lissome's blog

I read Sethuraj Nair’s blog  < swamiandme.rediffiland.com >  “A Beginner’s Guide to Hating Ayn Rand.” Reading Sethuraj’s blog was not easy. I read it twice. His writing is erudite and powerful. He has laid out his arguments clearly and with conviction and I respect his point of view.  When we speak of Rand and her [...]

I never thought I would one day explain my atheism. But here I am gathering my thoughts together to find out what makes me an atheist. To do that, I would first have to define God – that what I believe does not exist - and then give my reasons why I believe God does [...]

Opposites have always fascinated me.  William Blake’s (1757 – 1827)   influential work “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” written more than 250 years ago manifests a vision that is astonishing in clarity, wisdom and insights. A dynamic relationship between a stable “Heaven” and an energized “Hell” has fascinated theologians, aestheticians and psychologists. A book of paradoxical aphorisms and Blake’s [...]

We live in a world of nuclear families. The world for many of us has shrunk to I me myself. And that includes my wife kids and maybe my parents. This has made our thoughts nuclear – not just in the sense of nucleus or core family, but nuclear in its harmful and explosive aspect. [...]

Recently a friend lamented that most successful people  have feet of clay. He was making a reference to corruption, loosely translated as wine, women and song, symbolic of the selfish indulgence, sex and greed for money. This got me thinking about the terms “success” and  “goodness” and the role of social conditioning or engineering, in our perceptions of values and therefore [...]

GOD IS AN ETERNAL QUESTION . Teaching God the Socratic way is an adventure. If you have seen Dead Poet’s Society and To Sir With Love you will recall the power of the teacher. ‘The Wave’ was  the story of  a teacher simulating the Nazi ethos in his history classroom to rekindle flagging student interest in history. He finds how it acquires [...]