Letters

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Monday
June 4, 2001

Join the real world

Hamid Zanganeh's opinion regarding permanent politicqal and economic developmen in Iran is a typical opinion held by almost all Iranians ["First things first"]. It is so removed from reality, so vastly distant from one's daily life experience within an Iranian community or society outside or inside Iran.

The problem with such opinions is that they are abstract and do not involve or give any responsibility to the individual writer or person of Iranian descent towards achieving the goal of immunity from whims of individual or collective Iranians. How can we be immune from whims of society or individuals if we are not prepared to act responsibly towards natural/human rights of others?

Unless Hamid Zanganeh starts from himself and respects other Iranians' rights to free speech (by not ostricising those Iranians who have dared to speak out against evils within all Iranians,) right of participation in any meetings or ejtemaa'at (by not keeping them private and exclusive and advertising them only by word of mouth amongst approved friends and relatives,} social security (by making sure he pays for whatever service/s he receives from fellow Iranians) and by observing the ABCs of democracy when dealing with other Iranians in groups or individually in a meeting or a community and by treating Iranians right/like human beings when he/ his fellow Iranians find a public relation or decent job in any big or small office or company.

For unless he and his likes start observing every one of the rules he wishes to impose on the Islamic Republic and on Iranian societies within Iran, there shall never be democracy, fairness, equity, justice, absence of nepotism and corruption within Iran and within Iranian communities abroad, no matter where they are living: inside or outside Iran

After the Islamic Revolution, wherever Iranians have gone, they have taken their fascist, authoritarian and absolutist values with them and have been and are right now busy exercising them amidst Iranian communities: that is, what Mr Zanganeh wishes to be established inside Iran, must first and foremost be established amongst Iranians in the West and abroad in general; this cannot be done unless individual Iranians take it upon themselves to bring about democracy, freedom, emancipation, freedom of speech, immunity from personal and collective whims of other Iranians abroad/in the West, inclusiveness instead of the current trend towards exclusivity and not allowing undesired elements in. Why? Because they say things we do not wish to hear! That is, we need to make sure threats or possibility of threats to personal security are removed once and for all in all Iranian communities within and without Iran in order to ensure a dynamic economic, political, intellectual and artistic system of relationship between Iranians abroad/everywhere.

At the moment Iranians are like (and have been for thousands of years) uncivilised domestic animals who are in desparate need of civilization regardless of their place of residence. We Iranians should start from ourselves and put pressure on ourselves and compell ourselves not to want to be the centre of the attention or universe and not want to mix only with Iranians who are prepared to pamper us, admire us, love only us and live up to our expectations of them, which is: consider me the centre around which you must gyrate/revolve/circulate or else you are out of my circle of friends, artists, political activists with whom I wish to associate. Unless we change this attitude we shall never experience happiness and fulfiment as Iranians regardless of which side of the Iranian borders we live.

All Iranians, inside and outside Iran, possess the mental ability of a three-year-old child, and unless we start properly bringing up this child within us to face the world out there, instead of spoiling it by favouratism, nepotism and exclusiveness etc., we shall remain the three-year-old child we are and have been for thousands of years, forever and ever and all of us will eventually die / leave this sphere of being the same as we have always been: Three-year-old children who do not like other than sweets and lollipops. Why we are like this? Because we are reluctant to let go of ourselves and let the child within us grow up, let our eyes be opened by the hostile world out there. We must look around us to see the reality.

Our most destructive problem is that we love remaining in our mother's womb forever and ever. We are reluctant to be born in the bigger world where we cannot mannipulte things according to our own wishes, where we cannot be the centre of everything, where the world does not evolve and revolve according to our whims and silly wishes; and so we do not wish to sign the consent order for being born into the real world which is out there and in which we will not be considered the only one, the dearest, the most important being in the world, where people are not willing to do as we tell them to do simply because they do not care whether we are pleased with them or not, because their livelihood does not depend on us continuing to be spoilt brats or else we will terrorise them and haunt them like the spectre that Karl Marx speaks of in his Manifesto.

Yours Sincerely,

Rana Bahar

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