Bouquet #13: Eclectic Mind Food (Indian Villages, India House, Cute Dogs, Opioid Treatment, Science & Spirituality)

Eclectic mind food this week includes Indian Villages, India House, Cute Dogs, Opioid Treatment, Science & Spirituality

Bouquet #13: Eclectic Mind Food (Indian Villages, India House, Cute Dogs, Opioid Treatment, Science & Spirituality)
Photo by Eugene Golovesov / Unsplash
Free dance
Photo by Aliaksei Ramanouski / Unsplash
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein

1. Village as the basic unit of Indian society

Dharma Dispatch has always been the gold standard in serious Dharmic writing.  This article shares the facts on how a village was one, conceived, and two, formed the central segment of the Indian society.  The invasions and colonial rule dismantled its foundations and rendered the Indian society weak later.  But Sandeep Balakrishna shares some very interesting insights.

Introducing a Miniature Village Republic in the Sevuna Empire
PrefaceIN LETTER DATED SOMETIME IN 1830, CHARLES METCALFE wrote this about Indian villages: But Metcalfe was merely echoing our ancient Dharmasastra writers lik

2. India House - a novel

Good Indian writing is rare.  Specifically, one which is not leftist.  Because most of us have not ventured into this area.  Lila Krishna, a writer who has her newsletter on Substack is an exception.  She is writing a novel and sharing some of her writing with the readers.  Love her work and recommend everyone to subscribe to her newsletter.

Chapter 1 - Epidemic
1896, Bhagur, Nashik tehsil, Bombay Presidency Thirteen-year-old Tatyarao had been at the window all afternoon. Now as twilight fell, he showed no signs of moving from his perch. The screams from the opposite house grew louder and louder with each hour, and the falling darkness increased his dread.…

3. Cuteness liability?

Those of us who have a pet dog know how much they mean to us.  But are the dog owners - out of their inclination for "cute dogs" - skewing the whole group towards those with poor health?

In a study published in PLoS one in 2017, Peter Sandøe at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and colleagues identified a strange phenomenon. People who acquire dogs like pugs that have intrinsic health problems may be making a deliberate choice based on the animal’s need. Dogs with poor health require greater levels of caregiving. The increased caregiving and neediness of the dogs may, in turn, elicit greater feelings of attachment by the owner. So, poor health is actually the trait favoured by humans acquiring these dogs.

An eye opener of an article!

Breeding dogs to be cute and anthropomorphic is animal cruelty | Aeon Essays
The very attributes that make small dogs cute and popular are slowly strangling their ability to function as real animals

4. Treating Opioid Addictions

America is a country beset with drug problems.  Opioid addiction is widespread and rampant.  Methadone is one of the ways to counter addiction.  The politics of Methadone is something larger that a simple dose and a med.

Doctors, Not Dealers
Punishment, not care, characterizes opioid addiction treatment.

5. Science and Spirituality - a cliched perspective?

One of the problems with most writers influenced by the Western thought who venture into discussing spirituality is that they deal in false equivalence.  The Eastern ways and the Abrahamic beliefs are poles apart in their construction and the manner of use.  Yet the lazies find it easy to equate everything and get it all wrong.  

We had also looked at the cusp of science and spirituality.  Here is that article.  (PS: it got a special comment from Dr. Deepak Chopra since it was first published on his blog)

Eternal Illusion and How Observer Creates His Own Reality
In October of 1927, Born, Dirac, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Bohr came together and expounded as well as accepted “an” interpretation of the new quantum world that was reeling in the aftermath of Schrodinger’s Wave Collapse experiments. They called it the Copenhagen Interpretation. With the collapse of…

This guy Satish Kumar, ventures into the realm of Science and Spirituality.  And his views are just same old cliched.

The Union of Science and Spirituality – Utne
Science and spirituality need one another to flourish—one alone is never enough.

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