The Taliban's Dark Occupations: What Can Filipino Occupational Therapists Do?

Wokeness destroys everything in its path, whether it may be the stability of nations or our local clinical practice. Like the devil, it doesn’t present itself as a monster, lest we run away from it. It will masquerade instead as an agent of inclusion and diversity even if it will bring nothing but strife. Moreover, it creeps into our daily lives so subtly that it’s easy to dismiss anyone who calls out this sinister ideology as a conspiracy theorist. Then one day, we will wake up to the reality that tyrants have overtaken our therapy clinics, schools, work establishments, and families because woke virtue signalling has marginalized the people who could’ve stopped the real fascists. That’s exactly what happened in Afghanistan.

From Social Justice to the Dark Occupations

One reason why the Tailban reconquered this Middle Eastern country is because the US Military was distracted with indoctrinating American soldiers with the bigoted notion that White people are inherently racist. Instead of focusing on planning a sound exit strategy from Afghanistan, manning the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau, and training the armed forces to win wars, the military leaders have been sowing mistrust among the troops by brainwashing them to see racism where there is none.

Two months after military leaders were grilled in the US Congress over the troops’ woke indoctrination, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, which has been unleashing hell in the country. The Taliban now pretends to be moderate. But before the US occupation, the Taliban was notorious for oppressing women. They also executed LGBTQ Afghans. Hamas, an anti-Semitic terrorist group, has even met with a Taliban delegation for increased cooperation, based on Hamas’ praises for the latter’s victory.

As we all know, past behavior predicts future actions. Now, Afghanistan will once again experience the Taliban’s dark occupations: child marriage, sex slavery, executions of homosexuals, persecution of religious minorities, and terrorism. Such human rights violations stem from the Islamists’ radical interpretation of the Quran. In other words, they perceive their acts of bigotry as occupations that are “meaningful” and “a positive contribution to their well-being”, because they’re following their god’s commands.

Hating Their Own

For sure, there were many policy errors that handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban. And woke policies are among those errors. Wokeness destroys everything because it replaces truths that promote love, unity, peace, and prosperity with harmful utopian delusions. Its adherents manipulate and force these ivory tower fantasies on human nature that rebels against it.

For example, people are inclined to protect their fellow citizens and their nation-state’s allies by supporting stronger immigration controls. That’s not racism. It’s merely a commonsensical way of defending ourselves from international terrorists. It protects the good aspects of our culture from those who seek to destroy them. Moreover, controlling immigration is supposed to stop the entry of carriers of pathogens which could be used for bioterrorism.

But certain woke groups equate nationalism with racism. This woke idea infiltrated American culture and the US Military. It sows hatred for one’s fellow Americans, especially if they’re White, even when they’ve done nothing to hurt you. The US Military leaders were engrossed with promoting such political correctness instead of planning for contingencies that could happen in the Afghanistan pullout. As an outsider, I can’t help but feel that the Biden administration botched the evacuation of thousands of Americans and US allies because of this same hatred for their own people. Not only did many of the American troops leave before the repatriations, but they even wanted to charge 2000 dollars for every person that they were supposed to rescue! Thank God that the Biden regime relented from this inhumanity because its citizens are enraged. Tragically, thousands of Americans and US allies remain stranded in Afghanistan as of this writing.

Making Occupational Therapy Distinctly Filipino

We must not let such a postmodern agenda destroy the beautiful things that have uplifted humanity. Though possessing limited political power, we occupational therapists (OTs) can do our part in stopping the woke movement. We can do so by creating a Filipino practice framework that extols human liberty and love for the community instead of social justice’s false promises.

In occupational therapy, there is now an international push towards embracing the occupational justice model. This paradigm is based on the social justice movement’s deconstruction of the profession’s basic tenets. It promotes the utopian fantasy of turning occupational therapy into an inferior form of public health even if history and current practices show that occupational therapy is successful at treating patients at the individual level. The occupational justice model is therefore not occupational therapy. Moreover, shifting to this paradigm will have many detrimental consequences.

To keep the woke ideology at bay, Filipino OTs must break away from the politically correct platitudes that the American Occupational Therapy Association espouses, as documented in their Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. Filipino OTs must develop a separate Philippine practice framework that: a) emphasizes the profession’s focus on training daily living skills, especially the “Kapwa” way of social participation; b) excludes references to social justice, occupational justice, and occupational rights; and c) excludes “advocacy for populations” from occupational therapy interventions. With this new framework, OTs will still be allowed to be politically involved as individuals at their own time in whatever capacity that the law allows. However, they will no longer be required to push for social justice causes, especially in the settings where they practice.

Real-World Consequences

A woke-free practice framework will have many practical advantages. First, excluding social justice from a Filipino framework can stop occupational therapy schools from funding studies and developing curricula that promote the occupational justice model since this paradigm’s tenets contradict occupational therapy’s philosophical foundations. Occupational therapy professors don’t conduct gain-of-function research or lecture students about geriatric nursing because these are not within our scope of practice. The occupational justice model should therefore be treated in the same way. Diving into something that’s not within our professional domain is not only ethically questionable but is also a waste of allied medical schools’ time, talent, and money. Individual OTs who want to learn anything that’s beyond the scope of our profession will still be free to take up advanced studies in another field even as they practice occupational therapy.

Second, having a framework that excludes social justice will prevent OTs from using therapy sessions to promote any partisan agenda. It will stop politically-motivated therapists from using sessions with patients to trash politicians, debate gender pronouns, advocate for policies, push sex education on children against their parents’ wishes, and tag certain groups as oppressors or victims.

Most importantly, a practical Philippine practice framework will compel Filipino OTs to utilize and develop occupation-based approaches for improving our patients’ daily living skills. That’s our unique contribution to PWDs. Moreover, having a more developed evidence base for our practices will prevent pseudoscience practitioners from poaching and misusing our techniques.

Bridging Inequities, the Occupational Therapy Way

OTs should empower patients to acquire independent living skills, period. If an OT encounters an Afghan refugee who has a disability, the OT’s role is to teach daily living activities that are important to that Afghan patient. If a patient is a suspected crime victim, we report it to the authorities like what we’ve always done and we’ll testify in court if necessary. That’s how we promote justice. It’s our distinctive way of reducing inequities. Occupational therapy schools, health administrators, our clientele, as well as the government must judge us based on our effectiveness in this competency, regardless of our religion, political affiliation, or ethnicity. Who knows what terrors will be unleashed if we OTs forget our true calling!

(Photos from Canva)