Afghanistan and Inability to Cultural Development

Cultural growth is one of the main and fundamental components of human development. Today, advanced and progressing societies put culture building and cultural enrichment as their first priority and see the path to prosperity and progress in cultural progress.

In Afghanistan, not only are there no signs of cultural growth, but the increasing process of cultural regression is taking hold of the society and moving it towards regression and destruction.

In order to know what elements act as the cause of cultural poverty, we must first understand what culture, culturalization are so that we can succeed in recognizing the obstacles to culturalization and improving culturalization and find a way to solve this problem.

According to Edward Tiller, culture is actually a complex collection that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, ethics, laws, habits and behavior and any other abilities acquired by humans as a member of society.

Ralph Linton, however, considers culture to be a combination of school behavior that is transmitted from one generation to another by members of a certain society and is shared among people.

According to Edward Sapir, culture is known as a system of behaviors that society imposes on individuals, and at the same time, it is a system of communication that society establishes between individuals.

Therefore, culture, as the social heritage of humans, has four features and characteristics, which include thinking and the power of learning, speech, technology, and sociality (group life).

Meanwhile, humans, as members of society, form the main element in shaping culture, cultural change, learning culture and destruction of cultures, and they have the dignity of the main medium of transferring culture from the past to the present and the future. Therefore, they have the ability to become cultured. Becoming cultural is actually the coordination and adaptation of a person to all cultural conditions and characteristics, which is usually possible in two ways. Firstly, humans experience natural and gradual growth within cultural conditions, and secondly, this process can be done by crossing and mixing two cultures, which is also done in different ways.

Considering that culture includes all the things that people learn from each other and almost all human actions directly or indirectly come from culture and are influenced by it, if the culture of the society is not carefully considered and the government institutions and If non-governmental organizations do not act seriously and decisively in this direction, internal and external factors may cause the weakness and destruction of a society’s culture.

Cultural backwardness in Afghanistan is undoubtedly affected by external and internal factors. In the internal dimension, because this country has spent many years in the crisis of war and insecurity, culture and cultural development have been marginalized and forgotten for most of the time. It is clear that in the conditions of war and crisis of conflict over power, the first and foremost priority of the involved parties is strengthening and increasing the military capability and victory in the battlefield and violence, and in the meantime, what remains away from the center of attention and is isolated is culture and cultural development of society. In the meantime, the conflict and violence itself, while blocking the way to cultural development and growth, itself acts as a factor in the destruction of culture and backwardness of culture. In other words, the existence of violence and rapacity among the members of the society, if it flows in the arteries of the society for many years, will gradually destroy the positive cultural values ​​and instead, terror and violence will rule the society. In this way, instead of moving towards civility, new cultural and human values ​​and a life based on tolerance, the society tilts its way towards backwardness, divergence, extremism and violence.

External factors have also played a very prominent role in the changes of culture in Afghan society. The phenomenon of migration, which itself is considered to be the result of long-term war and conflict in the country, besides bringing about positive changes in the culture of the immigrant community due to the cultural intersection with the host society, has also caused many harmful elements to enter the culture of Afghan society.

Two cases of cultural miseducation of Afghan immigrants are given as examples to clarify the issue. The increase in luxury and consumerism in social events and programs such as weddings, etc., is one of the worst things that Afghan immigrants have taken from neighboring countries have introduced into Afghanistan’s culture. Taking into account that the traditional society of Afghanistan has naturally incorporated countless unsavory, anti-moral and non-Sharia elements in its culture and there is a great interest in promoting and popularizing it, similar cultural elements from foreign cultures, especially the society of Iran has entered Afghanistan’s culture and has made the problem of luxury and consumerism even more complicated.

Another cultural element that has been affected by immigration and cultural convergence in Afghanistan is the devastating phenomenon of addiction. Hundreds of thousands of young Afghan immigrants, affected by the difficulties of migration and due to the proximity and interaction with Iranians, have learned addiction and introduced it into the Afghan society. This has severely damaged the society and turned into a big crisis.

This is where the concept of culture building and its importance is highlighted. Acculturation, based on the definition provided by the American Psychological Association, is a process that begins in early childhood and through which some cultural values, opinions, attitudes and behaviors are transferred to the members of a society, and it is also called social transfer. In English Wikipedia, acculturation is a process in which people learn the dynamics of the culture around them and acquire the values ​​and norms suitable or necessary for that culture and its worldview. As part of this process, influences that constrain, guide, or shape the individual (whether intentionally or not); This includes parents, other adults, and peers. If successful, acculturation leads to competence in the culture’s language, values, and rituals. Also, culture is associated with sociability. The culture of the psychiatric community, however, defines acculturation as a process by which someone adapts to a new culture and finally accepts its customs and values.

According to the mentioned examples and definitions of culture building, we come to the conclusion that the culture building process in Afghanistan has taken a negative dimension due to the neglect of responsible institutions and citizens. This means that the element of learning in Afghan society has brought both positive and negative and harmful things from other cultures here. This situation shows that the lack of awareness and the low level of literacy and knowledge of the society has not prevented the society from accepting the destructive elements of culture.

Therefore, the government, the elites and all the citizens have a direct responsibility to work seriously in the direction of culture building, so that the process of improvement and cultural enrichment of the society is strengthened and the path of harmful cultural elements is blocked and the society moves towards culture building.