Its a sweltering afternoon in Hollywood and Im navigating a grittier part of town in search of my soul. In truth, anyone searching for their soul in Hollywood should probably be directed to the nearest mental health facility, but Im on the trail of Harry the Healer, shaman to the stars.

As I pull up to the address Harry texted me, it appears to not exist, or is somehow hidden on the street of mostly run-down cottages. This is where celebs come for healing? Id expected a ritzy mansion given Harrys supposed clientele (his devotees range from screen vet Anthony Hopkins to Aussie Hollywood brat packers Todd Lasance, Liam McIntyre and Luke Mitchell). My stomach tightens. What the hell am I doing, going to a strange mans house on my own? I text my husband the address, just in case.

When I finally find the front door, Im greeted by a slim but muscular older man whose golden skin literally glows back at me as he leans in for a warm hug. Harry the Healer (real name Harry Paul) looks exceedingly healthy and happy.

He leads me to a dark treatment room where a massage bed glimmers under slowly flashing disco lights. Spa music plays and the air conditioning hums (thank God). I must be in the right place after all. Plus, Harry told me on the phone that he once got drunk with Chris Hemsworth; call me shallow but that counts for something.

While I wouldnt have assumed getting wasted would lead to spiritual enlightenment, this is Hollywood. Celebrities have long espoused their devotion to some form of spirituality, be it Madonna, Britney Spears and Demi Moore following Kabbalah or Tom Cruises obsession with Scientology. But while those are huge organisations with textbook religious studies, the current spiritual trend is getting more personal, and making superstars out of individual healers who are tapping into the worlds current obsession with all things woo woo and wellness.

Jennifer Anistons recent revelation that shes been partaking in goddess circles for the past three decades where she and her girlfriends sit in a circle and pass around a talking stick to help navigate major life events sparked a slew of internet headlines. And when Gwyneth Paltrow isnt spruiking vaginal steaming or Psychic Vampire Repellent, shes extolling the powers of her personal spirit guide and bro, shaman Durek who calls her his soul sis.

But why exactly am I here? Like most mums of young children, Im consumed by the needs of my two daughters to the point that Ive found myself asking, Who am I, again? Or rather, Who was I? Im longing to rediscover myself and, over the next two weeks, I plan to make like Gwyn and Jen and do some serious soul-searching.

In preparation for today, I watched a video of a shaman performing healing on a woman. She sits closed-eyed as he converses with spirits through her body, speaking rapidly in an African language, which then propels her into what looks like a nightmare of an orgasm. It looks horrific but Im oddly intrigued.

The main reason Im here, though, is to strengthen my connection to my mother, who passed away 26 years ago,and who introduced me to spirituality. I have many happy memories of perusing the aisles of Londons annual Mind, Body and Spirit Festival with her in my early teens, watching reiki masters and crystal healers at work.

And when Mum got cancer, after radiotherapy didnt help, she had electromagnetism therapy, which uses crystals to help balance energy frequencies in the body. Even her sceptical GP attributed it to her living for four years after her diagnosis and called it a miracle.

What would you say life is asking of you at the moment? Harry interrupts my thoughts. Youre not going to make me cry, are you? I blurt out. In the serene setting I suddenly feel emotionally vulnerable, which in real life I thankfully dont have time to. Probably, he smiles gently. I tell him of my yearning to connect with Mum.

Writer, Madeline Collins with her mum.

Were either connected or were distracted, Harry croons smoothly. The mind is connected to the breath so you need to be aware of your breathing. I rarely am. Shallow breathing, shallow life. If you start getting distracted, breathe and connect internally.

Were human beings, not human doings, he goes on. I love that. So when you authentically let go, youll get more than you dreamed of. He tells me of superstar clients who have the adulation of the world but still want to kill themselves. Remember, your opinion is the only one that matters. Try telling my kids that.

Harry reads that Im addicted to heavy-dense energy due to my habit of expecting things to go wrong so that I cant be disappointed, and that Im here because my soul and spirit is calling for me to elevate, let go and be free. Hes a wise man whos suddenly brandishing a huge vibrating machine. It looks like its straight out of the 80s, just like the disco lights.

Lets find where you hold tension in your body, Harry says, as he slowly moves the machine up and down my legs, over my stomach, across my heart and back again. Then, after asking permission to touch me, he begins to knead my jaw, which really hurts.

Hang in there, he says. Can you see your mum? Shes here. But hes mistaken. Behind closed eyes, I suddenly see the beautiful face and hear the voice of my friend and former flatmate, who died in 2018 of a swift and aggressive form of cancer.

I was so devastated when I learnt of her passing via her husbands Facebook page that I couldnt leave my house for a week.

Tears roll down my cheeks as she answers a question Ive wrestled with since her death. I hadnt expected this and feel huge relief that Ive found some way to connect with my friend, who I never got to say goodbye to.

I leave Harrys hidden house with a sense of inner calm (and a strict recommendation to switch to pH-balanced alkaline water).

Im staring at Andrea Bendewalds chiselled jawline, trying to work out where I know it from ... its Suddenly Susan, the critically panned but oh-so juicy 90s sitcom. Recently, she had a bit part in Apple TVs Morning Wars, but today, shes guiding me in a full-moon circle.

Andrea is something of a circling savant she regularly leads circles for Jennifer Aniston, including at her 50th birthday getaway in Mexico. The actresses have been friends for more than 30 years; they both attended Manhattans High School of Performing Arts before moving to LA.

Jennifer Aniston with Andrea Bendewald.

Needless to say, my expectations are high as I rock up to DEN Meditation in Studio City, just over the hill from Hollywood. I enter the large, dimly lit room and see 12 other women setting up their place. Thankfully I fit in well in my no-label activewear. There are women of all shapes and sizes, none displaying the sports-bra-bursting boob jobs you often see in Hollywood wellness classes.

Andrea begins slowly beating a drum to connect us to our own heartbeat. Imagine theres a lotus flower at the top of your crown chakra, it opens up and a beautiful white light extends into the sky and the full moon were sitting under, she guides.

I try my best but my mind keeps wandering to where Id rather be: the beach. Luckily, attention soon turns to the talking stick, the centrepiece of circling, which Andrea describes as an interactive mindfulness practice and talking meditation. She encourages us to channel the fullmoons energy in positive ways, which can otherwiselead to anger and sadness.

Guidelines include no commenting on what someone else says, and whatevers shared in the circle stays there. If we hear something that resonates with us, were encouraged to murmur a-ho, a spiritually polite version of ken oath.

Each person holds the stick in turn and speaks their truth: overwhelmed mums; women feeling stuck from moving forward or going through dark times; those who find meditating lonely and came seeking a community from the circle. Its all relatable stuff and were a-hoing galore.

Im the only one who has an ugly cry, after speaking about Mum.

I feel a kinship with all the strangers in the room, yet dont feel the need to swap numbers when the circle ends. I leave vowing to return, despite the four-hour round trip. Goddess or full-moon circles may sometimes be dismissed as zany or frivolous (a common pattern when it comes to groups of females throughout history), but theres something undeniably powerful about women banding together and sharing their struggles to lift one another up.

Im still on a spiritual high three days later when I speak to shaman Durek on the phone. We couldnt meet in person due to scheduling conflicts, but Im determined to absorb his wisdom (he also counts Nina Dobrev, Selma Blair and Gerard Butler as fans).

I tell Durek about my mum and he speaks at breakneck speed, imparting all kinds of fascinating and life-affirming information I cant possibly keep up with. No wonder he has Hollywood enthralled.

Suddenly he tells me to tap my left hand three times. I eagerly oblige. Was he going to give me the connection to Mum I was craving? Gwyneth had lost her beloved father and she trusted him After a few more instructions, I feel a floating feeling throughout my body and my feet start tingling. But then Durek tells me a hawk has just landed outside his window and is staring at him, and that hawks signify a breakthrough to the other side.

Oooh, you just lost me, says my inner sceptic.

Not that I dont believe him. In grief, religion or any kind of healing, my motto is whatever works. And having taken time to focus, I feel more connected to myself than I have in years, and to Mum, too. Above all, Ive realised that pausing to breathe and be in the moment is perhaps the most powerful tonic for this often-crazy world. So while summoning ancient spirits isnt my thing, Im already counting down the days until the next full moon.

This article originally appeared in the February 2020 issue of marie claire.

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We put Jen Aniston and Gwyneth's spirituality gurus to the test - Marie Claire

THE third in our series dedicated to the memory and works of the conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton. We are targeting the Conservative government with a series of lessons drawn from his writing. Will they start to listen to him now?

Lesson number three isthis Scrutonism conservatism is not a sin or a heresy, but a possible worldview, all the more interesting in being condemned by the communists and despised by the Western left.

It is to be found in the speech he gave on national identity and the legacy of communism this last June, when he was awardedthe highest State civilian honour for foreigners by the Polish President Andrzej Duda.

LAST week Sir Roger Scruton was awarded the highest State civilian honour for foreigners by the Polish President Andrzej Duda. Afterwards he spoke in the Polish Parliament on the legacy of communism and the emergence of new nationalist movements.

How comforting it is that at least one person out there understands and respects our basic needs and capacities as human beings but how sad that those listening to him most are in countries such as Poland. Its a speech that reveals the huge gulf there is between his intellect and vision and the strutting, preening pretenders who are in the Tory leadership race. His speech can be viewed and listened tohereand the full text is printed below.

But first aprcisof his main points:

The division besetting the continent today is no longer between totalitarian socialism and free democracy, but reflect new battle lines between adherence to the nation state, with its language, institutions and religious inheritance on the one hand and, on the other, the cosmopolitan vision of a trans-national order, a borderless economy and a universal law of human rights.

The legal and political institutions of our continent have turned in a cosmopolitan direction, not least in the former communist states. While the law and jurisprudence of the European Courts have filled the legal vacuum left by the Communist Party, enabling them to receive and protect incoming investment and thereby to enter the global capitalist economy with relatively little friction, there has been far too little awareness of its social and cultural cost.

Freedom of movement has meant a massive one-way shift of populations out of the former communist countries into the West, and in particular into Britain, which has set a very low barrier to entry. It is one cause of the Brexit crisis but has also had a serious demographic effect on the Vyegrad countries, which have lost many of the best and brightest of their young people.

The charge of populism is levelled against movements for national independence and national renewal largely in order to discount the vote of the many who support them.

The conflict between the left intelligentsia and human nature has shifted from the sphere of socialism versus capitalism to this new sphere, of enlightened liberalism (a universal and borderless political order, in which conflicts supposedly vanish because their cause national loyalties has been swept away) versus residual nationalism and the inherited sentiments of identity and belonging.

The EU was founded by people moved by that enlightenment idea, and who saw nationalism as the force that had unleashed the century of European wars. However, looking back, it is just as reasonable to see the idea of a universal and borderless form of politics as underlying the imprisonment of East and Central Europe by the communists. Nationalism of the German kind was certainly destructive; but so was internationalism of the Soviet kind.

The current situation should be seen as an opportunity and not as a crisis. After thirty years of confusion the people of Eastern and central Europe are beginning to understand that they are heirs to two great achievements: on the one hand, the nation state as a form of social and political identity; on the other hand the Enlightenment conception of citizenship, in which each assumes the full responsibilities of social membership under a shared rule of law. The two achievements are forced into conflict with each other, in part because the EU wishes to dampen or even destroy the national idea. But properly understood they are mutually dependent.

For without national identity and the loyalty that stems from it, there is no way to build a society of citizens. Democracy and the rule of law are realities only if opposing sides can live with each other on terms. The great error of the communists was to eliminate opposition, to conscript the people into a unity that they had not chosen and were not allowed to question. The great benefit of democracy is that it makes opposition possible and also legitimate.

So-called populists are right to emphasise the nation state as the fount of loyalty. And their enlightened liberal opponents should acknowledge this, and cease to use the European institutions as a way to punish the governments that lean in this direction. And reciprocally those who wish to revive the national ideal, and to affirm the rights of national sovereignty, should listen to the voice of the liberal enlightenment, and accept that national sentiments must always be tempered by the recognition of others out there, who do not and cannot share them.

Speech in Full

It is a great honour to be asked to speak to this gathering, representing the Parliaments of the former communist states. And I welcome the opportunity to say something about the legacy of communism and what it means for us today.

I confess to being an anti-communist. During the 1970s and 1980s anti-communists were shunned in our universities in Britain. After all, we were attacking the revolution that offered to liberate mankind from the world-wide capitalist conspiracy. Our professors admitted that the Soviet Union had gone wrong; but it was wrong in practice, not in theory. We apologists for capitalism were wrong in theory, which was far worse than the mere accident of causing twenty million deaths and the extinction of individual liberty across half the globe. The fact that we were right in practice was barely noticed by our critics.

We have lived through all that, but it seems to me that the lesson still needs to be learned. Life was made hard for us by our nice colleagues, who repeatedly expressed their outrage at our nastiness, in order to put their own niceness on display. It was in those days that I learned just how nasty niceness can be. From the moment in 1980 when I came out as a defender of conservative values against the socialist orthodoxy, my life has been one long succession of attacks, designed to undermine my standing as a public intellectual. Teaching in the University of London was particularly difficult. Indeed, my first true experience of intellectual freedom was here in Poland, where I travelled to speak at conferences and private seminars, arranged by a small circle in Britain who, like me, were keen to make contact with their fellow dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. In Poland, the universal contempt for the communist system meant that students and professors were ready to discuss all the issues of the day. Conservatism, to them, was not a sin or a heresy, but a possible worldview, all the more interesting in being condemned by the communists and despised by the Western left. Travelling around the countries of East and central Europe in those days, carrying the message of an alternative philosophy, was one of the most liberating experiences of my life, the dangers and privations notwithstanding. I came to believe that I might be right in theory, and not merely right in practice.

Not surprisingly, therefore, I have followed with interest and concern the developments since 1989, and recognise that the moment of liberation from the Soviet yoke was not simply the end of old problems, but also the beginning of new ones. It is about these new problems that I wish to speak, and about the situation of our continent today, as we endeavour to co-operate in resolving them.

Before 1989 our continent was divided between totalitarian socialism and free democracy, and although the left-wing intellectuals defended the first of those, they all lived, if they could, in the second. Today the division is not between different areas of our continent. It is a division between two conflicting outlooks. On the one hand there is the adherence to the nation state, with its language, institutions and religious inheritance. On the other hand there is the cosmopolitan vision of a trans-national order, a borderless economy and a universal law of human rights. Both outlooks grew from the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century and both came to fruition in the Enlightenment. And the tension between them is enduring and unresolved.

There is no way to understand our continent today if we do not recognise that it is an association of nation-states, each with its territory, customs, language and indigenous religions assets that define the loyalty of its residents and their shared sense of home. But we must also recognise that the legal and political institutions of our continent have turned in a cosmopolitan direction. This is less true of my country, perhaps. But it is certainly true of continental Europe; and it is particularly true of the former communist states. The law and jurisprudence of the European Courts enabled the former communist countries to fill the legal vacuum created by the Communist Party. And this in turn enabled them to receive and protect incoming investment and thereby to enter the global capitalist economy with relatively little friction, and also, alas, with far too little awareness of the social and cultural cost of it.

There is, at the heart of the European project, an agenda which was set without reference to the specific needs and values of the European nations. Regardless of their social and religious inheritance, the people of Europe are being pressured to recognise rights that derive from abstract ideas of freedom and autonomy, and which defy the norms of the indigenous religions: rights to abortion, surrogate birth, euthanasia and so on, which are inevitably controversial in countries that have depended for their cohesion on their religious inheritance. These rights form part of the worldview of the governing elite, who can legislate above the heads of sovereign governments. Moreover, the governments of the European nations have been asked to renounce the primary right of sovereign states, which is the right to determine who resides within their borders.

The freedom of movement provisions of the Treaty of Rome were conceived at a time when the signatories enjoyed a comparable standard of living, with more or less full employment and similar welfare systems. There was no temptation to move, save for the specific purposes of an existing job. Now, however, freedom of movement means a massive one-way shift of populations, out of the former communist countries, into the West, and in particular into Britain, whose government sets a very low barrier to entry. This is one cause of the Brexit crisis. But it has also had a serious demographic effect on the Vyegrad countries, which have lost many of the best and brightest of their young people, at a time when both economic take-off and defence against the Russian threat require a full cohort of the young and a full commitment to rebuilding the national economy.

Furthermore the dissolution of borders has made it all but impossible to maintain a national immigration policy. The EU has tried to gain control of the situation by distributing migrants according to a quota system. But Mrs Merkels open invitation to the Syrians, the influx on the Hungarian border, and the big business of people-smuggling in the Mediterranean have between them made such a policy unviable. The situation is especially alarming for the former communist countries for the very reason that communism made it both impossible, and in any case unattractive, to migrate into them from anywhere outside the Soviet sphere. Hence this unforeseen price of freedom has come as an enormous shock, both politically and psychologically. Paradoxically communism, although established as an international movement and claiming to abolish all sovereign boundaries, helped to preserve the nation state. For the nation was an enduring reality around which resistance could shape itself and, when combined with the powerful resurgence of Catholic faith in Poland, proved decisive in the overthrow of the communist tyranny.

Resistance to mass immigration has attracted the charge of racism and xenophobia from the EU, with moves to expel Hungarys Fidesz Party from the EPP, and even to expel Hungary itself from the European Union. This in turn has hardened Viktor Orbns government in its attitude, and led to growing resistance to immigration throughout the region. The issue has also been absorbed into the wider conflict, between the national and the international perspective, itself reaching back into the past of our continent and into the dark and difficult emotions that tore the continent apart during the 20th century. The result has been a sudden and radical change in the language and direction of political conflict throughout Europe, with the European elite condemning the populism of national movements, which in turn condemn the elitism of the European political class. This conflict has played itself out with increasing anger and confusion in my country, between the proponents and the opponents of Brexit. And it seems to me to be vital now both to understand what is at stake, and to work towards a resolution.

The charge of populism is levelled against movements for national independence and national renewal largely in order to discount the fact that they enjoy popular support. This is what we have seen in the response of liberals in Britain to the Brexit vote. A majority voted for Brexit; but you can discount their vote by describing it as populist. For there are two ways of appealing to the people indirectly, through the institutions that safeguard the liberal voice, and directly, by asking them what they think. Direct appeal to the people is rejected as dangerous. After all, they do not know what they think, or if they do know, it is because they think the wrong things. Only when guided and tempered by a liberal constitution can the people be trusted, and that means filtering their raw emotions though a fine mesh of liberal hesitations, so that only a harmless stream of sentiment trickles forth.

The same charge of populism is levelled at the Law and Justice Party in Poland, and at Fidesz in Hungary. Both are accused of making too direct an appeal to the sentiments of the people, and in particular to their sentiments of belonging. Ordinary people cling to forms of membership that are local, bounded and difficult to translate into bureaucratic norms. Their values are shaped by religion, family, language and national history, and they do not necessarily recognise the force of transnational obligations, or universal codes of human rights, especially when those codes are in direct conflict with the specific obligations of family and faith. Populism is increasingly being used as a term of abuse, to dismiss the appeal to this kind of sentiment, even though it is a sentiment without which ordinary people might find it difficult to recognise their political obligations.

It seems to me that the conflict between the left intelligentsia and human nature has shifted from the sphere of socialism versus capitalism to this new sphere, of enlightened liberalism versus residual nationalism. What the liberals condemn as populism is really the attempt to retain old and inherited sentiments of identity and belonging. And what the people condemn as elitism is really the enlightenment conception of a universal and borderless political order, in which conflicts supposedly vanish because their cause which is the competitive network of national loyalties has been swept away. The EU was founded by people moved by that enlightenment idea, and who saw nationalism as the force that had unleashed the century of European wars. Looking back on it, however, it is just as reasonable to see the idea of a universal and borderless form of politics as underlying the imprisonment of East and Central Europe by the communists. Nationalism of the German kind was certainly destructive; but so was internationalism of the Soviet kind. Why not recognise that, in themselves, neither is more destructive than the other, but that each can become destructive when wound into a totalitarian project in which dissent is not permitted and the people are no longer allowed to express their views?

What I find most interesting in the new confrontation, however, is that the intellectual left has again assumed the high ground, is not prepared to concede the democratic legitimacy of the movements that it dismisses as populist, and is determined to frustrate any attempt by those movements to establish themselves in government. The same annihilating rage that was directed against conservatives like myself in the 1970s and 1980s is being directed now against the supposed populists, and not surprisingly there is a growing tendency of the populists to give back as good as they get. The resulting rise in temperature is one of the factors behind a loss of confidence in the EU, which seems to have precipitated a conflict that it cannot manage. And it is a conflict that is revealed in all the rapid changes that our continent is now undergoing.

This conflict is particularly important for the post-communist countries, since the one thing they lacked in 1989 was a clear idea of what they are, and what unites the people in a body politic. The communists had an agenda, in which the people were conscripted to a cause that was clearly unachievable and in any case hopelessly out of date. They offered no other concept of identity, than the all-comprehending purpose of the communist millennium. All those factors that might have persuaded people to adhere to that purpose culture, art, music, religion, history had been driven underground, and the joyless surface of everyday life contained no promise of a future other than this one. Inevitably, therefore, the people were looking for a new politics of identity, something that would hold them together as a we. This was the one thing the EU was unable to provide. It gave them an avenue into the global economy, and a route away from their home, but no new way of belonging where they arrived. As the disappointments accumulated, it is the hope of belonging that beckons. Where is home, and who defines it? Global capitalism is no answer, since it merely voids the world of loyalties and puts everything, human relations included, on sale. This surely is what is legitimate in those old leftist criticisms: that the human heart has no real place in the global economy, the heart that so many of us observed in those who fought the communist tyranny in your countries and who hoped that, when the mask of dictatorship fell at last, the smiling face of the nation would be revealed beneath it.

My view is that this situation should be seen as an opportunity and not as a crisis. After thirty years of confusion the people of Eastern and central Europe are beginning to understand that they are heirs to two great achievements: on the one hand, the nation state as a form of social and political identity; on the other hand the Enlightenment conception of citizenship, in which each assumes the full responsibilities of social membership under a shared rule of law. The two achievements are forced into conflict with each other, in part because the EU wishes to dampen or even destroy the national idea. But properly understood they are mutually dependent. And this is the task now facing us all, and you in particular. We must recognise that, without national identity and the loyalty that stems from it, there is no way to build a society of citizens. Democracy and the rule of law are realities only if opposing sides can live with each other on terms. The great error of the communists was to eliminate opposition, to conscript the people into a unity that they had not chosen and were not allowed to question. The great benefit of democracy is that it makes opposition possible and also legitimate. But this has the consequence that, in a democracy, more than half the people at any moment might be living under a government that they did not choose, maybe a government that they hate. What makes that possible? Why do democracies not break down, under the pressure of popular dissent? The answer is simple: they dont break down because the loyalty of the citizen is not towards the government, but towards something higher, something that is shared between all the citizens, regardless of their political beliefs and inclinations. This higher thing is the nation, the entity to which we all belong, and which defines the first-person plural of democratic politics. Without this shared we it is impossible for democracies to endure, and it is precisely by destroying this we that the communists were able to retain their grip on power, ruling as a pure they of dictatorship.

It seems to me therefore that the so-called populists are right to emphasise the nation state as the fount of loyalty, and that their enlightened liberal opponents should acknowledge this, and cease to use the European institutions as a way to punish the governments that lean in this direction. And reciprocally those who wish to revive the national ideal, and to affirm the rights of national sovereignty, should listen to the voice of the liberal enlightenment, and accept that national sentiments must always be tempered by the recognition of others out there who do not and cannot share them. This, to my mind, defines the task before you today, which is one of reconciliation between two pressing needs: the need to affirm national sovereignty, and the need to conform to the universal standards of citizenship. These are the two great gifts of the European political inheritance, and they are mutually dependent. We should stand against those who wish to prise them apart so as to condemn one or the other of them as an offence against the people. After all, it is the people who have most to lose from any conflict between them, and the job of the politician is not to stir up conflict but to soothe it. It is my hope that we have arrived at the point when this will be possible. Then, at last, the poison administered by the communists will have been flushed from the system.

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Roger Scruton on national identity and the legacy of communism - The Conservative Woman

The word woke has quickly degenerated into a meaningless term of abuse. Nobody says I am woke these days, at least not seriously. Its like claiming to be a keen nanny-statist or bien-pensant.

At one level, then, wokeness exists only so that journalists like me and social media warriors on the center or right can fight it.

Its not just the word that has become hackneyed. The whole idea of being woke suddenly alert to racial or social injustice is not real, and never was, and therefore the movement against it is similarly fake.

Right-wingers have the same concept and call it redpilling; in both cases, it means a sort of lobotomized enlightenment for people who enjoy feeling aggrieved. Scratch the surface go beneath the endless viral spats between trolls on social media and you realize that nobody means what they are saying. Nobody is redpilled. And nobody, come to that, is woke.

This occurred to me the other day when I saw a clip of Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu explaining on British morning television why white people are not allowed to ask for evidence of racism against Meghan Markle. They dont have the lived experience of black people, said Shola, so they must agree that the Duchess of Sussex is a victim of bigotry end of. What crap, I thought to myself, as I felt the familiar righteous aggravation bubbling inside me. Then I realized that Ive met Shola: we did a podcast together ages ago about Donald Trump. Shola was quite combative during the recording, but sweetness and light when the microphones werent on. Im not sure she really believed what she was saying: its just her gig, her media market. There is a massive appetite for woke talking heads because media consumers are so hooked on the feelings of anger that they generate. Maybe I am wrong, but I dont believe that Shola, in her heart of hearts, is utterly convinced of the words she spouts about white privilege. Its a schtick that helps pay the bills. Shes like a stand-up comic who specializes in offending people. Except instead of being un-PC, she is ultra-PC, which is even more offensive to larger numbers of people.

The same thought strikes me when I look at social media. Many of my friends spend hours virtue-signaling (another word that is fast approaching redundancy) on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. But if I ever ask them about it, theyll explain that they only shared the sanctimonious meme because everyone in their office did, or they just thought that is what you have to do. They dont really believe all women, they just think thats what you say online. Its like theyre all agnostics in the Middle Ages. Its easier to repeat the litany than go against the grain.

Theres often a profit-motive, too. I know a woman (who shall remain nameless) who spends her time promoting her feminist bona fides on Instagram. She posts endless shots of herself with cod-motivational messages about her body shape, the #MeToo movement, or the importance of her orgasms. She used to be a close friend so I always found her Insta-feminism particularly cringe-inducing.

Then, at a wedding recently, we had a cheering, drunken rapprochement: we bonded over how awful Instagram is. She only does it, she said, because she is trying to find her way as an influencer one of the few career avenues open to cash-poor Gen X mummies in suburbia (now that is a feminist issue worth raising). The woke version of herself wasnt true: it was a digital career move.

Heres another example: I once did another podcast about the royals and mental health campaigning with the Telegraphs Bryony Gordon, who knows Prince Harry and is herself a mental health campaigner. I took the perhaps fogeyish line that the royals should probably not spend quite so much time talking about their struggles. Bryony disagreed, but politely. Like Shola, she was charming off-mic, before and after. We both seemed to understand that, while we may disagree, the media is just a game and no need for bad feelings. A few days later, I saw on Facebook that Bryony had written a post essentially calling me a **** for demeaning the mentally ill.

Again, I may be wrong, but I dont think that was the real Bryony. Thats the Facebook Bryony, the Bryony who is just developing her brand as a campaigning media personality. The real Bryony isnt truly woke. Shes rather nice, all said.

At some point the mask becomes the man, as in the story of the Happy Hypocrite. We are what we emote. If we spend our lives hectoring and censoring each other online, that will eventually bleed into everyday life.

But its useful sometimes to remember, as we all gorge on offense culture every day, that most people dont mean it and nobody is really woke.

Read more from the original source:
Nobody is woke - The Spectator USA

Laurence Fox says he enjoys to be mean to the wokies (Picture: BBC)

Actor Laurence Fox has rifled many features recently after claiming on Question Time that being called a white privileged man is racist.

His controversial comments continued when he revealed to The Delingpod podcast that he broke up with his too woke girlfriend over her opposing views on the Gillette advert last year.

He explained: I dont know how we ended up together.

It was a very short relationship. We were walking down the road and she was talking about how good the Gillette advert was. I just looked at her and went, Bye. Sorry, I cant do this with you.

The Gillette advert which addressed issues of toxic masculinity, bullying, sexual harassment and the objectification of women was celebrated widely.

But Fox felt it was too much and claims to have broken up with his partner because of their opposing opinions.

In November last year, Fox also admitted hes becoming increasingly intolerant due to his views.

He said: I say, Can we just get on and not be mean to each other? But I feel compelled to be mean to the wokies.

But what exactly does wokies mean?

The word wokie has been floating around in the past decade and prior to that describing anyone aware of social injustices.

But in the last few years, terms such as social justice warrior and wokies have been used derogatorily to poke fun at those sensitive to these issues.

According to Urban Dictionary, a wokie is someone who wants kudos for performing wokeness enlightenment.

It explains: A wokie is an individual who is woke, someone thatemitshigher grace and does not shy away from sharing his or her insights on the topic, regardless of the actualpossession of said knowledge.

While wokie is more of an insult, woke originated with a racially political end by Black Americans which makes it difficult to unpick from race.

It became a watchword around 2009 for the Black Lives Matter Movement a call to arms against the various racial injustices still occurring in the US and beyond.

Musician Erykah Badu is said to have brought the term alive in popular culture by singing I stay woke in the 2008 track, Master Teacher.

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Fox feels wokies play the race card too much.

Ironically, he claimed to be the victim of racism when he was called out for white privilege.

And yet he has lambasted minority groups which has been inferred by social media users as a thinly-veiled attempt at racism from his part.

He has since become a poster boy for anti-wokeness claiming that those enlightened on subjects of race and social injustice are now boring.

Despite his unpopular take, Fox received support from fellow controversial speaker Piers Morgan.

Similarly, Morgan has also claimed to be a victim of racism following comments from people calling him gammon.

Since all the outrage, Fox has claimed he would be taking a break from Twitter yesterday.

He tweeted: Right, super fun as all this has been, Im going to take a day off from winding up the wonderful wokies. Have a lovely day everyone.

He then resurfaced with various other tweets, one referring to himself as Wokey McWokeface.

MORE: Laurence Fox dumped too-woke girlfriend over supporting Gillette ad as he finds support in Piers Morgan

MORE: Laurence Fox claims the UK is the least racist society in the history of mankind

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More:
What does woke mean and what is a wokie? - Metro.co.uk

There is no such thing as a Good Demon.

Let me say that again:

In todays world, the high-fantasy genre is liberated to a point where writers, artists, and readers can explore every imaginable realm of possible existence, and that is an intimidating but wonderful thing. It is in high-fantasy where our imaginations run wild, where we humor all subjective definitions of macabre, grotesque, beautiful, brave, and bizarre. We can escape societys norms to validate thoughts and feelings, and we can make moral statements about our society and where it needs to go.

From multiverses strung together by Marvels anthologies of comic books to the allegorical Narnian plains from C.S. Lewiss Chronicles, The Walt Disney Company is no stranger to exposing its audience to high fantasy and the adventures that await. But no matter how free we let ourselves roam, no matter how mainstream high-fantasy may become, we must always keep the objective, established understanding of what is good and what is evil.

For example, Demons are evil. Angels are the ones that are good.

Disney Channels latest show, The Owl House, tells the story of a girl trapped in a demon realm where she will learn and use witchcraft while befriending an actual demon. The show follows in the footsteps of NetflixsDisenchantmentand FoxsLucifer. They present themselves with a foolishly arrogant prospective that drops everythingeven the barebones of age-old ideological definitions of good and evilinto the bin of high-fantasy make-believe, demoting the reality of Angels and Demons to harmless mythology.

Ive come to terms with the fact that 90% of Americas mainstream media has decided to operate outside of Judeo-Christian-centric norms for now. But, religion aside, there are boundaries you dont cross and will have major consequences. Im not talking about the wrath of some powerful Zeus-like being from above, Im talking about scores of kids being led astray at their own free will.

Related: Ex-Witch Warns Parents of Disneys New Demonic Show: Be Careful!

The trailer for Disney Channels The Owl House ends with the protagonist saying I know it looks a little bit differentBut if you look at it from a different perspective, its just like home.

We keep hearing this one, dont we? Keep an open mind! You might like it!

But, last I checked, getting your body and soul lost in a netherworld of chaos and horror with a manipulating demon and witch is not exactly the same thing as trying some super weird ethnic food at a friends house that even she doesnt like. There are limits to everything. Even for how open-minded you should be. And shows like The Owl House can cause major levels of confusion for the impressionable young minds it is geared towards.

Shows like The Owl Housemanipulate the idea of theres good in everyone and teach kids to let their guards down to demons and witches just because they may appear cute, benign, and sassy. They profess the same to hell with it contrarian nihilistic perspective to normal life and real spiritual evils as every other hipster artist on Tumblr.

Related: Is Disneys New Cartoon Teaching Kids How to Be Witches?

Disney XDs reboot of DuckTales rides the line of enlightenment perfectly while also dabbling in demon dimensions and magic. But heres the difference:DuckTalesmaintains the established boundaries of Good and Evil.

LikeThe Owl House, DuckTalesteaches kids not to be afraid to ask any questions or research any knowledge. But the difference in DuckTales is that they say, unapologetically, THIS IS EVIL! While the chief magic expert, Webby, may have a slightly unhealthy obsession with the ethereal realms, her eagerness comes from a desire to learn with an understanding of objective good vs. evil.

Now, is there goodness in every being? Yes.

Can everyone turn to good and be saved? Yes.

Webbys best friend, Leena, was a shadow manifested from the darkest evil. But Webby works constantly to pull Leena into the light. Her naivete causes her to be manipulated constantly by Leena, but her purity and her dedication to the light save Leena from the shadow realm. Rather than what some people think a person should do and surrender to their friends ways in the name of enlightenment.

Whenever spiritual nether-realms are mentioned inDuckTalesthey are always accompanied by three show tropes:

Do you see the difference? Sure, its fun to play with a little fake magic on TV, but it is not okay to tell kids its cool to befriend demons and get involved with straight witchcraft. That will only lead to more souls being led astray and lost to darkness.

There is no such thing as a good demon.

For those of you left thinking this, youre right. I agree. It is just a TV show. Kids are smart enough not to blindly emulate what they see on TV. But in that case, why dont we bring back gun use in cartoons and the good old hilariously violent slapstick Loony Tunes comedy?

Seriously, the world is better off with cartoon bad guys carrying and firing real-looking guns than with a cartoon good guy carrying a cutesy-looking demon.

Read the original here:
OpEd: Disney Crossed the Line with Demon-Centered TV Show "The Owl House" - Inside the Magic

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Will 2020 be the year of enlightenment?

President Trump has requested an immediate impeachment trial. Will the Senate deny him this opportunity to provide witnesses and give his side of the story?

My suggestion would be (if necessary) to exempt from prosecution Pence, Bolton, Mulvaney, Barr, Pompeo, Perry and anyone else testifying on behalf of the president. This will eliminate the need for evoking executive privilege, the fifth or stating, I dont recall.

What more vindication could the Republican House/Senate members and the president receive than the truth being told by his inner circle on the world stage? Would this not allow for his accusers to be exposed?

If the impeachment accusations are proven false, President Trumps reelection would be a slam dunk. Now is a good time for the Senate to restore some credibility to its chamber.

Excerpt from:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Will 2020 be the year of enlightenment? - SCNow

by Stan Cutler

Ive been to the new central libraries in Seattle and Austin. The experience of traveling on the escalators in those buildings got me thinking about our work as library volunteers. Those libraries are gorgeous public places that proclaim the culture of those cities. I believe Philadelphia should emulate them.

Our culture is rapidly evolving, adapting to cyber media. Most people nowadays use personal devices to experience a joy that was once unique to libraries the opportunity to browse, to wander through a collection, to freely pick something to read. A kid with a smartphone can tap a finger and access millions of books and articles. As we knew them, libraries are obsolete. I want to build something new. My focus has shifted from preservation to creation.

Nostalgia is one of the reasons people become library volunteers. We love our old buildings, even Central, our white elephant on The Parkway. In our neighborhood, Chestnut Hill, we have a fine old Carnegie building with tall Palladian windows, lovely wooden tables, shelves of books, each spine an invitation. Certainly, we want to preserve them and improve them. But we mistake our purpose if preservation is our primary goal.

We believe in the lofty mission of the Free Library of Philadelphia, to advance literacy, guide learning, and inspire curiosity. Its vision is to build an enlightened community devoted to lifelong learning. How can we succeed with such a grand mission? I dont think we can unless we think big, unless our aspirations are as grand as the goals.

Our vision must not be limited to libraries we know. Rather, we should be inspired by the challenge of building the greatest public media system in the world. At its center should be a beautiful building that reminds us of Enlightenment values a building that glorifies our desire for knowledge, truth and wisdom. Before seeing the great libraries of Austin and Seattle, I was thinking too small.

One of the things I noticed in those wonderful buildings was how many young people were patronizing them. The childrens sections, with kiddy workstations on every table, had almost as many moms and dads as kids. The parents were switching off, allowing first one, then the other, to leave for their favorite places in the library, to look for the latest books on their passions. Multilayered, open architecture, light-filled and adorned with great art, is an invitation to investigate, to discover and to enjoy our minds. If we want young people in our community to join us in our struggle to extend the Enlightenment into the 21st century, we need to give them a goal not a memory.

What if we sought enormous contributions, great sums, hundreds of millions of dollars, to build a great library? What if we gave famous architects a chance to offer masterpiece proposals? What if we enlisted every man, woman and child in our great city to participate in the project? Let us be like the people of old Chartres, inspired to spend a generation creating a cathedral. We can do it if we want to.

. Bookmark the

.

More here:
- Can Philadelphia build the greatest library in the world? - Chestnut Hill Local

On the drive up Highway 1 along the Sonoma County coast, the road eventually begins to twist and turn and the landscape grows ever craggier, dotted with wind-battered homes. In the coastal hamlet of Jenner, about 80 miles north of San Francisco at the mouth of the Russian River, a quaint, shingled building with a sign that says Russian House #1 is perched along the road. Is it a restaurant? A community center? An experiment in spiritual development?

Yes is the answer.

Russian House #1 has no menu and no set prices for food. Its founders, Tatiana Ginzburg and Polina Krasikova, were inspired in part by their experience at Burning Man in 2014, where they witnessed an intricate barter economy in action. The restaurant also has no paid kitchen staff. Krasikova cooks most of the food and is chiefly responsible for the kitchen, though she relies on a revolving cast of volunteers. Some are neighbors. The owners do not use the word donation. Its not charity, Krasikova says. You pay according to your own sense of fairness. Some visitors pay with labor, staying to clean or chop vegetables.

In Russian Houses five-year history, Krasikova and Ginzburg have welcomed friends from all over the world, so the days flavors are liable to change depending on whos in the kitchen. Theyve hosted French, Italian, Chinese, Turkish, Indian, and Armenian friends. They cook whatever they want, she says.

Sonoma County may seem like an unlikely place to pass a sign reading Pirozhki to go, but Russian House is ten miles from Fort Ross, a rustic Russian outpost where fur traders settled in the nineteenth century. The compound is now a National Historic Landmark that draws visiting Russians and other tourists passing along this picturesque stretch of Californias coast.

The bright, windowed space inside Russian House has a grand quality, owing largely to the majestic view of the Russian River, where geese frolic. And though visitors are likely to get a good meal, Krasikova admits that eating is not the whole point here. The food, however good it is, is secondary to dialogue and communication. Thats what we want. People come for food and stay for something else.

That something else is hard to pin down: The place hosts philosophy and physics lectures and holotropic breathwork workshops, and a poster made by Ginzburg starkly lays out steps toward unleashing human potential. Its a sensibility that seems to combine 19th century Russian mysticism, a Soviet penchant for grandiose acts of bureaucratic classification, and a post-Soviet interest in New Age self-discovery. But the extra-culinary offerings can feel opaque, even to visitors well versed in West Coast wellness culture. One would have to really join the community to ascertain whether it delivers on its self-stated goal of global enlightenment.

That said, a spirit of playfulness is alive throughout the space, where complex wooden puzzles hang along the wall of a corner pantry designed to look like an old-fashioned Russian stove. Matrioshki Russian nesting dolls of various sizes and a miniature balalaika stand sentinel on a shelf above a poster featuring an 80s-style image of a matrix that says Meaning. Binders full of flyers for past events and one-day menus sit on a table near the entryway. The papers reflect the wit and humor that undergirds the Russian House project as well as a charmingly faltering grasp of English. Classical Piano Concert is Quite Possible reads one. An old menu for the Week of Consciousness Expansion lists food for the intellect (riddles and puzzles) as well as earth food (the actual buffet). Another from a past Labor Day lists prices for activities: the right to clean the floor in the kitchen costs $1; the right to bake one pirozhek costs $5; and doing a puzzle with Tatiana would run guests $10,000.

When guests arrive, they take a plate from the mismatched stacks below the table and serve themselves from a motley assortment of chafing dishes and ceramic bowls. A large insulated pot of steaming ukha Russian fish soup beckons as an obvious first course. The clear broth, flecked with dill, maintains its lightness in spite of large chunks of potato and cod.

Though Krasikova draws on traditional recipes, she spent her St. Petersburg childhood cooking and baking alongside her mother, who liked to experiment, and she calls the food she serves fusion. We get tired of cooking all the same all the time, she says, so we always experiment. She enjoys using seasonal vegetables and playing with ayurvedic spice combinations. Krasikova sometimes looks up classic Russian recipes from one of the vintage cookbooks she keeps on a bookshelf off the main room, but adds touches she thinks Californians will appreciate.

For example, when she realized guests didnt love plain kasha (or buckwheat groats, a staple grain dish in Russian cuisine), she added capers and seaweed. Instead of typical blini with buckwheat flour, she uses almond milk to make a lighter, crepe-like version. The resulting pancakes have an injera-like sponginess, and are delicious served lukewarm with a dollop of cold sour cream and a spoonful of raspberry jam. A tart cabbage-and-carrot sauerkraut (made by a neighbor) cut both the blandness of a medley of stewed vegetables and the richness of a braised dish of pork medallions and greens that Krasikova conceded was not very Russian.

Taken together, however, the meal felt Russian: heavy as a woolen blanket, warm, comforting, and filling. It was served with Ivan tea (made from fermented fireweed), an erstwhile export of the Russian empire, in delicate cups from St. Petersburgs Imperial Porcelain Factory. Krasikova refilled the cups as soon as they were emptied.

In a moment when Russian political intrigue dominates the news, it can feel quite radical and nourishing to spend a few sunny hours soaking in a spirit of Russian joy. That rare experience is whats on offer at Russian House #1, even if it isnt exactly for sale.

See the original post:
Pay-What-You-Can Russian House #1 in Jenner Is One of Californias Most Eccentric Restaurants - Eater SF

A Silicon Valley-based friend, who heads a tech giants in-house academy for its engineers, has been trying to inculcate the habit of reading among his students. Last week, he mailed me, asking for suggestions, especially since apps like Blinkist and 12min now offer the gist of important non-fiction books in text and audio form that you can gulp down with a cup of coffee, and be/appear more knowledgeable.

Fact is, we were already short on time, and now, we also have Netflix and Amazon Prime, so it really helps when someone tells you that the 816-page Capital In The Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty can be summed up in one line: The rich have been getting richer at a rate faster than world GDP, and thats not fair."

But some books need to be read in full. They cannot be summarized. So, here are five (actually six) that I loved reading this year (not all of them are 2019 publications).

Enlightenment Now: In his most ambitious work till date, Harvard professor Steven Pinker tackles every big issue that humanity facesthe environment, wealth inequality, sustenance, peace, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, happinesswith clean data, multi-disciplinary expertise and powerful logic. He has been criticized as being too optimistic, but he sees some existential threats" as figments of cultural and historical pessimism", and the genuine ones not as apocalypses in waiting, but as problems to be solved" through three weapons: reason, science and humanism.

War Or Peace: Prof. Deepak Lal is a formidable scholar. War Or Peace is a magisterial steeped-in-history analysis of current geopolitics, with the US resigning from its globo-cop" role, China pushing for global hegemony, wannabe imperial powers like Russia and Iran flexing their muscles, and India, another aspirant, caught in the middle. Lal even considers the possibility of a Third World War, and ends with his views on how India can cope with the new global disorder. This is a profound examination of the threats that the democratic world faces, and how they can be countered.

Savarkar: We badly needed an un-biased biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkarneither a hagiography nor a leftist hatchet joband journalist Vaibhav Purandares deeply researched and tightly written book is just that. Sourcing a wealth of new material, including previously untranslated Marathi documents, Purandare shines clear light on many controversies: the mercy petitions, Savarkars call to Indians to join the British Army during World War II, his decision to have the Hindu Mahasabha join Muslim League-led provincial governments, his views on the cow. Here is the charismatic visionary with all his quirks and wartsshort-tempered, stubborn, miserly when paying his eternally loyal staffers and, though acquitted by the court of any complicity in Mahatma Gandhis assassination, perhaps bearing some moral responsibility for it.

The Coddling Of The American Mind, and Woke: Im clubbing these two books together because both deal with the current wave of identity politics and social justice" sweeping a section of the worlds educated population, especially the young. Fed by theories of post-modernism and intersectionality, wokeness" sees the world only in terms of victims and aggressors, believes that feelings are more true than facts, often sees speech or content expressing opposite views as violence, supports actual violence to respond to such speech, and revels in cancel culture", where un-wokes are ostracized (the definition of un-woke" is broad: for example, if you are homosexual and dont feel you are a victim, you are a fake gay").

In Coddling, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff offer a sobering account of how fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play where the child has to take responsibility for the outcomes, the omnipresence of social media and a college system where dogmatic left-liberals, who have a stranglehold on the humanities and social sciences, indoctrinate rather than encourage openness to ideas, have created a fragile and angry generation with strong cognitive distortions. While Coddling deals only with the US, its insights and lessons are equally valid for India.

Woke, by Titania McGrath, the parody Twitter alter ego of British commentator (and fake gay") Andrew Doyle, is satire at its most biting. Samples: Socialism has been an unqualified success wherever it has been implemented. In Venezuela, a 2.4-kg chicken is currently worth a whopping 14,600,000 bolivars. So much for socialism making people poorer." My friend Tabitha has recently given birth to a baby boy After birth, one of the very first things this organism did was cry to be fed. Thats the kind of male entitlement were dealing with. Straight out of the womb, and its all me, me, me." Woke is the funniest book Ive read in a long time.

The Wandering Earth: I was also lucky this year to discover the Chinese science-fiction writer Cixin Liu. Earth comprises ten longish stories. Rock-solid science, dazzling imagination, sublime philosophical queries, and one hilarious end-of-the-world comedy. Sci-fi seems to be yet another field where China is ahead of us.

Sandipan Deb is former editor of Financial Express and founder-editor of Open and Swarajya magazines

Read more:
Opinion | A collection of year-end reads to give you food for thought - Livemint

The strains of the Indian freedom struggles picked up dramatically when Gandhi made the call 'Quit India'. Till then, it seems to me, Gandhi was soft peddling/ negotiating/ speaking, but his patience was being misused. So he decided that now, there will be more than local satyagrahas and dialogues, and that he will generate what in fact could become conflict. Hence the 'Salt March' and the 'Civil Disobedience method, where picking up a state owned product like salt as a form of breaking the law changed the course of the freedom movement.

Of course many people have written about Gandhi's skills and intuition in knowing what would be the mesmerizing project or process. Picking up salt from the beaches, easily accessible over miles of coast, and in some sense privatizing a state owned essential commodity was nothing short of genius. But there was more to the Quit India Movement.

It was a peaceful resistance to the state and galvanized another section or slice of the Indian population- these were the students. Quit India resonated with them in ways beyond the various satyagrahas and other efforts. Students all over India, used the slogan 'Quit India' and marched and held meetings and gave the movement an extraordinary strength and voice. Simultaneously they, the students got politicized. The two words- Quit and India had the tang in them which touched the spirit of the young.

So while the act of civil disobedience spread, simultaneously India's students rose to the call Quit India in a way similar to what we see in India today. For students to rise as a political force there has to be a morally compelling call which can be adopted across difference. In India we are blessed, at the same time stressed by enormous diversity- language, religion, practice, everything varies to multiple amounts/ numbers.

Quit India resonated with the students, -strong, full of power like the voices today resonating, Azaadi. The word, the sound of the word as it is voiced, is so powerful .It has become the strum of the student uprisings in India today as was Quit India in the 1940s.

However what we are missing,- and that absence or empty box must be filled - not only because it would be a form of appreciation and reward for the persistence, brilliance, commitment, understanding of India and its Constitution by the students. It is also for the bigger or more formal reason that it represents the heart of India.

Much has been written and with great detail and with expertise on exactly how the CAA and the NRC contravene the principle and the spirit of the Constitution. So I will not go into that. But what needs to be thought out deeply by others, for example "the eminent persons and academicians" that have been recording their anxiety and disapproval of this initiative by the Modi- Shah combine, is how to channelize this extraordinary wide- awake knowledgeable community,- students from across India, into regenerating the 'India of our dreams'.

Yes, we had an India in our dreams. 'We' meaning the before midnight's children. People like myself engaged with India as adults in the early 50's. So I came to Delhi to work for an organisation which was building cooperatives and then joined the University and there were hundreds of people like myself.

What did we experience?

We experienced, to use a new term that has come into fashion now i.e. a Resurgent India. Across the country there was solidarity in affirming not only our freedom but drawing on our civilizational and economic experience. Gathering the resources that we possessed into a wide range of domains- culture, economic progress, political and social institutions and so on. However on reflection, we have to recognize that we do not have that icon- that North Star that would capture the Quit India Movement and translate it into affirming our freedom. Gandhi. A person or an institution that can engage and respond to the current articulation of the masses/students is needed.

This is a gap which has to be filled now, soon, if we are to give due respect to these brilliant, courageous, informed student communities of India. How to capture the space they have made in what looked like a rock which could not be cracked, and enter through that space into a wholesome democratic and enlightened India as designed and articulated by the Fathers and Mothers of the Constitution and the immediate descendants of that era.

This question requires immediate attention and needs some form of construction if we wish to respect and encourage the students. Otherwise the students protest, courage, fearlessness, and brilliant articulation of what is wrong and what needs to be corrected, can be swept away by a brutal government and by those sections of the society which have not had the experience of enlightenment.

So this enlightenment that came to us as a result of the attempt by the current central government to infiltrate/ corrupt our beautiful democracy needs to be a serious consideration. The 600 intellectuals who signed the letter, the other several hundreds who have come together in various ways to express support - civilians need to find the political platform on which the brilliant students efforts can be mounted.

This is the urgent need of the day. We have no Gandhi now nor do we have a Jayaprakash Narayan, nor can we suddenly bring out an individual as a pole.

It is not enough that many governments now will not be BJP. We can see the tumbling down. It is not enough to think that if the Congress party still appears here and there, when the citizens wish to reject BJP and its allies, it can lead this nation. We have to think of citizens forums, the movements coming together into some form of political formation and then bringing in leadership which is not yet there, but which could be brought out.

A challenging task but what the students have done cannot be allowed to go unrewarded.

Devaki Jain is a reputed development economist

Original post:
Quit India Got Students on the Streets as CAA Has Now - The Citizen