The most basic civic oath and the pledge that many of us made in the past which then dwelled somewhere in our unconscious or subconscious minds – namely, the oath or pledge to advance and promote the most basic principles and values of the system which are none other than liberty and justice – was thus an oath and a pledge that we had to fulfill one way or another, otherwise, we would have been held to account one way or another and we would have had to continue paying a heavy price for not fulfilling the oath and the pledge one way or another. And how one comes clean with God is essentially a personal and subjective matter when all is said and done. Taking stock of what one needs to do requires a certain level of artfulness, creativity, quiet contemplation, and isolation. The individual is better at conducting and interpreting the accounting and balancing of the karma better than anyone else if they acquire a bit of isolation and solitude for themselves. And as the expression has it, karma is a bitch, until of course, that karma is transformed into some sort of authentic, good faith, and sincere affinity and love for others.
It is thus no wonder that the most isolated individuals are the most intelligent and in turn the most intelligent individuals are most isolated. As Arthur Schopenhauer said:
“The wise man will, above all, strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few encounters as may be; and so, after a little experience of his so-called fellowmen, he will elect to live in retirement, or even, if he is a man of great intellect, in solitude. For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people, – the less, indeed, other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. True, if quality of intellect could be made up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in the great world; but unfortunately, a hundred fools together will not make one wise man.”
What we also tend to overlook is that some of us carry with us and inherit the karma and the lack of accounting and balancing of the karma which belong to our ancestors and forefathers. As I have told certain folks, I am the grandson and progeny of drug dealers and drug traffickers, armed militiamen, tribal warriors, alcoholics, gamblers, and killers who fought the British in Afghanistan about a century ago. My family then joined hands with the British after fighting them about a century ago and in turn my family played a very important role in installing a neocolonial system in Afghanistan which then had an immensely polarizing effect on Afghan government and society. After polarization and social fragmentation took hold of Afghan government and society, Afghanistan continued down a treacherous and horrendous path of destabilization and upheaval and ultimately civil war with plenty of foreign interference involved, and now we are left with the sad and disheartening circumstances and situation which everyone is now familiar with in Afghanistan.
As a result, and for the most part, my motivations and purpose for all this research and writing were two-pronged. For one, it was a matter of settling an account which remained outstanding and needed to be settled with America. And second, the motivations and the purpose were to educate and inform American society about their circumstances and situation given that many Americans do not have the eidetic experience or memory to understand what is going on in their society at the moment. American society is at a critical juncture whereby everything can go one of either two ways in the near future, and it is the eidetic experience and memory of some us which can then shed light on how things can turn out if things are not steered towards the right direction through our collective and individual efforts and political will, all of which is then underpinned and undergirded by an oath, pledge, or even a “social contract” which requires both fulfillment and an honoring of sorts.
Adam A. Azim 