Joe, would you care to point out limitations? I'm finding it hard. It scales well.

As for the layering, that's already happening, as is the formation of new cultural seeds. The genesis of feminism was in 1930s US, when Betty Friedan was a young Jewish girl mixing with Marxists within a community isolated from the broader one. "she later wrote how she felt isolated from the community at times, and felt her "passion against injustice...originated from my feelings of the injustice of anti-Semitism"".

It was when another crack between layers opened up in the 1960s, with lots of free social energy to fuel interactions and lots of people free to move around as they pleased, outside of their peer groups that the seed started to attract others and a new culture emerged. We've seen what happened.

As for Europe, there are going to be upheavals everywhere. What "European societies" can do about it is limited, because there will be new cultural forces coalescing around seeds in many places that will keep growing and driving the layers further apart. A clay-like structure is malleable when the water of culture is enough to keep it plastic, but if that has been driven off by the heat released in social reactions like disorder then it is stiff and friable and can be broken up by the new structures growing in the cracks between layers.

Imposing order again means finding a way to mix the new structures with the old, or to dissolve them by removing them from the population that they are crystalising from.

It's happening here, too. The structure of the Labour movement is dissolving as the solution of workers that feed it is weakened and it is assimilating new structures as those workers that are left are mixed with new types, especially women professionals. The cracks between the layers are full of potential new cultural seeds.

I must try to work out some equations.

Antiseptic,

Worthwhile moving on to the social change models that take into account the complex human and natural factors affecting social change.

Some reading in sociology to go with the psychology you are interested in. Audio books available. Good stuff while trucking. Enjoy.

Politics and history too, that wouldn't go amiss, Antiseptic :)

Hi Pelican,

"Islam will eventually do the same."

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 ?

Back to topic - the Taliban brought it on themselves when they harbored al Qa'ida. The Yanks couldn't do otherwise than open doors for the women of Afghanistan and, right or wrong, I hope they stay and kick @rse until women are in a much stronger position. Until the culture of the country, and its social and political structure, has been transformed into something a little more civilized.

And, if the Yanks do leave, how many women can we take in ?

Joe

Loudmouth,

It's interesting to look at the situation involving Afghanistan and the expansion of educational opportunities for girls and women...after the Yanks moved in. In a difficult situation, headway has been made. whether the course can be maintained after the pull-out is the question.

I'm also interested in the changes made in Iraq courtesy of the Yanks "kicking @rse" on the subject of education. It seems that, with the exception of the years spanning the Iran/Iraq war, Iraq maintained very good educational standards - until the sanctions - and until the invasion.

So while the "Yanks" have been buusy attempting to improve opportunities for women in Afghanistan with varying degrees of success, in the case of Iraq they have acted to the detriment of girl's and women's education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iraq

The first paragraph says it all:

"UNESCO reports that prior to the first Gulf War in 1991 Iraq had one of the best educational performances in the region Primary School Gross Enrollment was 100% and literacy levels were high. Since that time education has suffered as a result of war, sanctions and instability."

Apparently much of the foreign aid that Afghanistan
receives goes to the military and issues such as
women's rights and education is not given any support.

According to the following link Australia should
make advancement of women's and girls' rights a key
component of its aid program for Afghanistan.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1752286/What-future-for-Afghan-girls-and-women

Hi Poirot,

As usual, I agree with you fully on Iraq - since there was no connection between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein, between Islamist terrorism and Arab-nationalism, thuggery as it may have been, there was no reason - at that time - for the US to invade Iraq. Perhaps in 1991 ;)

While we are waving red herrings at each other, one could also point out that, before the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran, women's rights and education was going gang-busters :) So, I take it, you would have supported the Shah over the Ayatollahs ? I certainly would have.

Back to Afghanistan and the predicament of women there - I'm glad that you are supporting the efforts of the Americans there to break down reactionary cultural barriers to the participation of women there in their society. We've got a hell of a long way to go, but we have to take progress wherever we can find it, I guess.

Thank you, Poirot.

Cheers :)

Joe