Violence, Fear, Censorship: Tools of Oppression in Male-Dominated Cultures

When we examine the system of government we have after thousands of years of male domination, we see that it perpetuates itself through two basic practices: one of these is the use of violence, and the other is fear. The male-dominated culture has obtained its power through these practices and continues to wield it not […]
What Is Consciousness and Do Humans Have a Monopoly on It?

There has not been so much excitement about the effect of electricity on the human body since Luigi Galvani discovered that an electrical stimulation of the nerves in the leg muscles of a dead frog caused it to kick. These early experiments inspired Mary Shelley in 1818 to write Frankenstein, a brilliant allegory about the […]
College Street, Kolkata: Where Life and Dreams Merge In Books

Books, first and foremost, must disturb, provoke, and yes, unmake me. For me, reading is as important as watching open-blue skies, electric poles with stray crows of afternoon and patches of white clouds that resemble bales of cotton. I suppose I was lucky or smart enough to find College Street while I was young, because […]
Courage Is Mastery of Fear, Not Its Absence

Our experience of the world is the most basic stuff of life. In other words, the most basic human reality is to live our lives in this world of experiences. Unlike the Earth, the world that we inter-subjectively share has been conceived, shaped and signified by our very own humanity. We are the creators of […]
Homelessness Can Happen to Any of Us: An Interview With Omer Gaudet

We recently learned that Omer Gaudet, a very well known social-media activist who was, among other things, involved with the Occupy movement, had been homeless for a while. Contrary to the idea that homelessness only affects mentally ill people or people with drug addictions, it is a predicament that can affect all of us, including […]