve come to a place where I don’t feel the need to fight every belief anymore. As long as a belief isn’t harming someone, physically, psychologically, or financially, I’m okay letting it be. And that’s a big shift for me, because I used to think that bad ideas had to be confronted everywhere, all the…
Beyond Science?
Humanity’s singular gift to itself, Science, the systematic pursuit of knowledge through cumulative faculties of observation and experiment, is not an institution but a method – a disciplined way of knowing that transcends cultures and epochs. At its core, science is a neutral compass: observe, hypothesize, test, falsify, refine. It does not care for values,…
Dissonance-led Deconversion
Some beliefs hold on to us, even after we have dropped them, simply because we grew up with them. Also because the people closest to us hold on to them. These are organised in cohorts of functional heuristics that are deeply entrenched into our psyches. Fear-based admonishment is one such embedded belief- retention premise. Deliberately…
Bulla Ki Jaana Main Kaun
(Bulla, Who Knows Who I Am?) Came upon Rabbi Shergill’s rendition of Bulleh Shan’s powerful poem and was caught off-guard by it’s timelessness. Syed Abdullah Shah Qadri, known by his followers as Bulleh Shah, was a Sufi poet, philosopher mystic who lived beyond the conventions of his time in the early 18th century in Punjab,…
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