Hi Joe
'But when ? How long already ? And I were a woman in those countries, I'd be despairing right now. When ? How much longer should they have to live under such conditions?'

They shouldn't have to live under those conditions at all. My argument is not to foster those conditions but to ask the best way to change those conditions. War and intervention by the West are not always the best option and in fact can lead to a hardening of those aspects of the culture that we would find oppressive.

Hi Pelican,

And in an imperfect world, perhaps "War and intervention by the West" may well be "the best option", now that they have started all sorts of democratising processes, at least in terms of women's rights and opportunities.

Unless you can propose a "better option" ?

Good luck,

Joe

I doubt the Afghanistan government is changing it's stance on the states of women. I believe it is only going along with the appearance of change because it is dictated by the US, with out whom they are out of power. This is obviously the case with the treatment of prisoners, & many other western demands.

As soon as the yanks go, expect a full return to business as usual, in the Afghan tradition. I expect many Afghan women are right now setting them selves up for serious trouble by adopting the western style currently on offer, courtesy of the US presence. The current government is still tribal Muslim, & a few years of western indoctrination will slip away very quickly.

Rather than any change in Muslim cultures, I expect we will see a steady erosion of women's rights & influence in western culture. If the failure of women in political leadership continues, & our culture becomes more influenced by the increasing Muslim population, we will see a steady change in rolls to something from the past. How far we go back will depend on how much we allow the politically correct attitude to take over our sense of self preservation.

Womens libbers should start taking action damn soon, or face major loss of status.

France understands this, & is taking steps to ban the burqa, & even the head scarves in schools. It is time we followed such sensible practice.

I can not believe the controversy about Muslim women drivers refusing to show their faces to police. It is unbelievable that any one with their vision so compromised as by wearing the burqa is allowed to drive a car, endangering all other road users. We obviously need our heads examined.

Joe, society is to us as we are to our atoms. They interact, each in their own way, and form compounds under the influence of the other atoms and atomic structures around them. Those structures are in turn the result of larger structures influence and the whole lot come together to form very complex structures which interact to form us.

It would be pointless trying to derive a model of how we work if the only thing you considered was the effect on atoms in our spleen. Yes, those things are important to know, but they don't tell anything about how the whole kit and kaboodle will behave.

A narrow focus on one group or one outcome is never going to lead to good results overall. Especially when we already know that the rest of the culture is evolved specifically to keep outsiders from doing just what you want to do.

A lot more thought and a lot less emotion is required. Feeling good about being good without having any idea about what being good meant is what made those bush communities so dysfunctional.

So it's just a metaphor, an analogy, Antiseptic ?

Quite an interesting observation, really.

Okay, now we can move on.

Joe

Yes Joe, it's an analogy. By using analogies we can compare situations that we encounter with things we already understand.

By rushing headlong, with no attempt to understand we can only make anything worse.

I've already suggested that trying to push a rigid society into some other form is going to cause more harm to the very people you claim to want to help. The atrocities have been a response to being pushed.

What is the most stupid aspect of all this is that educating the men is never mentioned, just as it's never mentioned here. The ideology is that if women are put in charge the men will go along, but that isn't what the evidence shows and in a place like Afghanistan the men don't get depressed and top themselves, they get angry and kill the women.

Stupid one-eyed do-goodery is never a way to approach solving a complex problem.