Friday, March 12, 2010

On the Necessity of Non-Adrenalinogenic Protests

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Fighting with a bunch of basiji bikers on streets is a pretty risky business. You don’t need to be a physiologist to realize the high amount of adrenaline that bodies of street protesters generate. Actually, I have had this chance in my life to experience such a situation. Of course not during the protests started from June 2009 after Iran’s presidential election (selection?), but quite a few years ago in some neighborhood in Tehran. I was celebrating Chaharshanbesuri with some friends that all of a sudden basijis attacked to stop us from having fun with our rather small street party. Obviously the violence basijis have shown in the past nine months in Iran is not comparable to what I saw that night, however, I got a pretty tangible impression of basijis that night. Basij bikers normally attack in pairs. The driver keeps the direction toward the crowd, while the one on the back seat keeps swirling his baton(s) to scare the crowd and hit them randomly. Their motorbikes are also often quite noisy, probably to psychologically destabilize people that are running away or those who dare to fight back. During their attacks, it happens that basijis chant some Arabic words as well, again, to boost their own spirit, and to scare people even more. In a nutshell, groups of basiji bikers always remind me of movies that depict barbaric tribes attacking innocent people of a given village thousands years ago. Probably the only difference between the two would be that back in a couple of millennia ago there were no batons and motorbikes, and barbaric invaders had to ride horses and use swords. All in all, street protests are a kind of those protests that I call adrenalinogenic. Most of the time, during street protests you are either running, or attacking, or scared, or having strong revolutionary feelings in your heart, etc. and these all make your body secrete lots of adrenaline.

Physiology aside, adrenalinogenic protests (AP’s) have some characteristics that here I name a few of them. First, they are bodily tiring: you cannot remain in streets for more than dozens of hours. You will need food, you will need a warm and cozy place, and you will need to take some rest. Secondly, AP’s look really important and exciting. Even if a rather minor clash happens somewhere, news agencies compete to be the first to broadcast the footages or in any way report that incident. Thirdly, ordinary people’s conception is that street protests are the most decisive ones, as if a government would fall on one specific day of protest, when a good number of people are out in streets and gain the control of everything. Fourthly and as a result of the previous two points, if a given street protest does not go well, some people lose their hopes and some news agencies and journals show their doubts about the prospect of the revolution or the protests.

Next to adrenalinogenic protests stand non-adrenalinogenic ones. This latter type of protests, such as economic protests, i.e. banning some products that belong to the opposing group, are quite the opposite of AP’s. First of all, non-adrenalinogenic protests (NAP’s) are not that tiring. They do not take that much physical energy, and are mostly done without any rush. Secondly, although news about NAP’s, at least partly, get some attention from media, news agencies hardly rush to report them and head editors do not mind postponing the publication of such reports for a day or two in case their journal’s space is already full with other reports on that specific day. Thirdly, ordinary people do not take NAP’s as seriously as AP’s. NAP’s are not that exciting and are normally not accompanied with intense revolutionary feelings. Moreover, NAP’s take patience, because obviously such protests cannot turn everything upside-down overnight. It takes time to see the effects of an economic protest such as banning a certain product. So it is important for people attending NAP’s to keep themselves motivated. But if people manage to stay motivated, even if AP's do not work that well, people's spirit would still remain high, as they do not see AP's as the most decisive protests.

But let me stop belaboring basic facts about AP’s vs. NAP’s, and get into my main purpose of writing this article. My main purpose of writing this article is to oppose this view that emphasizes on the unique role of street protests in particular and AP’s in general in any government change. Note that I don’t want to question the fact that historically, street protests have proven to be effective in revolutions. What I do want to question, however, is the claim that revolutions are born solely as a result of a bunch of street protests. So I believe there is no need for revolutions to happen due to successive and successful street protests: although revolutions by definition change the whole political structure of a country, they could be generated from totally different ways of protest, such as economic or cultural ones. But my claim is not just that there exist some NAP’s that lead to a successful revolution. In fact, I have a stronger claim: street protests, if not accompanied by some NAP’s, will either fail or their victory will be superficial. So even if a society seeks a government change through AP’s, the change won’t be successful, unless accompanied by some parallel NAP’s. I will pose two different arguments for my claims. Throughout my arguments, I shall use examples taken from Iran’s Green movement, to pay my homage to my beloved movement and to make the text a bit more tangible.


1) One doesn't need to be an expert in control engineering to understand the fact that each system has a response time. ‘Response time’ (… referring to Wikipedia…) ‘is the time a system or functional unit takes to react to a given input.’ Response time is itself independent of the inputs and outputs and depends solely on the characteristics of the system. The response time of a supercomputer is at the level of micro- or even nano-seconds. The response time of classic electronic circuits is some milliseconds. The response time of an ordinary airplane is a few seconds or minutes, and the response time of a power plant is a few days or even weeks. Now, since the response time of a system depends on the characteristics of the system on its own, it is impossible for a system to behave way faster or slower than its normal response time. It would be ridiculous to see a supercomputer responding to what the user types with the keyboard after a week. Or at least with the present generation of technologies, it is technically impossible to significantly change the speed of an airplane in shorter than a second or in longer than a few minutes. As I said, to understand these facts, we do not need to be an engineer; even our commonsense would say the same. And probably it is our commonsensical understanding of the concept of response time that makes us laugh at what Iran’s Minister of Transportation recently said about an airplane that landed 100 Km’s away from the place it was supposed to land. When asked ‘Why that specific airplane landed in Kish, instead of Shiraz?’, Iran’s Minister of Transportation replied ‘The plane was moving too fast, so it could not stop in Shiraz and passed that airport, so it landed in Kish.’

But it is also possible to analyze non-engineering systems with the same concept of response time. At least currently, it is practically impossible for an individual to learn a language in a few seconds; it is impossible for species to completely evolve into a new species in a week; and more importantly, it is impossible for a society to change from a dictatorship to a democracy overnight. It takes long term education for millions of people to change their country’s situation, and this education should aim the intrinsic characteristics of the society not just its inputs and outputs, because it is the intrinsic characteristics of a society that to a great deal determine the stable states of that society. A society’s economic trades with other countries, the verdicts its judiciary system issues, its athletic achievement, and so on, all comprise its inputs and outputs. But these inputs and outputs all depend, on the one hand, on the political structure ruling that specific society, and on the other hand, on beliefs, mentalities, and lifestyle of each and every individual living in that society. And here comes my argument: since changing people’s lifestyle and mentalities through consciously adopted policies takes years, decades, or even centuries, it is so naïve to think subverting the political structure of a country through street protests and replacing it with another one would work as a panacea to all country´s problems and brings about an impeccable utopia. The work required to change deep layers of a society cannot be done only through street battles; it takes social activities that lead to personal deliberation of individuals; it takes non-adrenalinogenic protests.

As I said in an earlier post entitled ‘The Greens Are Getting There’, it is not simply the title of the state ruling a country that matters, but the way people actually lead their lives and practice their freedom. Democracy and dictatorship should not be seen simply as titles, but as ways of life. If people only change the title of the state ruling them, they might look satisfied for a while, but it would work like a temporary input that destabilizes the system for a while, but in the long run the system would come to a stable state. What determines a (social) system’s stable states is, again, the characteristics of its element as different from its inputs and outputs. So the Green movement, next to its AP’s, should not forget the NAP’s, as it is the latter type of protests that guaranties steady and reliable changes. What Greens should always pay a special attention to is to slowly establish a shadow government that could thoroughly replace the current Islamic Republic. This shadow government has to be fully-fledged at all social levels and not only at the level of the political structure of the country.

2) Besides using concepts taken from control theory, and system engineering, there is yet another style of argumentation that proves the importance of nonadrenalinogenic protests (NAP’s). If we rightfully see what is going on in Iran as a social battle between Greens and authorities of the Islamic Republic, and if we are pro-Green (which I assume is the case about most readers of this article), then to win this battle, we need to think about different tactics that, if not guarantying our victory, at least make our expectations and ambitions more likely to come true. The first step is to identify different dimensions of this battle. I believe each social battle has two dimension: battle of crowds and battle of concepts. To effectively win a social battle, it is not enough just to win the crowd; rather, each party should also aim at winning socially valued concepts, such as respecting human rights, being concerned about environmental issues, being open-minded, being concerned about social justice, and so on and so forth. The reason why Jesus Christ, Imam Hossein (the 3rd Shiite Imam), or Galileo are not considered as losers despite the fact that they actually lost the crowd at their own time is that they managed to win concepts of equality, freedom, and scientific truth. However, not only could winning socially valued concepts heal the pain of losing the crowd and render the ostensible loser as the true victorious, but also it could help a rivaling party to win the crowd as well. A party showing to be more concerned about what most people value is more likely to attract more supporters, and the other way around. And that is why Greens should become more pro-active when it comes to socially valued concepts. And that is why soon after Ashura protests (on Dec. 27), Greens received so many feedbacks that if they become a bit more violent they might lose their domestic and international supporters, because it might lead to losing the concept battle of peacefulness. Winning socially valued concepts, as a kind of NAP’s, helps Greens not only to be referred to as ‘the good guys’ with the government’s officials’ being referred to as ‘the bad guys’, but also to attract more supporters, most likely from the grey layers of the society, i.e. those who have not completely taken sides between Greens and the government.

Needless to say that the Islamic Republic has long lost the battle over the concept of human rights: Iran’s government has never hesitated to incarcerate, rape, torture, or even murder Greens, and with limiting the internet access, monitoring phone calls, etc., Iran’s officials have shown to what extent they actually go beyond words when it comes to the battle over the concept of freedom of speech. But next to human rights issues and freedom of speech, there are other socially valued concepts that Greens could focus on, and I still believe that “The Greens Are Getting There.” Actually, I have seen some Facebook Green groups and Fan Pages whose aim is not to promote street battles or report the news of Iran’s domestic clashes, but to promote various NAP’s and to help Greens win battles of concepts. Of these Green Facebook groups and Fan pages that deal with NAP’s, I can name Green Environment and Replacing Ethnic Jokes with Basiji Jokes.

I believe that the more Greens pay attention to the battle of concepts, the higher their chance of victory will be. The point about battle of concepts is that sometimes the first rivaling party that shows concerns about a given socially valued concept could set that concept as a criterion to identify between the good and the bad guys. Therefore, socially valued concepts somehow work like an unclaimed treasure. The first one to claim it, would get it. If Greens show they are concerned about environmental issues and promote the related ideas, then this environmentalist value will work as a standard to differentiate between Greens and the Islamic Republic, rendering Greens the good environmentalists and the Islamic Republic as the bad environmental destructionist. 

To recap, I wanted to show that if Greens want to effectively change the structure of Iran’s ruling system, it is really important for them to pursue NAP’s next to their street protests. NAP’s take patience and long term plans, but guarantee a more durable and reliable change.

@Bsalamati
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