A Gymnosophist's life in review

Two articles I have read recently, published only a couple of days apart and in two journals I wouldn't normally admit to reading except in a passing hollow comedic reference, seem to have put the whole year into context for me and perhaps even provided me a guide map with which to approach the unflattering future - that unwelcoming prospect which we find ourselves increasingly addled with. There is no doubt in my mind that we will eventually have to account for these times, and it seems to me that there is really no better time than the present to begin to pose to ourselves the difficult questions that do emerge from our inevitable culpability for the state we find ourselves in today, firstly as members of the world community circa 2010, and finally, as pitiful present-day custodians of the seminal heritage collectively bequeathed to us and what we call civilization and progress.

I am not going to indulge in a detailed soliloquy of my immediate reactions to the encounter with the rather forceful ideas put forth (and implied) in the body of these articles in question. But I would, desperately, like to put this year behind me with something more than a great sigh of passionate longing for that mythic reality filled with vigour and purpose, and the sure sense that something better is on its way.

First, on the current state of affairs in a nondescript village extant somewhere in the vastness of the not-so-mythical-anymore Gangetic Plain.

And second, about the idea that ethical instruction is as much a requisite as detached guidance in a university education in the Humanities.

Merry Christmas & a Great New Year!