Can we agree that it would be best to make the target societal and political basis the principle of “I won't hurt you if you won't hurt me”?

I think the CCP faced a similar problem after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Ordinary people owed allegiance to their own family, then to the extended family. The emperor had been far away and maybe to be feared, but (maybe especially since the royals were Manchu nobles) not one to whom one owed allegiance. The task for whoever would lead a non-imperial China (CCP or Guomindang) was to get the average citizen to give allegiance to the nation and so, indirectly, to its leadership.

Lots of the foundational work, from the standpoint of ideology, was done by Sun Zhongshan in his book, 三民主義. Importation of science (making a perceptible impact even at the local level from around 1700) caused a discontinuity between what were perceived as “Chinese values” and “Western science.”

I think a similar thing happened with the rise of Kamal Ataturk and the rise of modern Turkey. Having a secular government was not an easy accomplishment.

For Afghanistan, the problem of Taliban-style Islam gives their leadership an immense amount of Trump-like power over people. However, there are also many people who oppose them.

In the USA we had our “second civil war” with the Civil Rights movement. It developed out of the African Americans themselves. It wasn't imposed on them by some outsider group. They had a way of developing a coherent set of goals, and they also had the learning and experience to be able to push their ideals into realities. This movement and its considerable successes were brought about by activists such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Bond.

The history of the success of communism in China is not well known by most Americans. The leadership of the USSR did not try to impose a system of government and a set of puppet leaders on China. Instead, they created a very large number of activists by establishing a two-year college for activists in Moscow. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_University_of_the_Toilers_of_the_East and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Sun_Yat-sen_University

You can get a much clearer idea of how the USSR leaders managed this school by reading a memoir you Yue Sheng. It was actually quite a contentious place to live and study in. I think students went to classes in the daytime and argued things out among themselves after classes. See: https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/1193

I think the attempts of the USA (or anybody else) to impose change have been proven to fail, whereas the Soviet efforts, although they did not produce doctrinaire Chinese clones of Lenin or Stalin, did lead to people such as Deng Xiaoping and others.

I think those are quite accurate accounts about the role of CCP and USSR in China. I just have a bit to add. The land reforms carried out by CCP knocked off the family heads/clan heads in the countryside so the state could grasp the resources they used to control. And CCP prioritized civil duties over individual allegiance to his or her family/clan, which gave CCP the manpower it needed to reform China into its modernity.

1. AZ: Good point on the dynamics of change.

In the case of Afghanistan, a political invention by the Pashtuns has been the 'jirga', the Pashtun version of congress, or representative system, though tribal. I think that was part of the reasons why they managed to establish a monarchy in the 17th Century and ruled the whole of Afghanistan ever since. That was some achievement in particular because Afghanistan used to be a geographic notion, as was Italy before its unification. And it has been the Pashtuns in power all along up to date, except for a period of interval between the Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban takeover in 1996. Now the problem in this respect is that the Pashtuns are weaker than they were in the monarchy period. On the one hand they have to resort to the pervasive religious establishments in the country and wear the cloak of Islamic extremism, on the other hand, they have to have Pakistan behind their back. In a case like this, they simply cannot afford to have any power-sharing arrangements with other ethnic peoples in the country. But this could be the discussion of another question.

1. AZ: I didn't understand the way Pashtun desire to retain power is causing heavier reliance on religious factors, extremism, and the Pakistan connection. What are other interests that might balance their desire for ego gratification and retention of power over others? My impression is that men frequently are even willing or desirous of killing their own daughters to preserve their social status. The women, on the other hand, seem more concerned for the welfare of their children regardless of ego and status issues. I was interested to learn of women who ran secret schools for girls under the noses of the Taliban pre US invasion.

1. Rui: The ideology behind the notion of 'Modern State' is nationalism, which hasn't really come to be in Afghanistan. If you look at the modern history of the country, it was Pashtun monarchy, Pashtun republic, Pashtun socialism, then the Soviet Invasion. The Pashtuns failed to create a unified national identity among all ethinic peoples in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion, yet they clung to the old political landscape of a Pashtun state. So they ruled with the element of terror - Islamic extreamism - instead of a statehood identity recognized nationwide by all ethnic peoples, when their military arm, the Taliban, seized power in 1996.

When it comes down to the tribal side of the society, I think Islam might pose a real challenge. On the one hand, the Islamic establishements provide to the tribes living in the pockets of the mountains rule of law in a very low-cost fashion, which is therein financially affordable for the tribes to sustain it. Basically all the elements of modern judicial systems are omitted. And no one needs to be bothered about drafting any code or having it revised, because the Quran is already sitting there. and the rule of law is more or less the interpretations of the lection by the few intellectuals and implemented by the vast majority of the illiterate and the ignorant. Again, low-cost is the key.

1. AZ: I would not want to visit law, as it is generally understood in the USA, on Afghans. When an “establishment” controls the so-called justice system, it can easily become an instrument of oppression. When families control children by punishment, parents can become abusive. At the same time, they do not prepare their children to assume adult responsibilities and make good decisions for themselves. When families help children to get control of themselves, see long-term consequences of potential hot-headed reactions, see the natural consequences of actions ahead of making those actions, then you get well integrated and responsible adults. In my home community, finding someone to blame for some bad act was the end of the matter in the minds of the citizenry, and they depended on courts to punish those to blame.
2. What I have eked out about child rearing in Islam-influenced cultures is that it may be even more abusive than the extremes of American guilt inculcation or Japanese shame inculcation. People generally do child rearing “the way it is always done, naturally,” which means that there is little real responsibility taken if “doing things the right way” turns out “bad” kids, or messed-up kids.
3. The best analysis of the dynamics of child nurture in contained in 顏元，存性編 but it is presented in the vocabulary of medieval Confucianism, and it is not easy to tease out the vector-based characterology that would inform parents of ways they need to think ahead and nurture their kids around individual traits. For instance, one of my friends had a kid who was enormously strong for his age. He could easily have learned to get his own way in interacting with his cohort just by the use of force. But they gently counseled him and got him around that potential problem. He would have been a monster if he had become a juvenile delinquent.
4. Because of the work of psychiatrist Karl Menninger and also work of some followers of the psychiatrist Adler, American parenting has become lots better in the last half century or so.
5. I think it would be possible to teach Afghan parents (and probably most successfully the mothers) how to get good kids without pitting children against each other. That would reduce the need for criminal law. Maybe that would be at least a start.

On the other hand, because the Islamic establishments have broken the tribal social structure down to the bottom, it can effectively tax the tribal people in forms like 'zakat', despite that how remote the tribal pocket is in the mountains. So here is the thing, once you have the rule of law and the taxation, both effective, you have a government. I think that's probably why extremist governments like the Taliban regime keep coming back.

• AZ: If people accept the basic “law” of Xun Zi, that implies responsibilities as well as privileges and security. As an American kid growing up, I thought the streets were just always there. Growing up, I drove my jeep to work in the countryside and had to travel over dirt roads. Then I learned that dirt roads had to be graded, i.e., smoothed out to fill in ruts. Obviously somebody had to pay the man who did the grading for his labor. So, that was where some of my father's tax money went. Of course it was his duty to pay for the grading or else I wouldn't be able to get to my bee hives. I think any villager can understand taxes on this level of personal application. The problem is to get a community at the local scale that has group loyalty and group identity. It is my community so even though I don't have an airplane, we do have crop dusters and we have a community need for an airport. So I benefit indirectly and so I must pay.

With all that being said, I think here is the question: how to transform the tribal society by introducing modern elements, and meanwhile, breaking the bond between the religious establishments and the society on the tribal level? And if one looks at the history all over the world, this might pose a challenge, something even unprecedented in the course of iteration of societies.

• AZ: I am doubtful that Afghanistan's societies can be transformed from outside. I grew up in a community of mixed Protestant and Catholic believers and a few quiet Jews. Nobody broke ranks with the Judeo-Christian common denominator, a “merciful, loving” God who would punish you for having sexual urges. On top of that, my very liberal father taught me not to oppose my immature and unformed conclusions or doubts to the general wisdom of society. “Always doubt that you have the capability to advocate change. Don't think you have the stuff to get involved with your suicidal college classmate's problems. You can't even solve your own problems.”
• My group claimed that the Bible was the word of God and therefore perfectly true — despite contradictions. But at least it is presented as a recording made by a series of fallible humans. Islam claims that the Koran is like taking direct dictation from God, and God says if you don't believe it and don't act according to what it says then you are in for punishment.
• There is even something like that kind of threat in the Lotus Sutra.
• Change is a non-linear process. Maybe activists' moving/changing some seemingly minor thing could result in a big change somewhere else. I remember that before the birth control pill was invented, pre-marital sex was religiously frowned upon by authority figures, particularly by the parents of young women. After the pill, suddenly the religious strictures seemed not to be much in evidence anymore. People could go on radio talk shows and mention casually how their daughter had been living with some guy and they were thinking about maybe getting married some day. Nobody made a fuss about it. So the fear of unmarried daughters with children who would become an economic burden on the parents of that young woman was apparently the real source of religious pressure against quasi-adulterous sex.

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