Afghanistan: Honor based social systems are not based on buying and selling and money like ours.

[ConsAreLiars]

A few excerpts from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour

Cultures of honour and cultures of law

One can contrast cultures of honour with cultures of law. In a culture of law there is a body of laws which must be obeyed by all, with punishments for transgressors. This requires a society with the structures required to enact and enforce laws. A culture of law incorporates an unwritten social contract: members of society agree to give up most of their rights to defend themselves and retaliate for injuries, on the understanding that transgressors will be apprehended and punished by society. From the viewpoint of anthropology, cultures of honour typically appear among nomadic peoples and herdsmen who carry their most valuable property with them and risk having it stolen, without having recourse to law enforcement or government. In this situation, inspiring fear forms a better strategy than promoting friendship; and cultivating a reputation for swift and disproportionate revenge increases the safety of one's person and property. Thinkers ranging from Montesquieu to Steven Pinker have remarked upon the mindset needed for a culture of honour.

....

Cultures of honour will often arise when three conditions<1> exist: 1) a lack of resources; 2) where the benefit of theft and crime outweighs the risks; and 3) a lack of sufficient law enforcement (such as in geographically remote regions). Historically cultures of honor exist in places where the economy is dominated by herding animals. In this situation the geography is usually remote since the soil can not support extensive sustained farming and thus large populations; the benefit of stealing animals from other herds is high since it is main form of wealth; and there is no central law enforcement or rule of law. However cultures of honor can also appear in places like modern inner city slums. The three conditions exist here as well: lack of resources (poverty); crime and theft have a high rewards compared to the alternatives (few); and law enforcement is generally lax or corrupt.<1>

This Wiki article is flawed in very many ways, but it gets at one very important point. It is a doomed venture from the start to try to impose a capitalistic European/American society and system of government, laws, and sets of values and beliefs in a land where, given the conditions the people live within, simple survival dictates a wholly different set of beliefs and values. They do not live in the same world/society as we, and trying to impose our system on them is doomed as an attempt to force them to feed themselves through their armpits.

It's a hard thing for many of us, living in a much different world, to understand. Our understanding of such an apparently obvious distinction between right and wrong is often totally at odds with theirs. Long ago I had the good fortune to have a long discussion on "right and wrong" with a young Afghan who, with incredible patience, finally allowed me to decenter enough to sort of "get it."

I hope this is helpful.

I've tried before in other ways to help people see this. Maybe a few more commentaries might help, if you want to read more about my experiences and share them.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/ConsAreLiars/17
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/ConsAreLiars/14
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/ConsAreLiars/12
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/ConsAreLiars/7
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/ConsAreLiars/6

And take a tour of Afghanistan, as seen through the eyes of a professional photographer who loves the land and people: http://www.lukepowell.com/

A giant gallery - start anywhere and spend a few minutes or a few days, or a few minutes every day. Over time, if you are willing, you will begin to see them as family.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

1. this statement :

"It is a doomed venture from the start to try to impose a capitalistic European/American society and system of government, laws, and sets of values and beliefs in a land where, given the conditions the people live within, simple survival dictates a wholly different set of beliefs and values."

that really nails it. we are trying impose a system on them that runs contrary to the very fabric their lives is built upon...

sP

[ConsAreLiars]

3. Thank you. You get it.

All of that is what the Brzezinski/Kissinger/et al game-players ignore and regard as irrelevant. The fact that there are real humans, with real beliefs and real values, who have a sense of decency and honor, unlike them, is something they cannot even imagine.

[anonymous171]

2. We should leave. That place will never change until the people there have had enough.

[izquierdista]

4. It's an easy thing for us to understand

After all, the culture of law was forced on us at an early age, when mother told you not to take things unless you could pay for them. So clearly, the culture of law just needs to be forced on them by slapping their hand and telling them to obey the law. Clearly, they have not been slapped hard enough or often enough. :silly:

The dichotomy I see is that the advanced model (culture of law) uses its own internal methods to try to advance the primitive model (culture of honor), even when those methods are shown not to work time and again. What they fail to realize is that when the LACK OF RESOURCES is overcome and the benefits of theft are not there, the system of honor will give way to the system of law naturally. But that would require a loan. The lending of resources to a people that don't have them with a mortgage that will only be paid back over a very long time.

This is one of the last places in the world where there are still roaming marauders attacking the peaceful farming villagers. The war solution hopes to kill off the nomads faster than they can replenish their ranks. That strategy worked in the American west of the 1800's. The peaceful solution, to provide the nomads with a house and a garden and schools and indoor plumbing, may cost more in material goods, but it costs less in lives lost on both sides.

[ConsAreLiars]

7. I had the good fortune to have a long discussion with a young Afghan whose family had been murdered

when in Peshawer. He had then been "adopted" by a British diplomat and educated in England, and was returning when we were just leaving. My companion and I were hunkered down in the hotel while a large political rally was massed outside, held by a nationalist party, and the manager asked that we keep out of sight since the sight of westerners might turn some hostility toward us and the hotel. (No hostility was ever encountered in Afghanistan.)

Then this young man knocked on the door and asked to chat. He told us his story, and was returning home once he had reached the age of majority and was able to take this action. He mentioned casually that although he was returning to his home country because hit was is home, he would kill the bandits who had killed his family if he ever encountered them. He was not intending to go out and hunt them down, Charles Bronson style, but would always be looking for ways to find them while doing whatever work he found. My companion was more inclined to try to convince him to be more Gandhian in his attitude than I, but with great patience he simply explained, over and over, with no anger, that is was simply the only right thing to do, that to fail to do this would be utterly shameful and debasing. Over time I began to understand. How this attitude was a survival tool appropriate in certain types of social ecologies was something I didn't get until later.

Just a minor caveat, those resisting the US/NATO ]occupation armies are neither nomads nor bandits. There are nomads with no fixed dwelling who move their livestock around according to weather, and there are marauders, but those are not the targets of the US/NATO military nor those who fight against them.

[Hekate]

5. We have an example of a culture of honor in the Appalachians, persisting for a couple hundred years

Malcolm Gladwell's recent book "Outliers: The Story of Success" includes one chapter on the Scots-Irish who migrated to America, specifically to the Appalachian mountains. As he sees it, honor cultures arise in harsh lands among herding peoples and persist for centuries. Violence is part of the mindset (remember the Hatfields and the McCoys?). It was a revelation to me.

I have not yet read Senator Jim Webb's book on the Scots-Irish in America, but I caught his interview on NPR and really want to read it.

In any case, the tribalism that persists in the Middle East simply cannot be discounted. It's how they live, it's how their minds construct their world. The gross ignorance of our policy makers will continue to lead us into folly until we have some who understand what they are doing.

Hekate

[ConsAreLiars]

8. My disagreement was based on tying such societies to herding-based economies.

At least before being turned into a killing field, Afghanistan had an extensive system of canals that were used to route summer snow melts from the mountains to irrigate farmlands and orchards and fill cisterns. Although goatherds were a part of the economy, agriculture and commerce were no less important, and the same sets of values are shared by all. The food merchant in a village is no less vulnerable to bandit attacks than the guy with the goats, and the only solution to that problem was elimination of that particular gang. Catching them and shackling them to the wall of a dungeon and tossing them food and disposing of their waste every so often, well, that was not really an option.

I think the strength of the short article is in pointing out that material conditions shape ideology and "morality," rather than seeing such beliefs and value systems as wholly arbitrary of accidental. "How their minds construct the world" depends greatly on how that world actually is.

[pnorman]

6. I'm not sure that Wiki had got this wrong,

but this looks to be a worthwhile discussion. So I'll save this for careful rereading later on. Thanks.

pnorman