Just saying...

...I have two online lives majorly, one on Books Inq and the other on Facebook. My life on Facebook is shared with my friends most of who are my age and Indian. I have recently been running into rough weather with a number of them over what they think is my conversion to the right. I find this curious, since what they charge me with -- an unconsidered slide towards rabble-rousing -- is as far as can be from the style of my argument. I am afraid they mix form with style. But yes, I have cut my intellectual teeth on this blog, so my life on Books Inq, is the raw material for all my other lives.

I do not intend to sound patronising but I do feel sorry for some of my friends. Let me explain. Among the youth -- and yes I am generalising here, but hear me out -- there is a tendency for rebellion. It's a most natural instinct and I have displayed it in different capacities and am certain continue to display it in some. A distaste for religion is a common thread that lends heft to youthful insouciance. Countless young people make fun of religious icons, practice or beliefs. It is almost a rite of passage for some.

My feeling sorry for them does not stem from a moralising gaze at how they are doing something they will pay for, but rather a sense that the lack of God implies a lack of appreciation for the mysterious. An incapacity for faith, in my view, leads to a tendency to compartmentalise life into neat packets of reason and can only enjoin what is alluded to in today's Thought for the Day:

When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.

My leaning towards the right (as my friends accuse me of), along with my life here on Books Inq, has entailed a richer inner life and a more nuanced understanding of things in general, without a hankering for "making sense". This means accepting randomness, not overestimating human agency (climate change enthusiasts, pls note), believing in individual action over communal will (a libertarian, if you will), and standing by one's principles and living life according to them.

I hope that's not too bad!