Jagat

Following on from my previous confessions about my YouTube binge watching , I jotted down a few notes that will not be of great interest to those who would prefer to find some glimpses into the spiritual world of Vrindavan and Radha-Krishna. As intimated in the previous post, issues of identity are at the crux of this disquieting distraction. It really has been a long year. I haven't been writing a at all on my blog in months. I don't know if Radharani has some perverse intent in having me bury myself in YouTube for the past several months. Perhaps the most evident result is that I get to see how deep my samskaras are. After all, I spent the first seven years of my life in Old Blighty and returned there for a significant boost of Britishness in my late 30's. I never assimilated or really wanted to, but evidently, that aspect of my identity was fortified in the halls of SOAS. The thing that made me "not-British" really was my indifference to the pub culture. ...

[For the record. This is a stub that never saw completion, which will explain its incoherent character. As people following this blog will have observed, there has been a rather long silence over the past few months. There are numerous reasons for it, and some are explained herein. On the whole, I have come to the conclusion that this was all  a kind of preparation for my visit to Canada from May 29 to Sept. 9. More about that later.] Recently I saw an article on a left-leaning blog criticizing the "apologists" for Western culture and civilization, in particular Steven Pinker and his " Enlightenment Now ." Jordan Peterson, to whom I have also written about favorably  once or twice  is also a part of this group that is now being called the "New Optimists." Even in the face of the current crises that threaten the human world, I consider myself an optimist , an "old optimist" of the spiritual sort. I have been watching a lot of YouTube lately...