Tariq Saeedi
Anyone who judges before they listen is considered a fool. We know this. A person who chooses sides before understanding both is diminished. We accept this too. Yet when nations do the same, we call it foreign policy. — Paradox?
The child is born without prejudice. Watch her in the playground. She does not ask the color of the hand that offers her a toy, nor the accent of the voice that calls her to play. Fairness comes naturally. Impartiality is instinct. These are not learned behaviors but original equipment, standard issue in the human model.
Then comes the education—formal and otherwise. Some children are taught to divide the world into us and them. Others are raised to see only neighbors, near and far. The difference is everything. It is the difference between a stunted soul and an evolved one.
“I never travel without my diary,” Wilde’s Gwendolen said. “One should always have something sensational to read on the train.” But what if the diary recorded not gossip but observation? What if it contained the daily practice of seeing clearly, of weighing evidence, of refusing the easy comfort of tribal thinking? That would be sensational indeed.
The evolved person—and they are rare—possesses a constellation of qualities that shine brightest in combination. Fairness without coldness. Impartiality without indifference. The capacity to stand apart from the fray while remaining deeply concerned with its outcome. They are involved but not entangled. Present but not possessed. They listen to all sides because they understand that truth is seldom found in a single voice.
This is hard work. It requires what the evolved person has in abundance: the ability to think deeply and independently. To resist the siren call of the mob. To say no when everyone else is saying yes, or yes when the fashionable answer is no. It demands moral courage of a kind that most find exhausting.
At the level of a nation, we have a word for this constellation of qualities. We call it neutrality.
But neutrality is perhaps the most misunderstood concept in international relations. It is not isolation. It is not cowardice. It is not indifference dressed in diplomatic language.
True neutrality is the geopolitical expression of evolutionary advancement—a nation that has moved beyond the primitive need to solve every problem with force, to answer every question with aggression, to divide the world into friends and enemies as if international relations were a schoolyard dispute.
A neutral country is a highly evolved country. It has learned what the evolved individual knows: that fairness is strength, not weakness. That impartiality is engagement, not detachment. That refusing to take sides in conflicts that do not threaten one’s existence is not betrayal but wisdom.
Consider Turkmenistan. For thirty years it has walked this path, cultivating neutrality as a gardener cultivates rare flowers—with patience, dedication, and the understanding that some things cannot be rushed. On December 12, 2025, as leaders gather in Ashgabat to mark this anniversary, they will be witnessing not merely a diplomatic milestone but a testament to evolutionary choice.
The skeptic will ask: Is this idealism? Can all nations become neutral?
The answer lies not in uniformity but in understanding. Every person’s journey to evolved thinking is unique. The farmer’s son and the banker’s daughter arrive at fairness by different roads. So too with nations. Swiss neutrality is not Swedish neutrality. Austrian neutrality is not Turkmen neutrality. Each has its own geography, its own history, its own reasons for choosing this difficult path.
But the destination—the destination is the same. It is a place where bias and discrimination give way to balance and reason. Where the first instinct is not to reach for a weapon but to extend a hand. Where strength is measured not in the enemies one can crush but in the conflicts one can prevent.
Evolution is not a choice; it is a direction. The river flows downhill. The child becomes the adult. The savage becomes civilized. And civilization, if it continues to evolve, moves toward neutrality as water seeks its level.
Not every nation is there yet. Some are centuries away. Others may never arrive, destroyed by their own inability to transcend the obsolete thinking. But the direction is clear, has always been clear, will remain clear for those with eyes to see it.
In this International Year of Peace and Trust, we might ask ourselves: What is peace but the practical application of fairness? What is trust but the recognition that impartiality serves everyone’s interests better than partiality serves anyone’s?
The evolved person knows this. The neutral nation embodies it. And the world, slowly, painfully, one country at a time, is learning it.
That is evolution. That is the journey. That is neutrality—not as a destination reached but as a direction chosen, day after day, year after year, until thirty years have passed and the whole world comes to your door to see how you have done it.
The answer is simple, though the execution is hard: You treated everyone fairly. You remained impartial without being detached. You looked at everything and dealt with everything without bias or discrimination. — You evolved. /// nCa, 20 November 2025