| CARVIEW |
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On Despair.
Once you notice that meaninglessness is the default condition, only despair feels like an almost reasonable response. A state of mind that can’t be cajoled by comforting delusions. The more sharply you understand the limits of your agency, the more the world’s demands feel absurd.… Read more
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The World of Prophets
Abraham was ready to kill his son for what he believed in. He’s revered for that readiness. He’s elevated as someone who operates beyond human morality. We’re told that our ethical systems don’t apply to him. Yet if anyone else does anything even remotely similar,… Read more
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky – A Short Review.
Crime and Punishment is frustrating yet compelling. The novel meanders through unnecessary plot tangents, and at times Raskolnikov’s world feels weighed down by the author’s prejudices and anti-Semitic shades. A few episodes and characters offer little to the story, testing the patience of the reader.… Read more
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017 – Book Review.
I’m neither Palestinian nor Israeli. I’m coming at this purely as an outsider who read the book and tried to make sense of the historical record rather than going after popular narratives. From that position, the book succeeds in showing how Palestinian society was repeatedly… Read more
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What’s art to you?
We admire and appreciate art but half the time we don’t even know what we’re looking at. Art isn’t made for museums or galleries. They were born out of blood and emotions and the need to confront the human condition. Art once held entire cosmologies… Read more
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Mirrors of Identity
I feel split, not into physical halves but into questions and hypotheses. Into a why that keeps circling back on itself. My mind turns inward only to find too many mirrors. Ignorance settles into the self because the ego feeds on the very identity it… Read more
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Listen to me, potato..
Suffering isn’t special. Yours isn’t. At any given moment, millions of people are in pain, broken, slowly nearing death or barely holding themselves together. And yet we believe our personal suffering is special, as if it carries some divine purpose. It doesn’t. If every individual’s… Read more
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Justice. Afterlife.
One of the stupidest ideas in religion isn’t hell but the belief that sinners will burn in hellfire instead of being judged right here. Once people accept that the wicked will be punished after death, they stop demanding accountability while they’re alive. This is exactly… Read more
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That one faith.
Hiding beneath the preaching, the scriptures, the endless debates and wars over faith and doctrine, is an uncomfortable truth. Monitheism intinsically pagan. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Zoroastrianism claim to disown the gods of their ancestors. The false gods. The rituals, sacrifices, pilgrimage, holy days,… Read more
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God’s Devil.
The scariest thing of all isn’t the silence of God; it’s the disappearance of the Devil. For God never spoke, and the Devil never stops. Yet, the hope inspired by what conspires through evil fuels the faith that empowers God. Do they complement each other?… Read more
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What are ghosts?
I think ghosts are man’s attempt at immortality, a soul refusing to leave the old body, forever stranded until some ritual liberates it. The idea of an afterlife, even if cruel or endless, shows how badly man wants to keep existing. Since the brain can’t… Read more
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The past week.
The past week has been one of self-inquiry. I’ve come to realise that I am an atheist when it comes to theology, agnostic toward spirituality, and Hindu by culture. When Richard Dawkins said he was ‘culturally Christian’, it resonated with me and I understand what… Read more
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Suspended Spirituality.
Caught between belief and disbelief, I drifts in a state of suspended spirituality neither faithful nor faithless, but aware of both. Temples and cemeteries hold the same silence. Beyond theory, beyond the need for proof or denial, lies a space where one simply exists. Uncertain,… Read more
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Faith and Futility.
Sometimes I wish there were more to life than merely existing. I want to believe in past lives, synchronicity, ghosts, spiritual dimensions, and rebirth. Maybe there is a purpose after all, one that exists only if we choose to believe in it. Maybe our ancestors… Read more
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My soul by Bharath Upendra
Oh, how I longed for thy touch, Rot of my soul! In yesteryear’s night, Tarnished, I slit my wrists to leave a trail A ritual thread, a call, a hopeless wail. That thou might catch my suffocating breath, And trace the scent of looming death.… Read more
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For a life that feels real.
You know what?I don’t really like the society we’re living in. Waking up every day knowing I’ll spend nine hours working, four more travelling, and pretending that this is normal.Waiting for weekends only to feel a poor excuse of freedom left,A freedom that comes with… Read more
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A Lamp in the Dark
Temples or scriptures have little to do with spirituality. Our ancestors looked at the world with fascination and fear. Out of desperation and to belong in a universe that was cold and indifferent, they told each other stories. Myths and gods were attempts make to… Read more
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A House on Fire
A father’s voice can wreak havoc on your nerves. He can be insensitive, loud, and the louder he gets, the faster your heart pounds. It isn’t fear. It’s an alarm, a siren that goes off deep within. It warns of an impact yet to come.… Read more
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My Neon Glory
Lately, it feels as though time has started moving faster. Or maybe it began after 2020, after the pandemic blurred my days. Still, every time I look up at the sky or at the neon lights, time slows down. The moving clouds symbolisea quiet resistance,… Read more
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Where to? by Bharath Upendra
Over roads of yore, beyond the yonder, I walk; fate’s lines crawling beneath my feet. Which way, you ask, as though I knew. I only sojourn the forsaken lands, Clothed in myths of the living and memories of the dying. Where to, I ask thee, … Read more
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Wealth Disparity, and the Seeds of Radicalization.
It is often claimed that capitalism has eroded faith and caused atheism with its obsessive focus on material gain. But capitalism did not kill belief. It redirected and in many cases, radicalized it. The problem isn’t disbelief but polarization. Wealth Disparity: Modern capitalism carries a… Read more
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God, Meaning, and the Human Substitution.
If God does not exist, everything is permitted. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov is supposed to have said that. I don’t know how true it really is. From where I stand, in a world where God exists, not literally, but as an idea, it seems like the… Read more
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Between Tradition and Inquiry.
I often feel that mine is a sandwiched generation pressed between inherited faith and the chaos of a world that’s rapidly shifting. My parents follow a rigid doctrine built on faith, rituals, and continuity of what was handed down by their forefathers. I walk a… Read more
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What’s a ‘self’?
Being myself is an inexplicable feeling. When I hear someone refer to me in the third person, it’s hard to believe I’m a separate entity, almost autonomous. While feeding the cat today, I wondered about the cat’s self. Does it have one? How does it… Read more
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Prislappens Rike
Every little thing had a price tag. Even the price tags here deserve price tags. Curse my luck for walking into this gargantuan store of minimalist furniture, all of it looking fragile but pretending to be functional. I have to admit, some of it looked… Read more
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What’s a nation?
I’ve been thinking about the very idea of a nation. What is a nation? What is nationalism? Australians aren’t native to that land. America was built on the backs of immigrants (and slaves), and before that, stolen from its original inhabitants. Europe? Once tribal, nomadic,… Read more
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For Dignity and a Shared Life.
We are treated like cogs in a machine, soon to be replaced by them.We are cattle and our worth is constantly weighed against the system’s standards. We are adults, and yet the world is run as though we are children and can’t decide for ourselves.… Read more
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Gluten Intolerance is a Bitch
The world is filled with delicious food and most of it is made of wheat or refined flour. A few years ago, I was covered in rashes, running to doctors, getting half-baked diagnoses. Hospitalization was on the table. Then one night, I skipped chapati. The… Read more
