Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 9

He was right. On Thursday evenings, trucks brought home some of the miners who spent the whole week working in the coal-mines. The men unloaded their coal sacs from trucks (as part of their pay) and sometimes sold some of them. When the area linked to natural gas supply lines, the trucks, the coal-miners and the coal sacs became very rare, if at all. Once a river (Proto-indus River) flowed and drained into an ocean (Neo-Tethys Ocean) in this region. Plate Tectonics closed the ocean and changed the course of the river. Now, instead of the ocean, there is Katawaz Basin and instead of river, there is Sulaiman Mountain Chain. Indus river irrigates an estimated 45 million acres and supports an estimated population of 300 million people along its course. Textile and sugar industries of the area are dependent on the harvests of the lands irrigated by Indus river. While Sulaiman mountains are memorial headstones of the late Neo-Tethys Ocean, her sisters, Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and Black Sea are still breathing life. Other the coal-mines and natural gas, there is very limited agricultural activities, no industry and very sparse population (very limited business). And that’s not all the story. What the active microplates of the region have for the people of the area? We can only guess. In 1935, the Quetta city was destroyed in an earthquake and from time to time, the plates remind people of their existence. For now, Katawaz and Helmand Basins’ chief productions are terrorism and opium, but there is hope that sometime in near future, the potential oil and gas reserves of those basins reward the people with peace and prosperity (or possibly with further wars for those resources). 

“Whenever, I think about rationality, I immediately think of 2600 years long history of Buddhist teaching, 2400 years of familiarity with Greek rationale minds (Philosophers), 2000 years of Christian , 1400 years of Islamic schoolings and about five centuries since Renaissance, and still there are no agreements on very basic things associated with humans. On contrary, we do all agree on mainstream scientific findings. And I ask myself, why is so?” the teacher fixed his glasses. “I mentioned all those names just to remind you that humans weren’t short of well-structured-thinking-tools and those tools were available for at least two millennia….”

“Sorry to interrupt, I want to ask a question before I forget?” I interrupted.

“Lotfan (Please)” the teacher paused, extended his right arm with opened palm and face up. 

“When you mentioned the two millennia long availability of structured-thinking-tools…”

“Balay” the teacher nodded.

“...it struck me that the philosophies and sciences or what you call structured-thinking-tools improve by contributions of each generation, while each person has to learn them from start as no one inherits those tools by birth. And that means each coming generation has to spent more of their times to learn and specialize those improved tools….”

“I wanted to walk you there through familiar paths.” the teacher smiled. 

“You know, I have learnt the hard way that people do perform best in the areas they are more familiar with and if you change the circumstances, it significantly impact their performances. My aim, here is not to teach you something but answer your question of why I preach that it is time to rethink our culture and why I think the culture should focus on making people feel better about themselves…”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded.

“As you pointed out early,” he laughed, “people in each coming generation has to spend more time in learning. And as more better thinking-tools become available by each passing generation, I wanted to point out two things; one, When one learns something new, one is susceptible in making a lot of mistakes and two, the more sophisticated something is, the brain looks for more excuses to not learn it. And as you can figure out yourself, the learner is under triple pressures, to deal with embarrassments of mistakes, to constantly fight off the brains new excuses to stay on the track, and to be patient for longer time to get better off at things. The culture, we are currently practicing developed in times, when the lives were simple and the people had not to face these problems. Your generation is spending more time than ours and I expect the next generation will be under even more pressure…”

“You are right.” I couldn’t resist, not to jump in. “I constantly face the questions like,’ When I am going to finish my schooling and get started with real life from elders and I have difficulty explaining them why I am working and studying, and how studying is part of my work?”

“And those people think, if you aren’t making money full-time, you are missing something in your calculations, right?” he grinned. 

“Something like that.” I laughed.

“See, you have a perspective about continued work and study and there are some who disagree with you.It’s not just that the elders have difficulty agreeing with your perspective. They are just worried about you and want to be help you at the best of their knowledge. You can find plenty of people of your generation who have different life perspectives..”

“Balay Ustad.”

“That’s just an example of how humans don’t agree with each other. You are under pressure for something that the you parent’s generation had not to worry about.”

“By elders, I didn’t mean my parents, as neither of them asked me at any time to not pursue my dreams. Nonetheless, none of my parents went to school.” I explained.

“As your parents didn’t go to school, I guess, you had no home schooling?”

“No.”

“You children, like mine, might start learning at home even before their schooling age and you might teach them things that aren’t offered at school.”

“I think so.”

“You see, how the pressures and expectations sharply increase from one to another?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Unlike facts, mistakes are considered stupid things. By the way, have you heard that once a former US President named Reagan's famous misquote John Adam.”

“No.” I answered.

“‘Facts are stupid things.’ he said, instead of ‘Facts are stubborn things.’?” 

“That happens.” I smiled.

“The fact is, mistakes are considered stupid and in our culture, it is encouraged to keep score-boards of mistakes. To avoid mistakes, our brains prefer to walk on simple structured, designed or well-paved paths and that’s why cultures encourages conformity and we as consumers seek validation and whenever the circumstances change, we get scared and undergo intense pressure...” The teacher explained. 

“I got you.” I interrupted him, “In order to encourage learning new things and trying new things, you want the culture should go soft on conformity and mistakes, so the new generation do not feel over-pressured?”

A boy jumped out of a store converted to a carpet-weaving workplace, and ran down barefoot on the road. He held a carpet-weaver-latch. Two boys followed him. The smaller boys came out and stood next to the store to watch the race, and laughed. The two boys caught the escapee, put him on the ground. One of the boys side-headlocked the escapee and dragged him back towards the store, while the second boy kept kicking him in the butt. Passersby laughed.

“That was just a small demonstration of non-compliance.” the teacher shook his head. “That’s partially what I wanted to say.” He resumed the conversation. “In addition to that, I want to point two more things. At times, when people follow a particular trend, things are clearer and the pressures of mistakes are fewer but when people are confused, the pressures are doubled and an encouraging environment greatly reduces the concerns. Even more important than that is, that we live in a time, when creativity is gaining more importance, and creativity thrive in an environment where error and trial and nonconformity are considered normal things. I want to remind you again that our culture like most of cultures around world is evolved to favor classism. The existence of class is reality but there should be people to check it regularly so they don’t deface the people. If you remember, I asked you the first time, we met, if Eids make you feel better?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Unfortunately, our culture encourages us to keep a score-boards and race for higher scores that add to nothing. For example, if a young couple is marrying, both parties check other people’s scoreboards of spending, number of events and the exotic traditions and things they introduced and try their best to beat them, irrespective how much additional pressures those things might add to the new couple. The same thing is true about funerals, Eids, Ramadan, Muharram and other cultural things. That’s why, I call all those cultural activities as traditional-marketing-of-ego, not real culture….”

“Why culture is your prime focus instead of education system?” I thought that was a smart question to ask.

“I have come to conclusion that, very simple thing, such as, being open to positive criticism and to new possibilities play much larger role in making people more rational than just arranging classes of logic. There are vast variations in abilities of people to reason, still open-mindedness make people more inclined to go easy, when things they like conflict with reason. Again, let me repeat, people will not become open-minded just by preaching open-mindedness. People like to walk on familiar paths and as cultures provide a well-structured, very familiar paths or if you like very natural way that do not burden people with hard and dry thinking, the more open a culture becomes, the more people become open-minded...”

“Aren’t we already open-minded?” I interrupted again. 

Continued…

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 8

One of the ‘side-effects’ of talking to an older, more level-headed person is the loss of part of your enthusiasm. When the teacher reminded me that there was a super-creature called ‘reality’ who ruled ruthlessly over the world of actions, suddenly, like a ‘terrified cave-man’, I felt the presence of the invisible ‘super-creature’ everywhere. The super-creature tolerated thinking, imagining and believing whatever I wanted in the safety of my head but the moment, I expressed or put them into action, He took actions against the impractical ones. 

The teacher paused and narrowed his eyes.The wrinkles on the corners of his almond eyes and nose became more visible. Either he remembered something or struggled with some deep thoughts. I wanted to allow him some moments and looked around. Three teen boys sat on the front-step of the workshop adjacent to the flour store, whispered and giggled. It wasn’t appropriate to stand on the corner of street and talk like teen boys. But I didn’t want to invite him home, as I knew he would decline the offer and that would end our that day’s conversation. 

“What are you thinking about, Ustad?”

“Nothing important.” he fixed his glasses over his nose, something he did when he wanted to concentrate. “As you are a curious young man, I thought to share some of my observations…”

“Balay Ustad.”

“I don’t know if you have noticed an illusions that have become popular among our people….” I got alerted. I wanted to know, if I shared that illusion “...I met a number of people who recently adopted the surnames, like Changizi, Mongol, Ilkhani, Chughtai and like that. Choosing a name is a personal choice and I have no rights to object on that. What I want to point out is the mindset behind those names. They have developed this illusion that, unless a people don’t have a great history, they can’t become great people, or more precisely, unless, you don’t have a proud history, you can’t have a bright future. My problem with this mindset is that, it encourages to look at history the way we like it to be, instead it really was. You can’t force your liking on reality, instead, learn to like the reality. Titles, slogans, badges, etc only confuse our youths, nothing more. ”

“Balay Ustad.” I said in low voice. Actually, influenced by the trend, once I thought to adopt the surname Changizi but then after long conversations with my grand uncle, I abandoned the idea. My grand uncle had the similar views, that if you you weren’t cool with your situation and instead of earning pride, you wanted to borrow it, you were under strong influence of a delusion. 

“And I met people who believed unless, you get rid of your past and become from hair to toe, in and out, identical to a western person, you couldn’t be an enlightened person.They have this illusion that everything have already been worked out , and if we just follow the West, all our problems will be solved. Period. That’s exactly like the mindset of Salafists who believe, if Muslims implement the Islamic laws as they were practiced during Prophet and His caliphs, all their problems will be solved by themselves.The reality is that Science and Technology are common and work everywhere the same but when it comes to the human societies, each society has its own personality and has to go through its own developmental stages.If I expect all my students perform the same at my class because they get the same instructions, in the same environment, I will get disappointed by the results….”

In those days, I was an ultra-idealist person. I started thinking of a “possible” future utopian world that I called “elysium”. I thought, Science will continue to increase our understanding and technological advances will help us solve all the problems. There will no illness, no shortage of food, no psychological, social and economical problem and so on. Everyday I read news about new breakthroughs which solved this and that problem and they were all pointing to the possibility of the elysium. Besides, the pursuit of the Master degree gave me a sense of mastery of the world affairs and I had no doubt that my “prediction” will come true. Certainly, I will not be there to see the elysium but I could enjoy imagining it. Then, this teacher that I didn’t know anything about his educational background tore down my “elysium” by pointing the human element that was missing in my prediction. When the teacher said, each society has its own personality, I couldn’t help myself but to interrupt him, 

“Don’t you think, if people become increasingly rational, over time, they will come to similar conclusions and ultimately, they will become identical?” 

“What’s your field of study?” asked the teacher.

“Geology.” I replied.

“Good.” his face radiated with a warm smile “So you know the forces that drive the continental plates are the same all over the world, right?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded.

“But the history of Sulaiman mountain chains are different than the history of Ural mountains, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Okay, Genetic inheritance works the same all over the world, half of the chromosomes are inherited from mother and other half from father, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Then, why are we different from Indonesians, for example?”

“Our genes and Indonesians genes had different mutation histories.” Based on his previous arguments, I guessed the kind of answer he wanted to hear.

“Good.” he smiled and fixed his glasses again. “As genes carry information about our physical make-ups and determine the physical appearances and the diseases of next generations to a large extent, likewise, the cultures carry information about our ethics, values, fears, worldviews and things like that and they determine to a large extent the worldviews of the next generations. As different mutation histories result in different genetic makeups, similarly, different cultural mutations histories result in different cultural makeups….”

“But humans are rational animals and they can fix cultural practices that are stupid.” I interrupted.

“Of course, humans can change, and we both are exchanging views to recognize some of our stupidities.” he looked at his wrist watch.

“You must have some work or have to take your lunch or something?” he inquired.

“No, no, Ustad, I’m free afternoons.”

“OK, I very like to talk something about the relation of rationality to stupidity…”

Continued…. 

Part ; 7

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 7

He took a pause and looked at me. I guess, he wanted to make sure that I followed him. At least that was, how I felt. My feeling wasn’t baseless. It was a common habit of all the teachers that I encountered; when they had to explain something of importance, difficult or spoke for long, they paused and asked, if they were followed. 

“Interesting!” I replied.

We were close to our street. On the main road a large truck with all those showy decorations (my uncle called them shrines) blocked the road for vehicles. Only pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists could pass through the space between the truck and the wall. Two laborers unloaded the hundred kilograms sacs of flours off the truck on their backs. Usually, It took three of us (my father and two of his sons) to pull one of those flour sacks on a wheelbarrow from the store to home. The one who pulled the wheelbarrow definitely expected appreciation as if he had accomplished a difficult task. 

It was dismissal time of the schools (and the beginning of second shifts in some schools). The street was full of students. Some of the female students wore scarves, some dupatta, some shawls and some chadar. Male students dressed in traditional shalwar-kameez and some in pants and dress shirts. It was just another school day. Students walked in both directions, in groups, chattering and laughing. 

Our conversation hadn’t finished and I didn’t want to say goodbye to the teacher without knowing why he wanted a culture that helped people to feel better about themselves. We stopped at the street corner and continued our conversation.

“I highlighted some important historical events just to bring you where we both stand.” There wasn’t anything extra-ordinary about where we stood. Our town was a poor, neglected town in a poor, neglected province of a third world country that struggled with messy multi-level, local and regional conflicts. While even our houses hadn’t postal addresses, how could I believe that we were moving along the events of our time? I felt we were just following the trails that others had already walked. And our disagreements were on what trail take to reach a better place? 

“Have you noticed that most of the students wear dresses that are different from what their parents wear?

“That’s obvious. Parents aren’t expected to wear uniforms of their children?” I tried to crack a joke but the teacher didn’t laugh. That was a bad joke.

“Whenever I see all these different uniforms, they fill me with hope. Those uniforms represent different visions for the future. They remind me that the parents have many choices for education of their children and which school system will attract most students will depend on how their students will perform. It also shows the openness of our people….”

“But don’t you think that these variations may divide our people?” I interrupted.

“I understand your concern.” The teacher answered. “And you are not alone in that regard. Remember, I counted a number of recent failures just to illustrate that we live in uncertain times, and in uncertain times, it is not safe ‘to put all your eggs in one basket’. It is a tested prescription from ancient times, that the more diverse your assets are, the minimum is the risk of your losses. And our children our real assets. Aren’t they?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded. “I get your point about modern schools but what about religious institutions? Do you think, they still have usage in our time?”

He smiled. “Instead of yes or no answer, let me put your question in its context and then let you finalize the conclusion.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“ Have you heard this quote, “religion is the opium of masses”?”

“Yeah, I hear it frequently and I assume that it is a darling quote for some of my friends.” I laughed.

“Let me tell you this.” he adjusted his glasses. “Don’t think that I am a mullah or intend to replace mullahs....” and rubbed his “belly”. 

“I know that.” I interrupted to assure him that I believed him. In those times, it was a growing trend to look at religious people as stupids. To avoid the embarrassment of being considered as stupids, the learned individuals, either didn’t mention religion at all, or if they mentioned, they quickly clarified that they are not religious at all. Contrary to individuals who were filled with the air of intellect, the teacher didn’t exhibit any arrogance of understanding or intellect. He just behaved like a teacher, offered his shoulders for the curious ones to climb and see the other side of the walls, still, I wanted to assure him that I didn’t think of him as a “stupid” person.

“... Despite of my deepest desires to look at everything with pure reason, over time, I have learnt to distinguish between ideas that look reasonable and those that are actually practical. For example, in the months of Ramadan and Muharram, my friends remind me now and then, that ‘religion is the opium of masses’ and count all those money, time and skills wasted on those occasions that could otherwise go into building schools, hospitals, roads and other positive things. I do agree with them. One doesn’t need to be Socrates to agree with them. But then, I see the massive consumption of tea, coffee, cigarettes, snuffs, hookahs, opium, painkillers, hallucinogens, alcoholic beverages, and those are the list of things that I know. From time to time, I hear the names of new compounds that are even more potent, and like any other field, I can only expect for more dangerous stuffs…” he paused again to readjust his glasses. 

“Yes Ustad.” I nodded. Unlike our first conversation, this time, he was in mood of explaining things in detail and I wanted him to continue. 

“... And you know all those stuffs are consumed on such massive scales that an entire world of subcultures and dark economies have developed. In a realistic sense, that is the real “opium of masses...”.

“Yes Ustad.” I got his point. I wanted to ask if he was defending one “opium” against another but I let him finished his point. 

“....When I see the popularity of both religion and other stuffs as long back as I can track the history and across the cultures, I have no other choice but to conclude that, the masses need opium or even sometimes, I inclined to think, humans in general are addicted for need of some sort of addiction. You don’t allow them a “spiritual opium” or religions, they will turn to the “material opium”. 

“Ustad, In that sense, movies, songs and video-games (social media, esp, Facebook wasn’t that common in those days) are also opium of masses.”

“Oh, Yes. I forgot to mention them…” he laughed. “Again, my aim is not to favor one thing over another. I want to distinguish between practicality and reason.” 

“Balay (yes) Ustad. Balay Ustad.” I repeated to assure him that I followed him.

“You know, why I’m so obsessed with distinguishing between practicality and reasoning?”

“From your personal experience, I guess.” I threw a stone in the dark. 

“From witnessing the collapse of Soviet Union. For a large part of my youth, I believed the Soviet Union, with all her brilliant scientists, engineers, economists, social scientists, and public servants is the beacon of practical reasoning. But then, I witnessed her collapsing under the enormous weight of the plunders and scattering into daughter-states. Her daughter states are still struggling to come in terms with the realities of the wider world. I used to have a teacher who told us that engineers are the most logical people. If an engineer constructs a building of his liking and ignores reality, the reality will soon deconstruct his building into a lump of concrete, steel and glass. I don’t doubt that Soviets had the best engineers but they constructed a super-state of their liking ignoring the reality and as my teacher used to say, the reality deconstructed their darling super-state. Religious institutions have been part of our society for centuries and they are still standing and that indicate that they are still having some usage, otherwise, they were long deconstructed….”

“Ustad, but we also have seen the spread of hatred and destruction by the promotions of religious institutions?”

“That’s right. As I said, if you construct a building of your liking ignoring reality, the reality will deconstruct it. As you know better than me that, the States opposed Soviet Union worked as a together as a team for over two decades to turn the religious institutions from places of spiritual services to places of training and recruiting militants to counter the expansion of Soviet Union and the rival states. The ongoing war on terror is the biggest evidence that it was a very bad engineering, and the world has to pay the costs deconstruction and of fallout for a long time.” 2 

Continued…. 

Footnote,

2. Since, at the time of conversation, there was no sign of Arab Spring and the following Arab Winter, I have to add a footnote here. It seems, despite the earlier failures, there are some countries, for whom, turning religious institutions into factories of militancy are still more beneficial than the costs of resulting destruction. The benefits to costs ratio may be higher for now but as we have seen it in Pakistan, those rations will finally start to change, and they will have to pay the overdue costs of dealing with the destruction, the militants and the mindsets for a long time.

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 6

“Are you suggesting that human rights activists are modern saints?” I interrupted. 

When I asked a question, he nodded his head repeatedly , while maintaining a light smile. His humble gestures reduced the gapes of our ages and knowledge levels. 

“I am sure, you have heard the names of Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela?”

“I knew about the three others but Martin Luther King, I recently learnt about from a textbook on American Politics. I guess, very few people around here know him as I have never heard anyone speaking about him.”

“I know people around here consider Che Guevara a bigger saint than Mandela and some may even consider Gandhi as villain. “ he laughed. “For obvious reason. But I mentioned those four names as they are generally celebrated as some sort of saint across the globe. My point is though each of those personalities had different ideologies and struggled against different systems, they stood for equal rights and in an age, human rights were recognized globally, their struggles were considered noble and earned them special statuses…”1

“If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that in our time, human rights is virtue, not knowledge?”

“I am glad that you asked that question. Though the answer is very obvious, especially to a person like me who had suffered significantly from it....” I noticed the rush of blood in his face. “When I was at the same age as you are or probably a bit younger, I found myself torn apart between three systems of knowledge, each rejecting the validity of two others. The communists thought, they were the real representative of rationality and rejected libertarians as modern sophists who had narrow world-view that revolved around profits. Libertarians rejected communists as anti-intellectuals who wanted to punish talented individuals for their talents and spread stupidity. These two groups stressed that they are the real face of Science. And there were Mujahideen who stressed to bend all forms of knowledge to fit their Islamic worldview, as the words of God were the only true knowledge. The war of those three worldviews destroyed the world of our generation…” he took a long breath. “So you see, we are no more living in the world of Greeks, and like Greeks, we can’t propose, knowledge is virtue…”

“The Athenians punished Socrates to death, blaming him for misguiding the youths of Athens, and Taliban (students of madrassa) are killing people indiscriminately for what they consider misguided lifestyles.” I interrupted. 

“Unfortunately, that is true.”

I didn’t want to turn our conversation into talks about news (The news and talks about the news were taking over normal conversations. On TV, at homes, schools, stores, workplaces and roadsides, almost everywhere people talked news. I had developed “news-acid-reflux”. 

“I feel like, somehow, you believe, our culture should solace people. Am I right?”

“To a large extent, yes.”

“What made you to develop such tendencies?”

“May be I am a bit more inclined to link current trends to events that shaped them. I guess, that is how I was taught to see the world. Anyway, “amadam bar sari matlab” (farsi phrase: I returned to the point). In my opinion, soon after world war second, people were confused, distrusted traditional sources of identities and looked for alternatives. Philosophers, men and women of letters, artists and movie stars became very influential and the intellectuals gravitated towards introspection. People were open and readily accepted new ideas and were ready to experiment new things. The popularity of existentialism, deconstructionism, “skimmed-Buddhism” and hippie movements are few examples that demonstrated people’s changed moods. My understanding is that all of those movements failed to open up new ways and that’s why we see a trend of looking to Science for guide. The popularity of tech-products, sci-fi, star-wars and dystopia are the fallout of those failures. In East, people turned to the golden times in their relative histories and tried to reincarnate those golden societies. Islamism and nationalism spread throughout of the region and created the mess that we are currently “enjoying” their fruits in forms of the distrust, hatred and terrorist activities…”

Continued…..

Footnote 

At the time of conversation, I (and most probably the teacher) wasn’t familiar with the concept of social entrepreneurship and neo-Philanthropy. so I mention as footnote to this conversation. These are new trends that are creating new billionaire-saints. The tech-billionaires create investment organizations that invest in the startups or initiatives that have or supposedly to have vast social impacts. Although the moves are positive and they may some have good impacts (as they are able to pull vast resources and attract experts people), still institutional philanthropism will cost taxpayers more (as the significant tax savings of those institutions will have to be compensated by the taxes of lower income people, and as decision makers are few rich individuals instead of people's representatives, their benefits might be in places of particular choices.)

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 5

Perhaps, it was the lens of identity through which I like most had looked at our culture, as the “Afghan” teacher suggested. I was proud of it and anything said against it hurt my ego. At the first conversation, I realized that I loved the image of the culture (as my natural ID) more than the culture, and in practice, I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it. It allowed me to set aside my ego and rethink it. In the process, I faced the reality that I was pride of a collection of things and practices that had very little intellectual foundation. 

I used to go to the library of center of excellence in mineralogy after my classes to do some reading. It was the quietest part of the University and I barely came across another person there in days. That day, I got out of University soon after I finished my classes. By that time, Hazaras had been attacked several times by the terrorists, still, Saryab road and surrounded areas had not turned into a no-go-area for Hazaras yet, and instead of Sabzal road, I rode through backstreets to cut the travel time as well as to avoid the crazy drivers and their overloaded trucks. All the way, I rehearsed my questions. By the time, I arrived at Hussain Abad road, I had rehearsed my questions several times and I felt, I was ready to face the teacher. The feelings gave me shots of relaxation and confidence. I parked my bike next to a popcorn cart, bought a bag of freshly popped warm-creamy-salty popcorn and sat next to a watch vendor on the front-step of a store. The street was packed with people and there were plenty to not get bored. 

The town was new and rapidly expanding. It happened many times that someone inquired about a street or a neighborhood and I had no clue. The streets frequently changed names and no postal address was assigned to any house or any other building in the town. The streets of the town was already aged and worn out. Like a young overweight person, she struggled to go with everyday life. There was a clear division between the city and the sky that watched over her. While the city was deeply segregated and the government services were unequally “distributed”, the sky shared sunshine and polluted air equally to all the creatures. Like the people, the valley’s bedrocks were broken and wrenched by active faults and folds and had plenty of fossilized water. I worried about a time when the thick forest of the people gasp for fresh air and water like creatures of a drying pool. The absence of prominent buildings informed visitors that “important” persons didn’t consider the town worthy of themselves, and in a society obsessed with VIP culture, that simply meant, the resident of the town weren’t important at all. Though the town was very humble, she possessed the strange ability to provoke immense emotions. She charmed me with the abundant young faces who rushed from a school to another school and from one academy to another one. The broken streets between those schools and academies were the only paths left to hopeful tomorrows. And, she tormented my soul with visibly exhausted middle-aged and older men and women whose sunken eyes struggled to remain open under the load of worries. 

I saw the teacher coming. Only his age and relaxed walking differentiated him from students. 

“Salam Ustad.” I offered popcorn as I approached him. “Do you recognize me?”

“Salam.” he picked few popcorn. “Yes, yes, why not…. so, what we are discussing this time, politics, culture or something else?” he asked. I liked his style. He saved time by avoiding formal repetitive inquires about health, business, studies, family...blah, blah, blah… 

“What about an easy and practical definition of culture?” I suggested.

“Basha (OK), basha (OK)” he smiled. 

We walked for a while without talking. He maintained his light smile. “Do you agree that we all have unique set of habits, both healthy and unhealthy ones?” 

“That’s obvious!” I replied.

“Just as each individual has a set of unique habits, each society has a set of collective habits and that’s their culture.”

For a while, I couldn’t think of anything. I needed time to process the definition. I prepared and rehearsed some questions about cultural “features” and the processes that shaped them. The conversation took a different track than I anticipated from very beginning, nonetheless, I liked the explanation. It was definitely simple and practical. Still I needed something that I could call “intellectual”.

“Ustad, do you remember, the other day you asked me, if I feel better by participating in happy occasions like marriage parties and Eids?”

“Yes, yes, I remember…” he interrupted.

“Don’t you agree that the more knowledge a person gains, he grows more discontent with his situation?”

“For example?” he asked.

“Like, when I was a kid, everything seemed perfect and I enjoyed everything. As I grew up and learned more about our past and present, I became discontent with almost everything.” 

“In that sense, yes, I do agree.”

“You may also heard Socrates believed that, ‘Knowledge is virtue.”

“Yes. I know that…..”

“Then, Do you think, discomfort is also virtue?” I interrupted him. 

“Huh” he chuckled. “Before I express my opinion on the relation of knowledge and comfort to virtue, I want to tell you what I think about notion of virtue…”

“That’s fair.”

“My understanding is that the concept of virtue has considerably evolved. From code of Hammurabi to the time of Greeks and Romans, the concept of honor or an eye for an eye stood at the core of concept of virtue. If you was harmed and you couldn’t exact an revenge, you had no honor. The good warriors were celebrated as national heroes. The tribal societies of our region still stand on the same concept. You may have heard that a tribal chief proudly boasted his first killing at age of twelve in an interview . The Christians upgraded the concept of virtue by declaring that love and forgiveness is more virtuous than revenge. Saints gained higher ranking than warriors. Islam introduced the classes of virtues, Qisas (revenge), diyya (compensation money) and forgiveness. Islamic saints were good warriors as well as kind and merciful. In modern world, the nations have agreed on human rights, and now, human rights is a global virtue. My point is that the concept of virtue is not a fixed one. It is evolving, and so are the concepts of knowledge and comfort…”

Continued….