my name is aditya ramachandran, just finished my first year of university at mcgill in montreal. i enjoy writing mostly about politics and religion, and since i’m too lazy to get a real job or go to class often, i decided to create this blog.
i think that the most important intellectual trait a person can demonstrate is the ability to question everything, evaluating all propositions logically based on their merits or faults. i’m strongly opposed to all dogmas, which by definition are uncritical. i’m an atheist as a result of my insistence on rational inquiry and i hope to write a fair bit about religion. as far as politics goes, i’m roughly a social democrat, because i find that this political view is most conducive to democracy. without going too far in depth about my general convictions, i strongly believe that words like democracy and freedom must be concretely defined and practiced, instead of just being thrown around without critical reflection, as they are by most politicians today. democracy means “the public exerting meaningful control over the political process,” signifying public ownership and control of important institutions, absolute free speech, optimal public education and consequently, public empowerment. freedom, as definied by cicero, “is participation in power.” these standards for democracy and freedom should be applied rigorously to our own societies, as they seldom are in mainstream discourse both in Canada and the US. i find that there’s a lot of bullshit in the world today, voiced mainly by politicians, corporate journalists and religious apologists, and i plan to talk a lot of shit about some of these people and their positions. anyways, that’s my intro, have fun reading 
