Social relations, interactions, and mechanisms for the distribution of wealth & power make up a society’s values and norms. In some societies the norms and values stress respecting human dignity and supporting art, music, and science, thus they end up exploring outer space, advancing science and adding to the knowledge of the human race. However, in some others, their norms and values replace poets, musicians, scientists, and lawyers with charlatan, drug dealers, human traffickers, preachers, and populists. What is painful about these societies is that few educated people also support the traditions as well.
We have not done much in critiquing our society. Why don’t we have another thinker like Avicenna, Al-Biruni, and Fakhr-u-Din Razi; but we keep producing warlords, smugglers, charlatans, and populist generation after generation. Why has charlatanism has been become part of the fabric of our society? For instance, a Herat based preacher once said that his followers are ‘Qorotak’ referring to mobs and thugs. The irony is that this preacher whose service is demanded by these groups has to have the same mentality and close interaction with them, and be on the same level with them.
The uneducated society values charlatan and populist; and the charlatans in turn spread the illness to all parts of a society like cancer, and so the vicious cycle continues. Plagiarism is an example of charlatanism in literature, vilification and false accusation in media, populism in politics, and superstition in religious preaching. In such a society, how can one expect to promote good governance, economic growth, advance science and culture?
The educated segment of the society should take the initiative and critique harmful norms and values of the society; as well as fight the influence of populists, which in no way is less important than fighting against tyranny. In fact, oppression exists only in societies that do not value free and critical thinking and education. Ultimately, the educated generation flee the country when they see that the mass of people accepts a smuggler as their leader, the whole education system is being made fun of by awarding scientific ranks to suicide bombers.
