Headline June 25, 2015/ "' THE TATTERS OF OUR VALUES GOOD' SIRES '"

"' THE TATTERS OF OUR VALUES

 GOOD' SIRES '"

'And then to rolling heavens itself  I cried,

What Lamp has thy  destiny  to......guide?

Your little angelic children.........................,

All stumbling........in the.....................Dark,

''Blind   understanding   heaven     replied"

And this original protest and  verse [of a Rubaiyat]  could only come from the one of the great thinkers to mankind  ''Omar Khayyam''   and this unique translation from nobody other than Sir Edward Fitzgerald.

WHERE I EVER to be asked, to name  one great judgemental metric of any one society?......I would never hesitate for a blur, but say:

A great society is known by the way it treats its minorities. Just so, and simply no two ways now or ever, on that.

PAKISTAN IS PREDOMINANTLY, but not wholly a Muslim country. There is a significant minority population made up of a basket of faiths spread across the country.

Among these millions of people, there are children who need to be educated, and moreover educated in a way that is appropriate to their faith.

Pakistan has traditionally got around this by teaching  "ethics" to the children who are not Muslims. Existing civics handbooks make no mention of the religion espoused by those being taught, and in the case of this province-

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, there isn't a single ethics teacher appointed anywhere in the province?  How does the great O"Captain Imran Khan explain that?

**Minority students have a right to an  equal education  as defined by the Constitution**

In this northern Paksitani province, called. KPK,  non-Muslim children are atught, where they are taught at all, using textbooks  "imported''  from Punjab. This is clearly discriminatory.

Calls from Leaders of the monority teachers associations for the balance to be redressed appear to have fallen on deaf ears. !WOW!,  -through Maraim, Rabo, Dee, Malala, Haleema, Paras, and Shazaib Khan Yousufzai, and Umer Khan, will be watching this ''grave concern" very carefully.  

As greatness takes flight, yanking all values in its talons, we ponder and sigh: 

I AM NOW CONVINCED -that all values, born within and learnt from, have taken flight to nowhere lands. And the great Chris Cork seems to agree:

"It's just too early to comment in any detail  on the case which is ongoing and  which is still at very nascent levels,  -involving a software house, but there is one-

That we can discuss with reasonable degree of clarity : "The great emerging market for dishonesty."

Several years ago I lost a friend in an argument over the place of lying and dishonesty and the way it has become embedded in the many cultures of all the countries of the subcontinent. Thank God, Pakistan is not alone.

My position was that Pakistan was the most dishonest culture I had ever lived and worked in. My friends took great exception and went our separate ways, never to meet again. Since then, I have taken a close interest in the local trait best described as:

When in doubt.......................Simply and plainly Lie."

The values of truth and honest were drummed in to me at a very early age, along with every other member of my generation. We were the first born after a war in which millions by millions died.

"Truth" is said to be the first casualty of war, and the telling of truth in the minds of my teacher in that early years at primary school. I recall children being punished for lying. Did I lie on occasion, Yes.

There must be a few of us worldwide who have never told a lie or a twisty untruth designed to gain some advantage or other.

But in general terms, within the normative values of dishonesty shall  we say  -I lead a truthful life and still do my best, difficult as it is oftentimes, to do the same.

I was much assisted by my rectitude by the fact that mostly the people around me were honest as well.

Not perfectly honest to be sure, but honest enough to grant a kind of herd immunity to  Institutionalised dishonesty.

Growing up and acquiring a taste for travel took me all over Europe,and although I did not travel with a  Lie-O-Metre stripped to the handlebars of my bicycle I was aware that I was travelling in countries and cultures that had similar values to my own.

I moved through places and people and places where the  truth  in broad terms was a valued commodity.

Things started to unravel a bit in Italy, were definitely different to the way i swung my moral compass by the time I got to Turkey and then there was the Middle East. And the subcontinent. And Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I discovered countries and cultures where the telling of the truth is a habitual sense was actually anathemous, and recall a number of discussions that I had with my staff in Afghanistan:

As to why it was that they persistently lied to  me about a range of subjects?

Similar discussions had also been had with communities and individuals I was working with north of Gilgit in the 1990s, with people in Nagar taking a perverse pride-

!In their almost complete lack of truthfulness about anything?!"  

The Honour and Serving of this  "Societal Operational Research"  continues. Thank you, for reading, and sharing and maybe learning!?

With respectful dedication to all the " Leaders Of The Free World."  See Ya all Your Excellencys'  on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' On The Mark "'

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless