Anti-Pashtun article posted by tajiks

[Badlun]

Regarding the second statement, that is a return to your typical nonsense and non evidence based statement. That is like saying: The more Caucasian you are, the less racist you are... or the more Tamil you are, the less racist you are. Racism and bigotry have other biological bases that have nothing to do how Pashtun one is or is not. Take for instance Abdurrahman's butchery and the continued residual ethnic discontent due to his behavior.

Pashtun if not a religious bigot , is a warm and broad hearted individual with dance, music, folk lore, hospitality, fun, stories, songs, landay, charbetey, majlasuna, tombs with spiritual celebrations,hujra, mangey rabab, masti, some times chars/hasheesh/bhang/sharab(which I do not support), meals, fairs, spring and autumn celebrations and so on.

This is why the more you are Pashtun(practicing Pashtunwali), the less you will be a talib, terrorist, extremist and bigot. Solution to terrorism is more and more Pashtunwali or Pashtun nationalism.

[Toramana]

The issue with the bolded sentence is not their stance, but their chicanery and faux grief with the operation itself. To that extent, Shah Baz and Bannu Mazdigar are correct. They (ANP degenerate feces-human hybrids) operate according to the following algorithm:

As you said, they support and jockey for the operation in clear terms and make their support apparent to the key army players (irrespective of morality or immorality ---> Operation occurs ---> To satisfy their base they feign continued opposition to the Pak Army and point out a series of obvious errors in the operations that were going to occur in any case. (e.g. that the operation's announcement period of 24 to 48 hours gave time for militants to flee yet they decry the loss of civilian life which can only generally be spared with either Special Operation targeted raids or a warning to the populace to leave) ---> They demonstrate faux grief and talk about the displacement of FATA tribes as if they were originally against this.

I don't think ANP people are more crafty than you are. Here you are writhing in rage and frustration not for the love of Pashtuns but for sorrow over the potential constriction of space for your beloved Al-Qaueda associated terrorists. Kindly, don't feign as a well-wisher of Pashtuns. Every body can see through your chicanery and foxy pretensions.

Every body knows that as a crazy Al-Queda affiliated fanatic ideologue you are a rabies bitten Islamist to the core and wouldn't mind if all Pashtuns perish for the sake of the establishment of your Mullah-Omar and Osma Bin Laden type khilafath utopia.

In the least you take ownership and are consistent. They are far from that.

ANP did take the ownership in the case of Swat operation where your brethren in aqida were butchering common Pashtuns day and night, were cutting their throats, and hanging their bodies by the poles at khoni chawk(bloody chowk). If it were not for the sacrifices of ANP party members and courage of ANP leaders, your brethren in terror would still be doing the same things in Swat and Swat wouldn't be peaceful place now.

Regarding the second statement, that is a return to your typical nonsense and non evidence based statement. That is like saying: The more Caucasian you are, the less racist you are... or the more Tamil you are, the less racist you are. Racism and bigotry have other biological bases that have nothing to do how Pashtun one is or is not. Take for instance Abdurrahman's butchery and the continued residual ethnic discontent due to his behavior.

Obviously, you have forgotten how your brethren in terror the Taleb followers of Mullah Omar and Osma Bin Laden massacred common people in Hazarajat and in the north just because of difference of Aqida and ethnocentric inclination under the Islamist skin. Not only that, the bruts also banned all means of fun and common happiness and converted Afghanistan virtually into a graveyard especially for linguistic minorities/majority(?) of the north.

Amir Abdur Rahman Khan cannot be equated with nationalists. Even he was far better in comparison to your beloved Talebs. He at least brought some semblance of order and stability to Afghanistan although he also brutally killed people for his personal power. ANP or any nationalist has yet to do what your brand in the whole Islmaic World has been doing. The acts of your brethren in aqida, i.e., the Islalmists of ISIS are an example.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Pashtun if not a religious bigot , is a warm and broad hearted individual with dance, music, folk lore, hospitality, fun, stories, songs, landay, charbetey, majlasuna, tombs with spiritual celebrations,hujra, mangey rabab, masti, some times chars/hasheesh/bhang/sharab(which I do not support), meals, fairs, spring and autumn celebrations and so on.

This is why the more you are Pashtun(practicing Pashtunwali), the less you will be a talib, terrorist, extremist and bigot. Solution to terrorism is more and more Pashtunwali or Pashtun nationalism.

Once again, this is an idealist view steeped in lore and not in evidence. There are Pashtuns without an ounce of religion that used to initiate and respond to blood disputes, there are pashtuns who to this day have no ounce of religion but practice swara etc.

You would do well to generate evidence and numbers to validate your supposed correlation.

That being said, there are Pashtuns par excellence in history who did none of things you mention but are considered ideal Pashtuns (e.g. Khattak writing against Roshanite heresy, Abdali, etc.).

Rather, this is the image you choose to mold Pashtuns into based on some Elphinstonian stereotype.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

I don't think ANP people are more crafty than you are.

If by crafty you mean intelligent and not fork tongued then yes.

Here you are writhing in rage and frustration not for the love of Pashtuns but for sorrow over the potential constriction of space for your beloved Al-Qaueda associated terrorists.

Dont be stupid. You know as well as I that this is a game of hungry hungry hippos and whack a mole. At this point, thanks to the idiotic siren song you and your sick minded prostitutesque ilk sang to the Kharij to get him to intervene on your behalf not just once, but rather twice, that movement has metastasized the world over needing not one single hide out but being legion like.

Kindly, don't feign as a well-wisher of Pashtuns. Every body can see through your chicanery and foxy pretensions.

Coming from a one that pertended not to advocate a full on frontal assault that would generate IDPs but is now bitching like a dog in heat over the issue for show? In the word's of your favorite Anglo influenced writers "Thats rich."

Every body knows that as a crazy Al-Queda affiliated fanatic ideologue you are a rabies bitten Islamist to the core and wouldn't mind if all Pashtuns perish for the sake of the establishment of your Mullah-Omar and Osma Bin Laden type khilafath utopia.

Nice try. In your world, stating the obvious based on evidence results in such labels. I wonder how you incorporate the Ron Pauls and Michael Scheuers who have generate evidences and theories that run in complete contradiction to your idiotic meanderings and theories? Are they sleeper agents? Grow a brain and talk some evidence and sense instead of your usual tired decrepit Soviet Era propaganda.





ANP did take the ownership in the case of Swat operation where your brethren in aqida were butchering common Pashtuns day and night, were cutting their throats, and hanging their bodies by the poles at khoni chawk(bloody chowk).

And I assume they also take ownership of the mass of evidences of abuse conducted by Pakistani regulars on the populace as well? The very fact that you had your kelptocrat (Afzal Khan Bibi) skimming resources and creating the ripe enviroment for the shariat courts to take over in the first place is proof enough of how idiotic your points are.

If it were not for the sacrifices of ANP party members and courage of ANP leaders, your brethren in terror would still be doing the same things in Swat and Swat wouldn't be peaceful place now.

In the words of Tacitus: "The Romans Created a desolation and called it peace."

In common sense words, your foolish approach merely created and then expanded the problem, not solved it

Obviously, you have forgotten how your brethren in terror the Taleb followers of Mullah Omar and Osma Bin Laden massacred common people in Hazarajat and in the north just because of difference of Aqida and ethnocentric inclination under the Islamist skin.

The lady doth protest too much me thinks. This coming from the PF propagandist for those excrement that pass as human beings known as Miss Anderson, ScrewBall Taqi, Kadhim Hussein, and the like? All derived from supposedly oppressed minorities who use their tactics to have others fight their battles for them? Thank goodness larger media networks have caught on to your subterfuge and general propensity to even lie to advance your causes:

This must really get you red hot when you see this:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/06/2011613931606455.html

Look at your girl friend Miss Anderson's retardedness (I would hope this is the case) versus extreme malignant and blatant misinformation:

As a matter of fact, the only known survey "on the ground in FATA" at the time was carried out by a "letterhead organisation" named the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy whose conclusions can fairly be described as deeply unreliable and dubious. It claimed that 55 per cent of respondents in a survey it carried out in "parts of FATA that are often hit by American drones" (among which it curiously included Parachinar, which has never been hit and whose overwhelmingly Shia population is deeply hostile to the virulently anti-Shia Taliban) did not think that the attacks caused "fear and terror in the common people"; 52 per cent found them "accurate in their strikes"; and 58 per cent did not think they increased anti-Americanism.

Not only that, the bruts also banned all means of fun and common happiness and converted Afghanistan virtually into a graveyard especially for linguistic minorities/majority(?) of the north.

Quit reinventing the argument over whether Pashtuns are a minority or not. That is a dead horse that you are trying to win swan song points over.

Amir Abdur Rahman Khan cannot be equated with nationalists. Even he was far better in comparison to your beloved Talebs. He at least brought some semblance of order and stability to Afghanistan although he also brutally killed people for his personal power. ANP or any nationalist has yet to do what your brand in the whole Islmaic World has been doing.

ANP lacks what the Al Pacino calls "cajones" or testicles my friend. They prefer to generate a whisper campaign in the manner of some rumor mill Dear Abby style house wife so that the real men can do their killing for them. Case in point when you and Khadim and Anderson and Ziauddin and others coordinated that miserable failure of an organization so as to generate as many mistruths and lies as possible... only to fail:

The survey (AIRRA) got much play in the media, quoted among others in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Its conclusions were found particularly agreeable by proponents of drone escalation and the label of an "institute" gave them an ostensibly academic pedigree. Few wondered why the survey's claims were so at odds with known public opinion in the wider region where, according to a Gallup/Al Jazeera poll conducted around the same period, only nine per cent of people showed support for the drone attacks. Those who did wonder, such as the journalists I spoke to in Peshawar, were universally dismissive. But the Institute had served its purpose and, typical of many LHOs, it vanished after a year (Web Archive shows that its website only existed between 2008-2009).

The acts of your brethren in aqida, i.e., the Islalmists of ISIS are an example.

Save your seizure induced drivel for people who are foolish enough to acknowledge your garbage that passes as evidence based opinion (a paradox).

You may call Badlun an agent of the imperials, but at least he is up front and honest and consistent. If he thinks FATA needs boots on the ground at the cost of some lives lost, he says it and backs and stands by it. You and ANP on the other hand prostituted yourselves out to the losers on Moscow a generation ago and tried to prostitute yourselves out to Graham and McCain more recently and God knows who and what intellectual red light district your ilk will visit next.

[Toramana]

Save your seizure induced drivel for people who are foolish enough to acknowledge your garbage that passes as evidence based opinion (a paradox).

You may call Badlun an agent of the imperials, but at least he is up front and honest and consistent. If he thinks FATA needs boots on the ground at the cost of some lives lost, he says it and backs and stands by it. You and ANP on the other hand prostituted yourselves out to the losers on Moscow a generation ago and tried to prostitute yourselves out to Graham and McCain more recently and God knows who and what intellectual red light district your ilk will visit next.

Yes, as if you guys have not prostituted yourself out to CIA, US, even Israel not to mention the Arab petro-gods like Khadimul Harmain Sharifain and the lustful Shiekh Zaid Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan during the Afghan Jehad/fasad---and later to Abdullah Aazam and Shiekh Osama. Looking at the aqida of Jehadis, they even might be willing to serve the "hareems" of Arab gods.

But what can one expect from a de-humanized being whose soul is devoid of any shred of human empathy and is only filled with an insane barbaric fanatic utopia of the establishing Shiekh Osama's Khalafath.

Rest, I still am in favour of military action against the terrorist provided the action is conclusive, effective, targeted, transparent, and causes the least trouble for local population.

You on the other hand under the guise of sympathy for Pashtuns are carrying out a propaganda for Pan-Islamist Al-Qauead affiliated Jehadis who you think may find space limited for them due to the operation.

[Kushan Prince]

I actually thought people would disown this garbage but instead, they are praising it! wtf?

And they attack Pashtun nationalists for no reason as if they have the time and energy to make demeaning articles about tajiks. Reading through these comments have made me come to conclusion that Pashtuns on here are total beghirats which is i have lost hope in the pashtun disapora. We are too nice and minorities use that as an advantage to mock and ridicule us.

I'm done here folks, no need to comment on this thread any further.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Yes, as if you guys have not prostituted yourself out to CIA, US, even Israel not to mention the Arab petro-gods like Khadimul Harmain Sharifain and the lustful Shiekh Zaid Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan during the Afghan Jehad/fasad--

Nice try- the whole world over saw the masses flux across the border because of your red army pimp masters. You can generate your idiotic and stupid conspiracy theories for the next century and it still cannot erase the fact that your policies were disasterous and that the masses found your conclusions repungnant.

Now with respect to those that "prostituted themselves out to the CIA" even they have, as I mentioned, cajones, since they fought their own battles face to face with your aforementioned red army pimp masters. Whats to explain the skirts you people have hid behind for nearly 4 decades of instigating violent intervention and violence all around the Pashtun lands while spinning your nonsense about Islamic imperialism that has yet to gain any traction amongst the average Pashtun?

-and later to Abdullah Aazam and Shiekh Osama. Looking at the aqida of Jehadis, they even might be willing to serve the "hareems" of Arab gods.

But what can one expect from a de-humanized being whose soul is devoid of any shred of human empathy and is only filled with an insane barbaric fanatic utopia of the establishing Shiekh Osama's Khalafath.

Once again, read Scheuer and the evidence, Caliphate was far far away in the minds of these people who had to deal with the fall out of your disasterous mischief mongering, deciding whether you wanted to lay with the slavs or bend over for the Brits, whether you wanted to be marxists or whether you thought capitalism was the way, the light, and truth

Rest, I still am in favour of military action against the terrorist provided the action is conclusive, effective, targeted, transparent, and causes the least trouble for local population.

Took a while, but your mental constipation finally lapsed so that you could exrete an iota of truth. Yes, you are in favor of the Pakistani military action knowing full well that it will not be conclusive, it will not be effective, not be targeted except such that whichever civilian is killed will be called a target, will in no way be transparent as reporters are not allowed, and has displaced the whole local population. Quit speaking out of both sides of your mouth like those lying sacks of human maneuer friends of yours, Thaqi the Mongolaid, Khadim the Hypocrite, and Taj Andersen the proven liar.

Just stick to the sentence in red and stop the showmanship of pertending you are somehow different, better, or morally on a higher level than Bannu or Shahbaz. Their goals are hardly hidden behind agendas, riddled with fabrications, and so on and so forth as yours.

You on the other hand under the guise of sympathy for Pashtuns are carrying out a propaganda for Pan-Islamist Al-Qauead affiliated Jehadis who you think may find space limited for them due to the operation.

Nice try since every report I posted high lights the plight of specific named civilians. The only one with sympathy for those aforementioned folks are mental retards like you who push for policies that will ensure further radicalization instead of improving the human condition.

x

[Herat]

Great read but one must differentiate natural sciences or physical sciences from social sciences. Natural sciences are totally based on verifiable facts and data while social sciences like Economics or Sociology or Political science can have subjectivity, bias and partisanship although not to the extent of religion.

When we talk of Science, generally we mean Natural sciences or biological sciences or physical sciences which deal with matter, senses, observation and experiments. Psychology has interesting position as it deals with mind and behavior not matter as such. Politics, society, economy etc do not fall in the category of matter.

I agree that one should adopt factual and realistic scientific approach with objectivity and verifiability even towards non material stuff like politics and society and this way we do not have articles like the one written above on the so called fascism of Pashtuns and Afghan Millat Party.

That Badlun sahab (your suggestion that the social sciences are out of the domain of the natural sciences), which Robert Trivers complains about repeatedly in his analysis of the social sciences, is the primary reason for why the social sciences remain in the stagnant state that they currently are (tough that is changing). You see, creationism isn't just limited to religious fundamentalists; there is another, a very little known by the public but in reality more insidious, variety of creationism: this is what the evolutionary psychologists call the "standard social science model"; Steven Pinker calls it the "Blank slate doctrine" by the name of which he has written an excellent book on, and what has long since been known in the philosophy community as "social constructionism". Like the religious fundamentalists, these guys (who dominate the zeitgeist of the social sciences tough their reign is now coming to an end) essentially believe that homo sapiens exists outside the domain of biology (well they do accept evolution for the body but it is heresy if you speak of it in relation to human behaviour).

Now to moderate all of this, and to pre-empt the typical knee-jerk straw-man of "biological determinism" that it arouses, let me clarify what I mean with an analogy from Physics. In Nuclear Physics, there is a phenomenon called radioactive decay: this is the process by which an unstable nucleus loses mass-energy by emitting radiation. The phenomenon is random (or more accurately stochastic) in that it is impossible to predict when a single unstable nucleus will decay and this isn't just because of the limitations of measurement, it in fact follows from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and most Physicists subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics which holds that uncertainty is literally intrinsic to the physical world and isn't just caused by the limitations of measurement and observer. Nevertheless, characteristic decay rates exist, that is, a large population of a given nuclei decay consistently over time at particular rates (decay per unit time). Yet, returning to Quantum Mechanics, there is in fact no such thing as a deterministic event even in the physical world of atoms, the ball falls to the ground instead of unexpectedly disintegrating simply because the probability of that happening is virtually infinitesimal, but it is not zero and that is of profound philosophical significance. The Physicists long ago also succeeded in surmounting that other obstacle relevant to the social sciences: complexity. You see, at the molecular level, you have billions of atoms even in a small container of simple gas and all of these interact in many ways so that predicting the physical behaviour of even one molecule is hopeless. However, you can analyze the statistical patterns in the behaviours of molecules and this is what the subfield of statistical mechanics (which forms the basis for thermodynamics) is all about: statistical mechanics amazingly, starting out with just a few principles and statistical theory, derived many of the results of thermodynamics that the Physicists/Chemists had come to via experimental techniques. Thus we see that order can emerge even from inherently uncertain and complex phenomena at the population/statistical level.

Human behaviour, if it is even slightly constrained by biology, is essentially a similar matter. It is obviously impossible to predict the behaviour of an individual human being, no matter how much information we may have about him. That does not, however, imply that emergent statistical properties of human behaviour do not exist. Give me a man and I can tell you nothing about him but give me a population of human beings and I can tell you much about it, many such properties are obvious: for example, the fact that parents (the existence of abusive or even murderous parents notwithstanding) tend to deeply care about their offspring. This isn't just some cultural or random thing either, it is a psychological phenomenon rooted in the neurophysiology of the brain and follows directly from evolutionary theory (kin selection theory). We have already went far beyond simple generalizations such as this: Robert Triver's parental investment theory explains a ton of things that the social sciences have failed to address scientifically, from parental affection to the fact that males predominate as leaders (one of the reasons that follows from PIT is the fact that males are significantly more concerned with obtaining social status than are females).

Historically, after Newton, Physics literally exploded in activity and progress but the event for Chemistry and Biology was delayed by more than a century, why is that? I believe most of the answer has to do with what the great Physicist Eugene Wigner famously called "the unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences". Mathematics is the science of abstract patterns and Physics is the science of patterns in the real, physical world but you see, it was only after Newton (who invented the Calculus and thereby took the Mathematization of Physics to a whole new level) that Mathematics truly became the language of Physics and this historical development produced a whole new form of productive theorizing by equipping Physics with a natural language. Chemistry and Biology, on the other hand, required sufficient technological advance (and the ensuing key experimental discoveries) before they could truly take flight. The human brain, which mediates human behaviour, is a product of evolution, so what do you think ought to be the natural language for any science of human behaviour? The answer is evolutionary theory and indeed, there is a current revolution going on in our day, in analogy with the Mathematization of Physics: this is the appropriation of evolutionary theory by the social sciences. From evolutionary psychology to behavioural and evolutionary economics, the social sciences are now employing the language of evolutionary theory. This revolution has been met with fierce resistance by the secular creationists described in the first paragraph but I believe there are 3 strong signs that the revolution will be a success:

1. Evolutionary approaches to the social sciences (e.g. evolutionary psychology) are not being sent to the grave as is the fate of pseudoscience (e.g. psychoanalysis) but, like real scientific frameworks, are merely being refined in the light of experiment and genuine criticism as time has gone on. For example, the massive modularity hypothesis of evolutionary psychology is probably wrong as developments in the cognitive sciences are making clear but in response, new approaches are emerging that incorporate domain general cognitive mechanisms as well as successful cultural frameworks (e.g. dual inheritance theory). More importantly, unlike pseudoscience like psychoanalysis, these approaches are all experimental in the sense that they follow the statistical experimental methods of the physical sciences in accordance with the scientific method and not the drug-induced intellectual fantasies of Sigmund Freud.

2. The politically motivated academic left, once the main brand of secular creationism, is now increasingly starting to co-opt evolution for itself and surprisingly without too much reorganization of values to accommodate it; a good thinker I read is Peter Singer (author of "A Darwinian Left"). Another trend seems to be that disillusioned Marxist academics typically turn to evolutionary theory to understand the world. My favourite examples are Pierre Van den Berghe (the disillusioned Marxist who went on to produce the classic work on ethnocentrism from an evolutionary perspective, "The Ethnic Phenomenon") and Herbert Gintis (the disillusioned Marxist who has gone on to become one of the more prominent of the evolutionary economists); these two thinkers both remain leftists but have simply abandoned the dead end of Marxism in favour of evolutionary theory in their work as social scientists.

3. The nature vs nurture wars are coming to an end to a middle ground with theory, reflecting the now overwhelming evidence, reorganizing itself to accommodate that settled fact. The verdict is out (notwithstanding a few academic maniacs and unfortunately, public discourse): both nature and nurture are about equally important to human behaviour and the former can only be explained using evolutionary theory. There is even a new scientific field of study, behavioural genetics, dedicated to the genetic influences on behaviour.

In sum Badlun my friend, I believe that the social sciences can at least come close to the standard of the physical science of statistical mechanics once they are grounded in the actual scientific theory of human nature (evolutionary theory)

[Badlun]

Herat

I am amazed that we have such a great member like you here on PF. Although World cup first semi final is a few minutes away and I have to rush to watch it but still I am captivated by your such a great post. I ahve read it many times and really appreciate it.

Evolutionary theory is great but I am afraid man invented machine and because of such patterns of thought, man may become machine itself. For Plato idea(archetype) was reality while Aristotle was thinking the other way round. For Freud sex was reality while for Marx matter was everything. Kant was for intention while William James was for consequences and pragmatism.I wish we could evolve one theory which give a balanced approach to reality.

Where is the place of emotions, love, fear, hatred, beauty, compassion, feelings, sentiments, sensations, empathy, antipathy, sympathy, greed, ambition, self actualization, law of attraction, spirituality, meditaion, intuition, direct experience, instinct and selfless sacrifices in the world of evolutionary theory?

Why we try to explain human behavior with mechanics and materialistic theories. Why we do not differentiate human from matter? Otherwise life will be very boring. monotonic and mechanical as we see it in countries like Germany. I love the life on the Island of the sun or on Isla bonita not in the shopping center of Toronto.

[Herat]

Badlun, dear friend, it is ironic that you mention Philosophers and broach the need for consilience (the unity of knowledge); let me introduce you to a personal hero of mine, who was of a similar heart to you in this respect, the Philosopher who enticed me into the depths of that wonderful subject with his very famous ( in fact the most successful popular philosophy book in history) introductory philosophy outline, "The Story of Philosophy", which I do recommend to all readers. Will Durant was a man who thought like a logician but who wrote like a poet, that is in my opinion the quintessential feature of great philosophers and no philosopher, as far as I am read, embodied the trait better than Will Durant. Let me quote a bit from the introduction of the Story of Philosophy:

My publishers have asked me to use the occasion given by a new edition of The Story of Philosophy to discuss the general question of "outlines," and to consider some of the shortcomings of the volume. I am glad of this opportunity to acknowledge these, and to express with all the weakness of mere words the gratitude that I must always feel for the generosity with which, despite so many defects, the American public has received this book.

The "outlines" came because a million voices called for them. Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions of years, where men before had thought in terms of thousands; physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a microcosm in the cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible mystery in every organ, and psychology in every dream; anthropology reconstructed the unsuspected antiquity of man, archaeology unearthed buried cities and forgotten states, history proved all history false, and painted a canvas which only a Spengler or an Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole; theology crumbled, and political theory cracked; invention complicated life and war, and economic creeds overturned governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture of the good, found its task of coordination too stupendous for its courage, ran away from all these battlefronts of truth, and hid itself in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and responsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too great for the human mind.

All that remained was the scientific specialist, who knew "more and more about less and less'" and the philosophical speculator, who knew less and less about more and more. The specialist put on blinders in order to shut out from his vision all the world but one little spot, to which he glued his nose. Perspective was lost. "Facts" replaced understanding; and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated wisdom. Every science, and every branch of philosophy, developed a technical terminology intelligible only to its exclusive devotees; as men learned more about the world, they found themselves ever less capable of expressing to their educated fellow-men what it was that they had learned. The gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those who governed could not understand those who thought, and those who wanted to know could not understand those who knew. In the midst of unprecedented learning popular ignorance flourished, and chose its exemplars to rule the great cities of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as never before, new religions were born every day, and old superstitions recaptured the ground they had lost. The common man found himself forced to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible pessimism, and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hopes.

In this situation the function of the professional teacher was clear. It should have been to mediate between the specialist and the nation; to learn the specialist's language, as the specialist had learned nature's, in order to break down the barriers between knowledge and need, and find for new truths old terms that all literate people might understand. For if knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worshiping at a respectful distance its new priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon a technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology. No wonder that all the world applauded when James Harvey Robinson sounded the call for the removal of these barriers and the humanization of modern knowledge.

Will Durant tasked philosophy with the duty of coordinating and unifying knowledge but I respectfully disagree with him. I think the old definition of the subject "the love of wisdom" is a better description of its task. It is the duty of science to describe the real world around us as it is but it is the duty of philosophy (and religion) to tell us how it ought to be; we human beings are not entirely chained by our nature and therein lies the meaning of life, that is, the need for philosophy and religion.

Two things unify the physical sciences: mathematics and the scientific method; these are the two languages with which the physical sciences are expressed. The social sciences, especially the more successful ones such as economics, have successfully adopted these two languages but they are missing a key piece of the puzzle for they cannot converse in the language that describes the real behaviour of man, they do not speak the language of evolutionary theory (yet). In economics, the prevailing model of human behaviour is rational choice theory: "homo economicus" is a selfish, completely rational actor who always acts in ways as to maximize "utility". But "homo economicus" is wrong, for homo sapiens, as described by evolutionary theory, is neither completely selfish nor rational but a mosaic of selfish, rational, irrational and altruistic.

You also seem to be under the impression -and I do not blame you for it is the popular impression- that evolutionary theory is all about "survival of the fittest", in fact evolutionary theory has now explained cooperative and altruistic behaviour and may even be used to inform the universal human goal of increasing moral and cooperative behaviour. Here is how my favourite evolutionary economist, Herbert Gintis, described his interpretation of evolutionary theory (which I happen to mostly agree with) as opposed to the reigning paradigm of "homo economicus" in economics which frankly lends support to immoral behaviour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pS2LthVoac

Finally, John Dewey once remarked that Will Durant did not popularise Philosophy but humanized and I say: David Sloan Wilson has not popularised but humanized evolutionary theory. To accompany the "Story of Philosophy" let me introduce to you the equivalent for the third language of the social sciences "Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives". This is the book that turned me into an evolutionist and which gave me the motivation to teach myself undergraduate evolutionary biology.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change/dp/0385340923/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404859369&sr=8-1&keywords=evolution+for+everyone

[Badlun]

I have read Will Durant book. It is really a great book. However I like the definition of Philosophy as the search of ultimate reality through rational methods, not its etymological definition of love for wisdom. As wisdom cannnot be always Philosophy. An illiterate man in a village can be wiser than some one PhD in Philosophy.

Why not we adopt different ways to reality. As I always say that I divide Reality in 4 dimensions.

1. Nature and the way is senses+observation+experiment and the subject is Science while the product is technology and material well being.Some times negative products can be like atom bombs.

2. Mind/Reason , the way is thinking, logic , the subject is Philosophy and the product is metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, ontology etc. Negative product can be over rationalizations, more theory than practice, mind boggling ideas, craziness etc.

3. Consciousness and Intuition, the way is Mysticism, Spiritualism, Sufism, direct experiences, love, devotion, self Realization, God realization,telepathy, hypnotism, meditation, yoga, zen, tantra etc, Subject is all Spiritual and Para -Psychological sciences. Product is spiritual well being, peace of mind, no stress, self actualization, mindlessness, humanism etc. Negative products can be superstitions, inhuman sacrifices, cheating, quakes etc.

4. Religion ,the way is Revelation(from a God or gods) , prophet-hood, subject is theology or religious sciences or holy books and the product is morality, worship, beliefs, faith. Religion or its misuse may have negative products like holy wars, crusades, terrorism, sectarianism, bigotry, superstitions etc.

I am of the opinion that we may not mix or supersede these 4. One cannot replace the other. For material well being we need science not religion or mysticism or Philosophy. Similarly for God we need Religion not science. Astronomy can study stars but God is more related to morality or faith than stars or celestial bodies. For each of the 4 destinations we have to adopt the path leading to it not for example finding God by science or stars by God. These paths are parallel not parts of one line.

Why we adopt only one way of Science? Why not also those of religion, philosophy and Intuition?

[Herat]

I have read Will Durant book. It is really a great book. However I like the definition of Philosophy as the search of ultimate reality through rational methods, not its etymological definition of love for wisdom. As wisdom cannnot be always Philosophy. An illiterate man in a village can be wiser than some one PhD in Philosophy.

Why not we adopt different ways to reality. As I always say that I divide Reality in 4 dimensions.

1. Nature and the way is senses+observation+experiment and the subject is Science while the product is technology and material well being.Some times negative products can be like atom bombs.

2. Mind/Reason , the way is thinking, logic , the subject is Philosophy and the product is metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, ontology etc. Negative product can be over rationalizations, more theory than practice, mind boggling ideas, craziness etc.

3. Consciousness and Intuition, the way is Mysticism, Spiritualism, Sufism, direct experiences, love, devotion, self Realization, God realization,telepathy, hypnotism, meditation, yoga, zen, tantra etc, Subject is all Spiritual and Para -Psychological sciences. Product is spiritual well being, peace of mind, no stress, self actualization, mindlessness, humanism etc. Negative products can be superstitions, inhuman sacrifices, cheating, quakes etc.

4. Religion ,the way is Revelation(from a God or gods) , prophet-hood, subject is theology or religious sciences or holy books and the product is morality, worship, beliefs, faith. Religion or its misuse may have negative products like holy wars, crusades, terrorism, sectarianism, bigotry, superstitions etc.

I am of the opinion that we may not mix or supersede these 4. One cannot replace the other. For material well being we need science not religion or mysticism or Philosophy. Similarly for God we need Religion not science. Astronomy can study stars but God is more related to morality or faith than stars or celestial bodies. For each of the 4 destinations we have to adopt the path leading to it not for example finding God by science or stars by God. These paths are parallel not parts of one line.

Why we adopt only one way of Science? Why not also those of religion, philosophy and Intuition?

Badlun sahab, when I first left Islam some years ago, for a time I found solace in the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Taoism, before my conversion to scientific materialism, but I suspect that in my old age, I will revert to idealistic Buddhism once more. I have no qualms with your system at all, my problem is with the religious and spiritual charlatans who think that their religions and philosophies have anything factual to say about the real world as it is. As I said before, science only has supreme authority in investigating what is, not what ought to be (this is David Hume's famous distinction); in the domain of the later, science is but one piece of the ingredient of the recipe, which I do believe should include philosophy, "intuition", and religion. I do not think we have a disagreement here.

[Badlun]

Badlun sahab, when I first left Islam some years ago, for a time I found solace in the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Taoism, before my conversion to scientific materialism, but I suspect that in my old age, I will revert to idealistic Buddhism once more. I have no qualms with your system at all, my problem is with the religious and spiritual charlatans who think that their religions and philosophies have anything factual to say about the real world as it is. As I said before, science only has supreme authority in investigating what is, not what ought to be (this is David Hume's famous distinction); in the domain of the later, science is but one piece of the ingredient of the recipe, which I do believe should include philosophy, "intuition", and religion. I do not think we have a disagreement here.

My very dear friend. I would love to see you some times in real life.

In search or research of truth and reality we all go through different stages. I remember that in my college days I used to talk to a friend hours and hours to convince him that there is a God, Muhamamd is the prophet, Islam is a complete code of life and Quran and hadith are the only truth. He was student of Philosophy and English Literature and would not agree with me. He was almost an atheist. Now he lives in London and he is the one who took my place as now he is a fundamentalist and a Wahabi.

I have gone through the stage of comparative study of religions. Have remained a typical Talib in a madrassa for 4 years in my childhood. I have studied all basic books of Fiqa, sarf wa nahwa, Persian literature, Mantiq, books of Hadith and Quran with Pashto translation. I speak and understand Arabic upto much extent but one man Osho changed my life and now I know the difference of religiosity and religion.

I like philosophy but that of Durant. I am a pro life person . Every thing positive is good. Consequences is the touchstone for good and bad. Moderation or the golden mean is the best way. I follow Islam only in faith, worship and morality nothing beyond that. I love Sufi or Ismaeli or esoteric Islam. I love science for its contribution and with you now I am learning how science can also contribute to your life style, thought, world's view and a better life.

[IcancryifIwantto]

Damn... so much hate be spewing over Afghan Mellats... they ain't that bad of people.

Most Pashtoons speak multiple languages... I mean if you wanna up your game you gotta speak at-least both Pashto and Farsi.... if you just speak farsi you maybe a successful intellectual but you aint gona be no successful politician. You mad bro? lol

[Herat]

My very dear friend. I would love to see you some times in real life.

In search or research of truth and reality we all go through different stages. I remember that in my college days I used to talk to a friend hours and hours to convince him that there is a God, Muhamamd is the prophet, Islam is a complete code of life and Quran and hadith are the only truth. He was student of Philosophy and English Literature and would not agree with me. He was almost an atheist. Now he lives in London and he is the one who took my place as now he is a fundamentalist and a Wahabi.

I have gone through the stage of comparative study of religions. Have remained a typical Talib in a madrassa for 4 years in my childhood. I have studied all basic books of Fiqa, sarf wa nahwa, Persian literature, Mantiq, books of Hadith and Quran with Pashto translation. I speak and understand Arabic upto much extent but one man Osho changed my life and now I know the difference of religiosity and religion.

I like philosophy but that of Durant. I am a pro life person . Every thing positive is good. Consequences is the touchstone for good and bad. Moderation or the golden mean is the best way. I follow Islam only in faith, worship and morality nothing beyond that. I love Sufi or Ismaeli or esoteric Islam. I love science for its contribution and with you now I am learning how science can also contribute to your life style, thought, world's view and a better life.

Hehe well perhaps but if it is to convert me I think you will find it impossible my friend, any religious proclivity I had has completely evaporated. In retrospect I have said far too much in this thread; Badlun, I like your way, tough I disagree with your apparently positive views on secular militarism, your religion will at least keep you somewhat tied to your community. For me, the only regret I have with apostasy is the distance it brings me with my own people, but I cannot turn back, scientific materialism, unlike any form of philosophy or political ideology, seems to be the pandora's box to religion. Do not open that box, lets leave it at that.