Choosing between Spirituality and Activism: Vira-rasa and Madhura.
After Karttik Purnima I came down with a cold and a bit of exhaustion, and have been either sleeping or sitting here sipping brahmastra tea and catching up with international news of various kinds. Though many things, mostly same old same old, are features of the current world situation, I would summarize the following three principal points: . (1) The American empire is expanding at a speed that I never would have imagined. If anyone had any illusions that Obama was progressive on this front when he promised to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is now clear that this was a smokescreen. The Military-Industrial Complex in the USA is the single most dominant force in dictating the international situation. The technological capacity to survey, control, and coerce ordinary citizens, combined with the total domination of the media in [at least] the USA for propaganda and control of information, is at levels that Communist and Fascist dictatorships of the past could only marvel a...