Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Is 42 the only thing that aliens and the answer to the question of the meaning of life have in common?
Some people tend to think that philosophers get together and with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in their hands try to find an answer to the question of the meaning of life. But if you ask most philosophers what they think about the meaning of life, an empty look would perhaps be the best reply you get. Then again, when we disengage ourselves for a minute from things like poking people on Facebook or favoring others’ tweets and instead start thinking ‘What the hell am I doing in my life?’ or ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’, most of us would conclude that what we really value is living a meaningful life. A meaningful life perhaps for us is even more valuable than a happy life. So we come to the conclusion that if living a meaningful life is such an important thing for us and presumably for other Homo sapiens, there should be someone, some group of people who have found the answer to the meaning of life question. So we try asking the question of philosophers again. And we get disappointed. Again!
One of the reasons why, at least for some of us, looking for the answer to the meaning of life question becomes a hopeless pursuit is that we may not know what to look for. Consider these answers. A chair! Can the answer to the meaning of life question be a chair? Can it be an object? Imagine someone telling you that she has found the meaning of life and now she is keeping it in her closet. Can the meaning of life be in the form of a number? Like 42? Can it be a word? A song? Or a religious hymn? Can what makes life meaningful be a person? Imagine a person telling you that they have got the meaning of life with them, and thanks to their existence, your life is now meaningful.
The meaning of life question is not the only one which not only do we not know its answer, but also we do not know how to look for the answer. Trying to look for aliens in the universe has a similar problem: if we want to look for aliens, what should we look for? Should we look for things/sentients that are more or less similar to us? Should they have eyes and ears? Can aliens not have similar biological organs as us? Can they not look like some animals, say, kangaroos? Can aliens not be living organisms? A rock! Can an alien look like a piece of rock? Without even moving!? How about a star? Can aliens be in the form of stars? Imagine something like our sun be an alien!
What the task of finding the meaning of life and that of finding aliens in the universe have in common is that we may not have a clear idea of what we should look for. But another similarity between these questions is that we’ll get to know parts of the answer by asking yet another question: ‘What do we want to do with the answer?’ If we encounter an alien, what do we want to do with it? If we find the meaning of life, what do we want to do with it?
In the case of looking for aliens, the answer would be something like this: we try to communicate with them. Perhaps they know things about the universe that we don’t know. Or together with the aliens, we can solve some of our planetary or even galactic problems. But if these are the answers we give to the question ‘what do we want to do with aliens?’, then we already have some ideas about the answer to the question ‘what should aliens look like?’ as well. If we expect them to be able to somehow communicate with us, then aliens cannot be just a piece of rock, or a star. They cannot be kangaroos either. They may not be alive in the precise biological sense that we earthlings are, but what they should have is a certain level of intelligence that enables us communicate with them, even if the communication is very basic. Here the point is that we get to know how to look for something by know what we expect to do with it when we find it.
In the same way, the answer that we give to the question ‘what do we want to do with the meaning of life?’ can help us answer the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ or ‘what life is a meaningful one?’ So, the answer to the meaning of life question cannot be an object or a number because we do not want to hide the meaning of life in our closet or multiply it by two to double the amount of meaning in our lives. The reason why we are curious to know about the meaning of life is that we want to live a meaningful life: a meaningful life should be something livable. So the meaning of life should be in our everyday activities. Someone who sits at a corner for their entire life without learning or doing anything, without travelling or getting that much curious about anything, etc. does not have a very meaningful life simply because he or she does not engage in many activities. On the other hand, someone who consciously decides to explore different places, learn different skills, play games, interact with people at different levels, etc. would "probably" have a more meaningful life compared to the first person. There might be more into a meaningful life than the sheer engagement in various activities. But if there is an answer to the meaning of life question, it should be found in relation to our everyday life activities. The meaning of life cannot be in one sentence, one person, a place, an object, or a number.
Other than 42, there are other things that aliens and the question of the meaning of life have in common. We can find out how to look for their answers by thinking about what we want to do with them. Sometimes in life, before starting to search for something, we can first ask ourselves ‘what do I want to do with it when I find it?’ The answer which we give to this second question can help us find the answer to the first question. This method of thinking, by the way, is called "pragmatism".
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Tuesday, May 24, 2011
A letter from a group of Iran's Green Movement's Twitter activists to the brave people of Syria
'
Our Dear Syrian brothers and sisters,
The path to free a nation from dictatorship has always been a costly, yet an immortal and laudable communal experience. It is now two months that YOU, Syrian people, have been walking on this path and thus marking this era with your ongoing revolution. In fact, each and every single one of you, as well as your revolutionary movement as a whole, is writing history in a glorious way; a history full of tears, hope, blood, and heroism. Though the beginning is dark and the path is unpaved, the destination is bright and the cause is encouraging. The entire world is witnessing brutalities of Al Assad's regime and is extolling the virtues of your struggle, the Syrians, who are fighting for liberty, justice, and for what any individual on this planet deserves to have.
Millions of Iranians have started a similar path as you and have experienced similar, yet not exactly the same, kind of brutality from another oppressive regime which unsurprisingly is a close ally and shameful supporter of the Syrian government. The images from Homs and Daraa or those from Tehran University dormitories and Azadi Square are now part of our identity. The brave people of Syria and Iran have decided that it was time to end the era of dictatorship. In this journey, Syrians and Iranians are all together. Our future is interwoven with yours and any step forward by either of us will pave the road for the other as well. We sure hope we could start helping each other on this path and brag about the strength of our unity to Khamenei's and Al Assad's regimes.
As a group of cyber activists, we would like to address Syrian cyber activists in particular as well. We are defying tyrannies that have unlimited resources to feed their propaganda machines. So we should take full advantage of social media across the Internet, if we want to make up for our shortage of domestic mass media. There are many possibilities of mutually beneficial cooperation that are waiting for us to be explored. Through the power of our collective intelligence, we could spread the voice of our oppressed brothers and sisters across the world. By mutualising our networks, our artistic and organizational contributions, we could come up with creative ideas to achieve our goals and more effectively pay our contribution to the Iranians' and Syrians' movements.
United we stand with you Syria!
V
A group of Iran's Green movement's Twitter activists
Source:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vzkJOBMxP7F0HBFzJrKOrJl154T0NcQSlhNpd0yeuvE/edit?hl=nl#
Our Dear Syrian brothers and sisters,
The path to free a nation from dictatorship has always been a costly, yet an immortal and laudable communal experience. It is now two months that YOU, Syrian people, have been walking on this path and thus marking this era with your ongoing revolution. In fact, each and every single one of you, as well as your revolutionary movement as a whole, is writing history in a glorious way; a history full of tears, hope, blood, and heroism. Though the beginning is dark and the path is unpaved, the destination is bright and the cause is encouraging. The entire world is witnessing brutalities of Al Assad's regime and is extolling the virtues of your struggle, the Syrians, who are fighting for liberty, justice, and for what any individual on this planet deserves to have.
Millions of Iranians have started a similar path as you and have experienced similar, yet not exactly the same, kind of brutality from another oppressive regime which unsurprisingly is a close ally and shameful supporter of the Syrian government. The images from Homs and Daraa or those from Tehran University dormitories and Azadi Square are now part of our identity. The brave people of Syria and Iran have decided that it was time to end the era of dictatorship. In this journey, Syrians and Iranians are all together. Our future is interwoven with yours and any step forward by either of us will pave the road for the other as well. We sure hope we could start helping each other on this path and brag about the strength of our unity to Khamenei's and Al Assad's regimes.
As a group of cyber activists, we would like to address Syrian cyber activists in particular as well. We are defying tyrannies that have unlimited resources to feed their propaganda machines. So we should take full advantage of social media across the Internet, if we want to make up for our shortage of domestic mass media. There are many possibilities of mutually beneficial cooperation that are waiting for us to be explored. Through the power of our collective intelligence, we could spread the voice of our oppressed brothers and sisters across the world. By mutualising our networks, our artistic and organizational contributions, we could come up with creative ideas to achieve our goals and more effectively pay our contribution to the Iranians' and Syrians' movements.
United we stand with you Syria!
V
A group of Iran's Green movement's Twitter activists
Source:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vzkJOBMxP7F0HBFzJrKOrJl154T0NcQSlhNpd0yeuvE/edit?hl=nl#
Friday, March 12, 2010
On the Necessity of Non-Adrenalinogenic Protests
`
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
.
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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Sunday, January 24, 2010
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.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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?”
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.
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