Gloria Indica

Hi! Welcome to the 11^th edition of Gloria Indica, our newsletter written specifically for Wednesdays and Thursdays. If you’re reading this for the first time, then welcome. Wherever you’re from, whenever you’ll read this, this is our newsletter when we train our eyes a bit more specifically to India and other narratives across the world. Narratives that’ll have an impact on all of us, if not immediately, then definitely in a few years. 

The Fortune of Birth

All this time, we were having a ball and tripping ourselves blazes, so that our productivity and economic values were not compromised, while being hamstrung by all sorts of needs, wants and desires, sometimes most of them unnecessary, a characteristic of aspiration and upward mobility, in a nation full of it, on account of most of India (65-70%) being under the age of 35. 

While we did not think too much about the hardships, difficulties and struggles faced by millions, we did think too much about privileges brought forth as a product of being born to the right set of people at the right time. A new life at birth is a cause of celebration, yet they also determine the destiny of a particular child, in tandem with the parents’ socio-economic outlook, tinged with their own sense of optimism and aspiration for progress. Beyond this point, there’s systemic factors that come into the picture – the result of government policies and the wider society, including the strength of the media to support dissent, creative conflict and non-violence.     

Amidst all this is where lies the greatest potential of the internet, provided it is used in the right way by the right individual. The internet will be the biggest enabler of change among India’s young aspirational population, many of them seeking refuge in its information fountains to learn what they want, when they want, to raise capital and start their own enterprises doing whatever the Indian free market will pay them for. 

Let’s keep blazing. 

Congratulations University of California

The university declared that it will be setting up a research centre devoted to studying the applications of psychedelics for human well-being. The reader may feel a little skeptical at this point. After all, psychedelic substances like MDMA and LSD are notorious as so-called party drugs, while the harder ones like Cocaine and Heroin are in a separate league of their own when it comes to misuse and abuse. 

The world’s interest in using natural plant-based substances like cannabis and magic mushrooms, in addition to ‘selectively’ dosing MDMA and LSD goes completely against the conservative peoples’ stand that the human body is god’s sacred reservoir and it should not be messing around (unless there has been a serious accident which necessitates surgery and ‘messing’ around the body to fix hands and limbs) with substances, even when some of them occur naturally as plants. 

According to Marijuana Moment: 

“Researchers at the center will attempt to discover potential therapeutic applications of psychedelics for mental health by studying the fundamental mechanisms that go into a psychedelic experience. They plan to explore how visual hallucinations work in the brain, as well as the long-term effects of taking these substances on “social and political attitudes, identity and resilience to stress.”

If we were to summarize all the recent development in Psychedelic studies, again courtesy of Marijuana Moment, it would go like this: 

• “In May 2019, Denver became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin (an active compound present in magic mushrooms), with the approval of a local ballot measure. Soon after, officials in Oakland, California, decriminalized possession of all plant- and fungi-based psychedelics.” 
• “The Canadian government will have to officially respond to a petition calling for the decriminalization of psychedelics after it recently garnered nearly 15,000 signatures—and there’s legislation in the works that could make the reform happen.”
• “The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies announced last month that it raised $30 million in donations—including from several notable business leaders outside the drug policy realm—that will enable it to complete a study on using MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Science and Humanity both took their time, but finally as we have increasingly come to accept that humanity still faces a boatload of global problems (one of which is healthcare, the others pertain to the financial system and geo-political tensions), it is an apt time for plants to enter the conversation and make the world their own, just how it always used to be. 

Let’s keep Blazing. 

Make a List of all your Problems 

Everyone has problems and none has been spared. 

Elon Musk has another level of a problem. His company, SpaceX still does not possess the technology required to reach Mars (from a commercial point of view) and start exploring, and as far as he’s considered, this situation sucks. So the man is going to make a lot of money from Electric cars and trucks, taking rich people to space to watch Earth from above, build a global network of satellites to beam down internet on the earth, and then use all of that money to get to Mars. The man is obsessed with solving hard problems.

Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man has another level of a problem. He’s raised $20 billion dollars (that’s 1 lakh fifty thousand crore Indian rupees) from global investors, all in a bid to virtually take a cut on each and every transaction that arises from each and every user using its Jio telecom service. He’s pushing himself to satisfy everyone involved with him and shape the trajectory of India’s (for at least 800 million bottom of the pyramid Indians for now) digital future. The man is obsessed with controlling Indian commerce. A very hard problem to solve, made easier with government support. 

We have another level of a problem. 

Increasingly we find ourselves thinking too much, blazing up too much, and then procrastinating too much, all in a bid to find our own way into the world. Yet, thinking about our past and our future isn’t doing us any good. So we decided that from tomorrow, we will take a walk everyday in a nearby park and try to do some meditation, where we need to focus on our breath and then gradually move towards the sensations moving across all our body. 

Let’s keep blazing. 

Have a great day 🙂