Expressions
An Anthology: On running and not growing weary; walking and not being faint.
Monday, February 5, 2024
5 Science-y books I’m recommending in 2024
Monday, January 8, 2024
My 6th year as an immigrant to the West — the good and the bad
Before I get into lessons learned and all that, passport privilege is real. When I visited Glasgow a few months ago, I almost headed into the longer line snaking out of the entryway, and then glanced at the conspicuously shorter US/Canada line that did not require a visa of its passport holders. For such dignities, I’m grateful.
As an unabashed admirer of the West, words come easy when thinking about the exceptionalism, cultural assimilation, superior institutional standards, and meritocracy of these lands. So it gives me no pleasure to note (still as a relative outsider) the rapid deterioration of the West, almost entirely self-inflicted, and feel powerless when many have no cognizance of it.
- Rejection of what makes the West great: The US is still more religious relative to other Western countries that have long abandoned the vestiges of their great faith which shaped, particularly in England, their identity, judicial system derived from Biblical case law, and conscientious application of justice, often at great cost. Historian Tom Holland, author of Dominion, says, “People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything.. All of us in the West are a goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilisation.”
Having discarded and now openly hostile to faith, citizens’ natural spiritual impulses are now recklessly attempted to be satisfied with nihilistic, self-mutilating activism.
2. The ‘no work is mean’ attitude: Coming from a highly classist society, I frequently reflected on the dignity rendered to all tasks and jobs, and found it moving in all my travels to the West. Man being made in the image of God, must surely, have been the underlying ‘assumption’, and its weight can sometimes be deeply appreciated, only through its contrast.
I loved my life in Mumbai and miss the hustle and hospitality of people there, but markers of distinct socio-economic layers ran across society. It was unspoken in many occurrences, overt in others, but there were parallel societal clusters who mingled but didn’t merge.
3. The inability to hash out differences: This one is a bit of a head-scratcher. I was an admirer of public discourse in the West, and viewed the rancorous interaction between politicians and reporters, even the onerous hair-splitting over policy matters, as proof of a transparent society that greatly valued individual liberties, consent of the governed, and a robust commitment to free speech. Increasingly, however, even highly accomplished and educated men and women, who should have been steeped in these values prefer confining themselves to their in-groups, will tolerate no threat to their worldview, and retreat at the first sign of conflict.
Instead of engaging with another viewpoint, being open to conviction, and willingly entreating opportunities for growth.
Sadly, professing Christians have not exemplified the standard. How evident was this during the lockdown years of 2020–21. Francis Collins, the then NIH Director, whom I admired fresh out of my Biotech Masters program as an example of a public witness to the critical and ethical thinking encouraged by Christianity, as applied to science, failed to reason together with those who consistently provided clear-eyed dissent.
4. The rise in lawlessness: Growing up in Mumbai, no matter where I went, my head (or is it neck) was on a swivel. I could not let my guard down, and I mostly looked forward to my US trips because I did not need to be scanning all directions, all the time. Women in the West come and go as they please, and have no sense of the queasy unease or the stomach pit when you have to push past lecherous hordes with their obscene gaze.
When ‘Defund the Police’ spread to Toronto, it was truly chilling and each time I walk past or read about locked merch, shuttered stores, needles and syringes, bus shelters taken over by tents, the alarming rate of suicidality, pro-Hamas intifada chanters, and violent offenders released after their 49th strike, I feel a soul-sickness looking on at the destruction of the last-standing bastion.
5. The reek of death: Perhaps, best symbolized by the wafting smell of weed as one drives downtown. Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) according to an Oct 2023 Health Canada report* constituted 4.1% of all deaths in Canada in 2022, having grown by 30% over PY. The law is set to expand access to MAID for mental illness even if it’s the sole condition.
A culture of degrowth, decline, and death — how can it enjoin God to keep our land ‘glorious and free’?
6. The veneer of relationships: Much ink has been spilled lamenting the loss of friendships, increase in loneliness, and a perpetually online presence. Going from doing life with a community where people dropped in uninvited because they were in the area (they were not), were lavish with their time, and made it their business to know all about yours — the barren formality, revelling in its ‘niceness’ was a huge adjustment.
I’ve met genuinely well-meaning and compassionate people here, and experienced the kindness of strangers. It made overnight transition to a country, alone and with few connections, worthwhile. And so from within these fair lands, I hold out hope for a one — conscientious, chivalrous, with the ability and desire to hold conversations, even difficult ones, in person, and who rejecting the lull of the false bravado offered by the dating app culture, steps up to the plate.
Until the day that ‘swords are beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks’, may the West be salt and light, a city set on a hill, and a respite in the storm.
Friday, June 30, 2023
A conversation on Bible study and why it matters
Monday, December 26, 2022
Advent Passages - A (South Indian) Reading
Saturday, September 10, 2022
How loving Lennie changed my mind about pets
First of all, as someone who wasn’t raised with and has never owned a pet, every meme about cats is true. They are the star of their own show, and you’re the novice actor with a bit part. They will snuggle when they are ready to, will play when they feel like it, and will emerge out of their safe space on their time. They are immune to the sound of your voice, will ignore your pleas, and unless allured by food, are the original social distancers.
So, from confidently asserting that I was fine with pets, as long as it was others’, that I had no problem adoring their quirks, as long as they were at arm’s length, to now whispering “I love you, Lennie” in the midst of a hectic day, it is a tale of an about-turn in the face of first-hand experience.
Lennie, although, is an exhibit among cats. Temperamentally mild, she mewls sparingly and invites play by gently bouncing off your feet as you walk by. In the early days after my sister brought her over for weekend visits, I did try, somewhat, to be immune to her liquid brown gaze narrowing as she struggled to keep her eyes open, her dorrito-shaped face sculpting into a triangle if you lifted it for a kiss, and her soft pink paws walking pitter-patter over you as a stopover on her destination.
Three Lennie-inspired reflections:
- Mortality: We’re off to a macabre start.
My sister insists that Lennie’s soul is eternal, and that the redemption of all creation one day means she will go ahead of her and stay ready to respond to her voice, in heaven as on earth. I don’t know — “Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:12). While pondering on Lennie’s trajectory including her slow deterioration and eventual death is dreary, it does spur a sense of urgency. In a treatise, Thomas Watson wrote, “He who often meditates of death — will make the best preparation for it.”
2. Uncertainty:
Lennie is smothered with affection, squeezed with cuddles and is the theme of many impromptu songs. Yet, going by her fright at the sound of a doorbell, her commitment to secluded corners, and her forlorn wailing at the crinkle of a can of tuna, one wonders if she thinks she’s one misstep or meal away from death’s door. Her memory clock resets each day, not taking the comforts of yesterday for granted.
For a to-do lister, detailed scheduler, and timeline-bound goal creator, grappling with uncertainty is discomfiting.
3. Curiosity:
It’s endearing when Lennie’s head turns, her ears tilt, and her eyes fixate on a squirrel, chirp, or a twig. One of my favorite ways of learning is to ask questions of people from all walks of life — in that sense, I’ve never met a stranger. Being curious is a valuable trait that supports the injunction found in Old Testament law, “then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly”. And Proverbs states, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” In our present state of the world with fixed ideological priors overruling any appeal to withhold judgment, hear all parties out, and be willing to change one’s mind when presented with evidence, I want to be like Lennie: ever-learning, ever-teachable, and ever capable of being influenced.
Lastly, I can imagine the generosity, wonder, and compassion, a pet would arouse in a growing child. So, future hub, if you think the kids would benefit from a pet in the home, I wouldn’t object. We’d have a role model in Lennie.
Friday, August 26, 2022
Finish well.
In an interview, Kellyanne Conway, a successful political campaign manager, frequently in the eye of relentless storms, posed this heart-breaking question, “Would you rather be right or be loved?” She was commenting on the extreme polarization within American politics where lifelong friendships and even marriages, including her own were being torn asunder by the blood-drawing sword of blind ideology.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Nostalgia. Melancholy. Worship
Monday, August 1, 2022
A giant leap backward. Why scientific fraud affects us in more ways than the obvious
In light of this expectant glow that bathed any new discovery and any new approval related to Alzheimer’s, the allegations of fabricated data in highly cited articles describing a leading theory of disease formation, are no doubt a massive setback.
Science.org’s investigation into claims of misconduct by the leading light of the dominant theory on the causative agent in Alzheimer’s, Sylvain Lesné, reveals how perverse incentives in science can actually hinder critical thinking. Because scientific journals reward novel work, there is insufficient motivation for researchers to disprove prior theories, or attempt reproducibility. After this mischief was unearthed, it was reported that scientists who tried to replicate the finding of Aβ*56, the purported culprit in the formation of brain plaques leading to Alzheimer’s, were unsuccessful.
In addition to wasted funding of over a billon dollars by the NIH, this reigning theory is believed to have led researchers off into an erroneous direction for 16 years. The FDA’s controversial decision in 2021 to approve Biogen’s aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, directed against Aβ, despite weak clinical trial results on its efficacy, and against the guidance of its advisory committee, should have begun exposing the weakness of a system that undermines ongoing critical inquiry of past scientific discovery.
Matthew Schrag, the neuroscientist who played a key role in unearthing the fraud of manipulated images in Lesné’s articles, speaks of his lab experiments on the link between Aβ plaques and iron deposits, and a high cholesterol diet in rabbits. When Schrag moved to replicating the results in humans, he failed. Alzheimer’s was a complex disease and as he explains it, even careful experiments done in good faith can fail to replicate, leading to dead ends.
Personally, there was another reason why this uncovering was so disquieting. In the last three years, most of the civilized world in a mass abdication of the values that propelled scientific exploration and advance, congealed around the two blunt tools of lockdowns and vaccines. Obdurately refusing to learn from the success of an alternative approach, the crushing of dissent from those who refused to sing from the official song-sheet was immediate and complete.
The criticism of the expert-driven consensus around Covid was primarily that science is never settled, that it requires an attitude of healthy scepticism, open-mindedness to a multiplicity of therapeutic strategies, and a willingness to course-correct in the face of mounting evidence. What’s especially galling is that the heavy-handedness of governments and health bureaucrats was executed in the name of service to science. The loss of credibility and trust in public health institutes is a blow that would be hard to recover from. This broad distrust of the purveyors of science is a frightening development, not least because it puts paid to the conspiratorial bent of many who reject scientific endeavors brought to fruition through the academic-industry network.
During the pandemic, I noted with consternation, a growing tendency in some circles, to connect all pharmaceutical treatments, and all healthcare systems and procedures, to a global malfeasant plot. It really didn’t help that much of what would otherwise be dismissed as conspiratorial, actually came about, through governmental overreach, regulatory authoritarianism, and breach of territorial sovereignty by the dictates of unelected global elitists. I do not have hope that this situation will improve; I fully expect that in the war-pandemic-famine-crises the world will yet undergo, we would have relinquished more of our liberties and suspended more disbelief.
Addressing my fellow Christians, as an aside, nuance should be our forte, and waiting to examine all evidence, the norm. I love how the New King James puts it in the book of Proverbs, “The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him.”
As people who make the case for our faith by appealing to reason, pointing to the historical authenticity of Biblical manuscripts and events, and presenting God as the One who empowers minds to uncover the principles behind the fixed laws He established in nature, there ought to be a very high bar for what we believe about what’s happening in the world. Gleaning from the wisdom of the 8th century prophet Isaiah, “Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.”
Scientific dogma, in general, is disconcerting. It’s easy to forget that as late as the mid-19th century, maternal deaths were common due to the absence of antiseptic procedures. When Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 proposed handwashing with a chlorinated lime solution, he was mocked by his colleagues, and roundly rejected for going against the scientific consensus of the time. He was eventually committed to an asylum where he died shortly after, due to being beaten. He was vindicated only three decades later, when handwashing measures became a widespread practice.
Makes me wonder which of the unfalsifiable theories we do not tolerate any questioning of, will be cracked open years from now. Even Darwinian macroevolution which is the sine qua non of biology, which has had several intellectual critiques by scientists across multiple disciplines, including mathematics, will perhaps, not be required allegiance for advancing in careers. Intelligent design (which opens the probability of God, but does not work within a theological framework), might gain ground as a credible explanation for the origin of life. There are several noteworthy scientific discourses on the exploration of intelligent design as a theory, without the scientists holding any religious viewpoint.
“Even if misconduct is rare, false ideas inserted into key nodes in our body of scientific knowledge can warp our understanding,” said Matthew Schrag, the Alzheimer’s neuroscientist supporting the petition to the NIH about the data fraud. I’m making an extrapolation to societal conduct and cohesion — the most urgent rediscovery, is of the need to engage with differing opinions, instead of viewing them as threats. More to come, on the detrimental effects of extreme polarization, due in large part to, a refusal to challenge one’s intellectual hubris, and inviting another into one’s mental and emotional vaults, with their suppositions, worldviews, and experiences, while demanding acceptance, nay, celebration of our own.