Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

I always thought it a bit strange when people say they “like music.”

I didn’t think it was a choice. It’s kind of like saying you prefer to breathe air.

So imagine a government outlawing air, which might be how it feels in Afghanistan, where those backward-ass, misogynistic, religious nutbars in the Taliban have started burning people’s musical instruments, according to NPR.

No music making. No music listening. No music. No fun.

Why not just crawl into the people’s heads and remove their thoughts?

NPR cited the BBC this week, quoting an official at the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry saying music “causes moral corruption.”

I realize it doesn’t take much courage half a world away to come out in support of music and against the Taliban. But … how do you even begin to relate to the rest of the world, as a government, if you don’t allow music? Where’s the common ground? Do they at least allow people to speak?

There are reports of instruments being confiscated and burned in bonfires. To play or listen to music is to be treated like a criminal in Afghanistan.

And you were just complaining about the price of concert tickets.

For many, every bit of our lives is associated with music. My 15-year-old just started her sophomore year last week. When I dropped her off, I remembered my first month of 10th grade, dating a girl with whom I was madly in love. Our song was “Jack and Diane.”

You have songs with people, too.

I drove away smiling from dropping my daughter off at school all these hundreds of years later, with “Jack and Diane” in my head, remembering how I felt running around crazy about this wonderful girl who actually liked me back. I was also a little sad, because that girl who broke my heart in the fall of 1982 committed suicide years later and is no longer around to laugh at how we used to behave back then.

So many feelings, all siphoned through a song. Which, by the way, happens every time I hear “Jack and Diane,” and about a million other songs relating to a million other people who have been in my life.

Everything is connected to music – every year, every person, every memory, every first time, every everything, has a soundtrack.

But not for the kids growing up in Afghanistan. How does anyone in authority do that to a populace for which they’re supposed to be responsible?

I’m not religious, but can you imagine a world where people’s belief in God wasn’t allowed to inspire and produce music? That’s the real irony here – so much music created in the name of God.

And there lies the stupidity. If those guys want people to believe, to really grab the hearts of minds of followers (instead of simply threatening everyone), how do they ban one of the best expressions of love of anything?

Music connects us, it disconnects us. It gives us life. It smooths out our differences. It teaches. It’s poetry. It expresses every human emotion.

It taught me how to count to four…

Music makes us want to call old friends. It makes us want to avoid songs for the loss they represent. It makes us brave, it’s makes us afraid. It picks us up better than a syringe full of adrenaline. It literally saves lives.

We identify ourselves by the music we love, even years after the artist is gone. I made the mistake of commenting on a post about Van Halen this week and, for about 30 seconds, found myself in the middle of yet another argument about the best version of Van Halen, a band that has been gone for years.

This isn’t necessarily about religion—which is a great thing for some people—but it’s about extremism. In some cases, we haven’t got any better as humans in the thousands of years we’ve used religion as a moral compass to decide how others should live. That’s somehow still a thing in the 21st century.

Music supersedes language, or else bands wouldn’t tour the world. The feelings that music evokes are frequently beyond words. I went through a phase when I was 17 when one of my favorite bands on the planet was Japanese. I didn’t understand a word they were singing, but I still bought their early records and played them to death.

In no world is it acceptable to take music away from people. And I don’t know what anyone can do about it. Except keep playing … loudly, and hope the sound still gets through. You can take the instruments away from people, but they’ll still find a way to make music.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.