11/23: Afghani shoe dealer

[Undertoad]

This guy's name is Raheem Gul and as you can see, he's a shoe dealer.

And he's been in the shoe business for 40 years.

Used shoes, that is. And once again we are struck by the differences. Here, you can't try on a pair of shoes without having socks on. Ew, someone else had these shoes on! Gross! There, your pair of shoes was lived in for years by other people, and maybe even removed from their dead feet.

But this guy has been doing this for so long - this is the Afghani system of doing things. It just goes to show you, where there is no established way of getting things done, people adapt - people develop some system.

What occurs to me now is how the US ghettos probably have similar systems set up, and middle class America's attempts to further civilize everyone, through taxation, regulation, welfare, licensing, etc. MAY NOT WORK with such systems. The guy who gets you your shoes at the mall has to play by different rules than the guy who gets you your shoes in the ghetto.

So is it better to "civilize" the ghettos - or to wait for systems that we cannot possibly understand to "catch up" to the systems put in place by the politics of the middle class?

Or am I just babbling? You make the call.