Hello steemit

^ That's me in Mongolia some time ago

Happy to become part of Steemit, I've already found interesting and useful pieces here, looking forward to getting to know more of you. I'm finishing an MA in European, Russian and Eurasian Studies from the University of Toronto Munk School's Centre for European Russian and Eurasian Studies and Ethnic and Pluralism Studies Program. I also have a BA in Chinese and Russian from the University of British Columbia. I've spent most of my adult life abroad in the countries you would guess from my BA, as well as Saudi Arabia. I intend to write opinion pieces relevant to my fields of study, quirky stories from life abroad, language learning advice, and other interests like current affairs, psychology and philosophy.

I was born and raised in modest circumstances on Canada’s Pacific coast. Dropped out of high school and moved to China at 18 and stayed 7 years, travelling around all but four Asian countries. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis I decided to study Chinese and Russian at the University of British Columbia. After that, I became fixated on the Eastern Baltic littoral region, particularly St. Petersburg and Riga, and spent the summer of 2013 studying in Sevastopol. I also spent a year in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia building an in-depth understanding of Isalm. I’m now finishing an MA at the University of Toronto Munk School's Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and Ethnic and Pluralism Studies co-program.

In my travels I enjoy trying to understand foreign ways of thinking on their own terms. I try to apply a high degree of skepticism to all claims of objectivity and moral superiority. I don’t like any kind of supremacism. The categories Left and Right don’t make any sense, there is great value in ideas identified with both; we should realize there is a value in the personality types and life-experiences that we don’t understand. The more commercialized and Industrialized the society, the more reason and ‘nurture’ overshadow the vagaries of human nature, which nevertheless remain just beneath the surface, eventually exacting revenge proportional to their neglect. They are temporarily appeased by physical, economic and emotional security, but we fool ourselves expecting to progress away from them. Innovations in technology and rational thought are neutral to our eternal moral, psychological and spiritual dilemmas. For example, we need our lives to have meaning, we have an inescapable libido dominandi, and perhaps pursue social and economic justice amidst humanity’s innate, and equal instincts of selfishness and cooperation, which fluctuate back and forth based on factors like abundance and scarcity. If that makes any sense. The future belongs to those who can synthesize ideas from oppositional camps rather than falling into petty tribalism, needless, lazy dichotomization and group self-identification against some demonized 'other.'

Anyways, I intend not to write about that kind of thing too much, but to write opinion pieces relevant to my fields of study, quirky stories from life abroad, language learning advice, and bits on other interests like current affairs, psychology and philosophy.