Is It Time To Tolerate The Taliban?
The world of 2021 is very different from the planet just 15 years ago. It is a flatter world, in fact, a bit concave because of our collective grief. It could be that George Floyd, yet another black man changed the world. Or it could be that after a smart virus put us all in jail, glued in front of smart technology, something changed. It has become safer to wear a beard, okay to be any colour, okay to be Muslim, express any sexuality, wear a Hijab, pray or meditate in a post George Floyd world. Ergo: We are all in a constant state of physical vigilance because of a virus and our race doesn’t seem to bother us as much.
In a post covid19 world, being alive is enough. According to post covid19 fashion trends, it is okay to wear loose baggy tunics and cover one’s face as well. So, yes the world is more liberal….is it more liberal or more conservative to be okay with other races being more conservative?. “It just is”, Eckhart said on youtube, and I will take that, thank you.
If somebody came to my door and said the Green Party had a sweeping victory in the next elections in Canada, I’d say for sure. It had to be. Our current ideas of how to live, why to live, and how to live are completely defeated. They don’t work. I’d say here are the metaphorical keys, I’d give them to young people who are far less close-minded. The young are the ones who have to collaborate and innovate to get a roof over their heads and meals. That seems to be the way things are now.
Culture is a major thing, and destroying it doesn’t make people change. Examples of colonialism proved that the destruction of a people only destroys their ways. It doesn’t make them grow back just like you. There’s something missing you know, something that hollows out the heart of the world i.e., if one believes the Anima Mundi idea, the Earth is an overarching soul, and we keep exchanging pain like we exchange currency, thus nobody is free from suffering, because at the soul level we feel the same pain that we give others. The realization that we can’t get away with it is part of a ‘spiritual awakening’. Perhaps this realization is becoming more accepted than 10 years back.
If we were still in the world of 2010, people would be outraged to see media images of bearded men with guns taking over Kabul. The thing is, we saw men with guns taking over Kabul just a while back. And the year before that and…. and ….. I can’t remember a time when men with guns and weapons weren’t taking over Kabul. The Taliban, historically speaking, were the anti-drug kind of men with guns. So one hopes that Pakistan and Afghanistan’s drug problem will reduce. It might even have a positive effect on the rest of the world’s drug problem. Now the Taliban don’t historically seem to like women. Turns out that most armies of men generally don’t ‘like’ women as much as they want them.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that a woman should not have to get a bullet just because she wants to go to school or get a job. Truth be told, I think I like going to school more than I like men with guns, which is why I support girls like Malala. A girl’s gotta have her books. Thanks to Malala, women’s education is more of a cause than ever before. Even though conservative people in Pakistan do not respect women activists, visible and risky women’s activism has made sure that women’s voices are heard and women have the kind of jobs and income that they couldn’t before.
What I see is a strange defeated apathy about Kabul and an unwillingness to hate them in the media. In general, the usual patronization towards non-white cultures is missing from the media. It isn’t being missed. In the light of a more concave flatter world consciousness, Taliban appear more tolerable than before. This is a world that lived through a narcissist as President of USA. The old higher ground looks way lower in a post Trump and George Floyd and Covid world. Maybe the New Taliban won’t appear as insane as the last ones. Maybe they will let women talk on the radio and walk outside dressed as women. Maybe.
Malala, we hear you, but like Dandelion weeds, the Taliban are resilient. Violence couldn’t kill the Taliban and send kids to school. The war in Afghanistan didn’t create a whole lot of schools or passionate students so that everybody could get trained for a job. Let’s get totally real here, the Taliban didn’t even have to shave or get some trouser leg pants in the last 10 years to compete for the opportunities from the ‘free’ and ‘civilized’ world after the wars. It could be that they don’t want to work for Apple or Google or maybe Violent control of Afghanistan didn’t work to convince them that the free world is worth it. Random questions in my mind, I really wonder if the Taliban practiced social distancing because of Covid19?. Did they get vaccinated? How did they get their funds in a world where supposedly every transaction that promotes terrorism is monitored. I’m not sure how despite all the watching and surveillance of our devices, they were able to take over Afghanistan. I am assuming they couldn’t have posted advertisements for funds online. The millions of dollars that were poured into the War in Afghanistan were useless in changing the Taliban. In Canada and in USA the government took tax payers money, essentially to make weapons companies rich and pollute this beautiful fast dying planet. How much of that money created any opportunity for Afghans? Probably a fraction.
The takeover was pulled off in broad daylight with everybody watching. Is that technically a theft?
It looks more like a relay race. Somebody must have given them the baton.
Photo by The Chuqur Studio on Unsplash
