A website that welcomes you to reason

It also has detailed instructions on how to collect unused drugs, before their expiry dates, and channel them for use by poor patients who cannot afford the cost of drugs – with photos of  the specially designed drug collection boxes to suit various situations.

But, the website is not a laughing or social responsibility matter. Its core objective is to promote reasoned discussion on topics of current interest which perhaps cyber criminals are not very pleased with. But, its promoter and editor, author and journalist, John B. Monteiro is fighting back with a relaunch of his website.

www.welcometoreason.com, a website, first launched on July 1, 2007, to provoke and promote reasoned discussion on topics of current and abiding interest, has been re-launched on May 12, 2011 to provide for response from readers to topical-essays posted on the site daily. Though the site was projected as Interactive Cerebral Challenger, it is only now that it has a provision for response/comment. It is specially tailored for young to showcase their creativity and imagination and for senior citizens challenge their brain cells and share their experiences. In its re-launched avatar, the site is reader-friendly and easy to browse and respond. The site hopes to familiarise and orient students to prepare for competitions, with attractive prizes, due to be announced at its fourth anniversary celebration on July 17, 2011.

According to author and journalist John B Monteiro, promoter and editor of the website, “Our world today is marked and marred by wide-ranging conflicts, terrorism, rebellion and subversion. Even in the realm of ideas, we are living in the shadow of civilisational/religious conflicts which have violent manifestations. In the midst of these, www.welcometoreason.com stands for what it says. It hopes to bring together thousands of men and women, including students and senior citizens, on a common platform in quest of sanity in human relationships.”

Monteiro says that we accept old adages and dictums like “Honesty is the best policy,” that have been trotted out to us down the generations, without challenging them. He says that there is no finality about such dictums. “That there are two or more angles to any issue was the basis of columns I wrote in the print media over 30 years. A collection of these has come out as a book – “Some current issues for debate.” One of the reasons why these columns could run for so long is the case study approach used in presenting the issues. It is based on the premise that we are not easily provoked by abstractions and apparently settled issues like ‘Honesty is the best policy’. If an issue is dissected sufficiently, but not conclusively, there is much scope for provoking people into looking at it from unexpectedly hidden angles – aided by personal experience, observation and logical reasoning.”

Monteiro cites a humorous ditty which says that man can go to heaven by drinking because when one is in a drunken stupor he goes to sleep and there is no time to sin and if he doesn’t sin, he goes to heaven. “Similarly, if we are preoccupied with healthy ideas, as welcometoreason seeks to promote, we will have no time or inclination for violence that mars our polity.”