The Fabrication of Social Reality

Remarks on normativity, Iran's Green movement, and the Islamic Republic's made-up facts

John Searle in his influential book The Construction of Social Reality tries to show how the social reality, as distinct from physical reality, is shaped. Searle aims to demonstrate how we can ground our ontology of social facts (or objects) on the ontology of brute facts (or objects). Social facts are those which are observer-dependent and their existence depends on the existence of human institutions, and brute facts are those which exist independently. Mountains, rivers, and electrons are among brute objects; and governments, money, and marriages are among social objects. So Searle wants to demonstrate how one can move from that level of reality which is described by electrons, atoms, and chemical reactions, to another level of reality which is described by governmental laws, agreements, and transactions.

The core idea of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality, in simple terms, is that social reality is built through conventions of individuals and their intentional ascriptions of meanings and functions to physical objects. For instance, these rectangular pieces of paper that people keep in their wallets and pockets have certain values in society and are called “money”. Physically, bills are somehow like any other piece of paper. You can burn them, if you are cold, or you can make airplanes with them, if you want to entertain kids. But socially speaking, people assign certain values to these papers and these values let people buy fuel with their bills and burn the fuel, if they are cold, or buy some toys and play with the toys, if they want to entertain kids. The important point here is that it is not simply the physical characteristics of bills that let them play an economic role in people´s lives; rather, these papers have given this function through social tacit agreements that transcend bills’ physicality. This very point shows that the functions assigned to bills are relative to the society in which bills are used, and this relativity proves that one cannot talk about “the social facts”, because social facts are just made-up facts. This relativity could go to the extent that in some societies, next to their economic functions, bills might serve for other purposes as well. These days in Iran, for instance, Green people, due to their lack of mass media, use paper money and banknotes also as a medium to write their slogans and/or promote their future plans. So paper money has gained another meaning in Iran.

Still note that although the social meaning of bills is not causally related to their physical properties, their physical properties do matter, at least to some extent. That is why bills are not newspaper size, or they are not made too heavy, rather they are small and light enough to be carried easily. Back to Iran’s Green movement example, it is the substance by which the bills are made that lets Greens use paper money as a movable medium. If bills were made of steel, probably Iranian dissidents would have a big challenge writing slogans on them. It is noteworthy to mention that there were rumors spreading around that Iran’s government actually did think about replacing all paper money with coins to impede Greens’ plans and prevent them from constructing their “social reality”.

However, Iran’s government does not only passively respond to people’s tactics, rather it has also actively tried to construct its own social reality. A short glance at the state media in Iran (including TV, Radio, Newspapers, etc.) proves that the government broadcasts its own version of stories, in a bid to present them as “the social facts” and make others believe them. For instance, the government refers to protesters as the traitors, or as moharebs (enemies of God). But the point about such imputations is that they seem to be difficult to falsify, because whatever Greens do, the government still calls them traitors, and you might start wondering whether the regime knows what the word “traitor” actually means. Then again, one cannot talk about “the meaning” of the word traitor (or any other word), because that is also relative to the society in which the word is used. In the vocabulary of the Islamic Republic, anyone who criticizes the government is both a traitor and against God. And that is how Iranian government is "fabricating" its own reality. Since language is a social phenomenon, and the meaning of words is not intrinsic to the signs we use for them, a special group of people can start using words differently and by doing so fabricates reality. So the question is “Why should one choose Greens’ version of social reality and not that of the government?” Why do I refer to Green’s construction of social reality but the government’s fabrication of social reality? After all, this “fabrication”, however conflicting with our common sense and/or ethical principles, is perfectly consistent with Searle’s ideas. What is happening is a group of people constructing specific social facts/objects and assigning specific meanings to them. Searle never tells us when we should and when we should not accept a social fact or how to choose between two conflicting social realities. In other words, Searle does not provide any criterion to differentiate between the construction of social reality and the fabrication of social reality. So it seems Iranian government is winning against Searle’s philosophy. Our common sense would tell us what Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and their allies are doing is wrong, but Searle’s book would see it as constructing one special reality. In a nutshell, Searle’s philosophy lacks a normative stance. There is no standard to criticize a specific social reality, and any kind of social reality is allowed to be constructed.

To save philosophy against the Islamic Republic, I need to refer to good old Ludwig Wittgenstein and his idea of ‘meaning as use’. Wittgenstein teaches us that any change in the usage of a specific linguistic term or phrase would change the meaning assigned to that term or phrase. There is no magical link between a linguistic sign and its meaning, and it is simply the way speakers use the sign in the society that counts. This way, the Islamic Republic’s novel usage of the linguistic terms that Iranians were already familiar with (e.g., mohareb, traitor, etc.) in fact changes the meanings of these terms. And that is why I call what the Iranian regime is doing “fabrication of social reality”, instead of “the construction of social reality”. The point is that although the Islamic Republic uses words differently, but it intends their old meanings. So when Ahmadinejad calls people a bunch of goats, or when Khamenei refers to the protestors as traitors, they do not intend to change the meaning of these terms, rather they want to convince their audience that protestors are actually goats, traitors, etc. But that is not how language functions. When millions of Green protestors look at themselves and don’t find any sign of goat-ness or treason, they automatically assign new meanings to the insulting words that Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the rest of their gang use. We saw this phenomenon happening in the case of I-Am-Majid protest, in solidarity with Majid Tavakoli. The government thought wearing women’s clothes on Majid Tavakoli, a student political activist arrested on 16 Azar, would humiliate him. However, after Majid Tavakoli’s arrest, many male Green activists dressed up with scarves on their head, not to humiliate themselves, but to stand in solidarity with Majid and to show their protest against Islamic Republic’s law of obligatory hijab for women and defend women’s rights. The same goes with the I-Am-Mohareb protest, in solidarity with political prisoners accused of being mohareb. While the Iranian regime thought labeling protesters as moharebs would justify its brutality and human rights abuse on the one hand, and weaken the Greens on the other, many Greens started calling themselves moharbs, not to say they are against God, but to publicly mock the government’s usage of the word which deviates from the meaning the word “mohareb” often bears in Farsi.

Thus, the Iranian government’s reality is not constructed but fabricated. Khamenei thinks if he calls ordinary people mohareb, they would turn into moharebs (enemies of God). What he doesn’t notice is the fact that giving a new usage to the term “mohareb” simply changes the meaning of the word. The word “mohareb” in Farsi does not mean against God anymore, in the same way that in Farsi the word traitor does not mean against the country anymore. These words only mean against the current government that runs Iran, and the negative connotations of these words have become positive.

The Greens are getting there

From overthrowing the government to getting prepared to establish a democratic society
In case you have got the chance to watch Ice Age 2, you probably remember the story of a mammoth who thinks she is a possum. If we take such a line of thought, we can ask two interesting questions regarding Iran’s Islamic Republic government, and Iran’s Green movement which is often referred to as a democratic one. The questions, in order of difficulty, are first, “Is Iran’s present government an Islamic Republic?” and second, “Is Iran’s Green movement a democratic one?”

It is now 30 years that the Islamic Republic is distancing itself from rules of both Islam and a Republic. The government has confined the social education to its own rather radical interpretation of Islam. The courses on humanities offered in schools and universities do not give any chance to students to study any ideology that questions tenability of Mullahs principles, except for tenuous versions of some historically important schools of thought that could be easily refuted and are in fact meant to be refuted. Moreover, all media, including newspapers, journals, TV and radio stations in Iran are monitored by the state government and therefore, any medium that could somehow influence the public does not do justice to even heterogeneity of Iranian cultures, let alone to the international ones. The fraudulent elections in the last June and its aftermath provide even more evidence for the claim that Islamic Republic is not much more than just a title. The government has committed lots of crimes such as torture, rape, and murder, just to name a few, that if anything, probably only its own radical ideologies could justify such acts. In a nutshell, the Islamic Republic is neither Islamic nor a Republic. It is like the mammoth in Ice Age 2 who thinks she is a possum. However, the difference between the two is that in the end the mammoth gets to know that she is not a possum and acts more like a mammoth, but as time goes by, the Islamic Republic acts more and more differently from any conceivable Islamic Republic.

The parallel question about the Green movement is that, if Greens succeed to establish a democratic country, is it going to be a democracy as it should be, or will there be only the title of democracy and the state and citizens will deviate from democratic standards? After all, most Greens, given the fact that some of them are in exile, have grown up in a society of censorship that the Islamic Republic has brought to them. However, practicing one’s freedom is something to be learnt, whether as a radical Muslim, a democrat, or as an anarchist. It is the society which teaches us how to act as a proponent of a certain ideology and how to go beyond words when we give a specific title to a nation’s establishment. So the Green movement had this challenge in their early stages. The ostensibly democratic movement was comprised of civilians who did not have that much chance to learn the rules of living in a democratic country. Consequently, even if the Greens could have toppled the Islamic Republic in the first few weeks, it was still dubious whether or not Iran’s theocracy would be effectively replaced by a liberal democracy at all social layers.

However, at this juncture, both the millions of individuals who consider themselves Green and the leaders of this movement have proven to be well prepared for a democratic society. The discussions regarding the Greens’ behavior on Ashura day (December 27) and the tone of Mir Hossein Mousavi especially in his 17th statement support the claim that as time passed by, the Greens have proven mature in playing the game of an open society. One of the peculiarities of clashes on Ashura day was that although protesters tried to hold a huge peaceful rally like that of June 15, the government crackdown on Ashura day was so violent that as we saw in some videos, protesters found fighting back as the only solution at certain points. They set fire on dozens of basij motorbikes, took off the uniforms of the guards trapped between protesters, and threw stones at anti-riot police guards. This behavior of protesters was a bit unprecedented. Some interpreted it as a kind of bravery and some interpreted it as an equally violent act which should be denounced. Some others, like Masoud Behnoud the Iranian political journalist in exile or Agh Bahman the Iranian blogger, went further and announced the failure of the Green hope in that the Greens are now playing the same game that the government does, namely violence, and so there is not any significant difference between Greens and the Islamic Republic anymore. Whether or not the protesters’ acts on Ashura day is defendable, the very fact that Greens were so much concerned about not getting violent that in less than 48 hours so many articles were written about the incidents of that day and the related discussions are still going on between Greens on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. shows the difference between the values of the Green movement and those of the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic answered protestors’ question of “Where is my vote?” with batons, tear gases, and bullets, while the Greens answered the question whether or not protesters were violent on Ashura day by meaningful discussions based on common sense and rationality. The fact that the Greens are so much open to criticism shows the maturity of the movement and the huge number of discussions, articles, and blog posts indicates that the Greens have learnt how to build a society based on public debates and rational arguments.

Moreover, Mousavi, as the most prominent leader of the Green movement, distanced himself and his notion of leadership from that of Iran’s hardliners in his 17th statement, emphasizing on a democratic conception of leadership. Islamic Republic is based on the principle of Velayate Faghih, which gives full power to a Supreme Leader who should be a high ranking Ayatollah as well. Such an ideology is intrinsically undemocratic for the civilians are supposed to simply follow the orders of the leader. Mousavi, however, sees himself as only one member of the Green movement and declares he is as important as any other Green, and even if he gets assassinated by the Islamic Republic he will be one of the martyrs who have lost their lives in the quest for their legitimate demands. Mousavi’s statements show his notion of leadership is far more democratic than that of the Islamic Republic. He is aware of the fact that people are the true leaders of the Green movement and he only speaks out for them, instead of giving orders to them.

Thus, although the future of Iran’s Green movement in not clear, Iranian protesters have shown the government they deserve is a democratic government that respects social values such as freedom of speech and equality. If they succeed, the society will be built upon open public debates, and the future leader will be representing people’s voices instead of imposing specific doctrines on them.