Irrationality and our identity
Kambiz Iranpour
I had posted this to another mailing list. I thought that
some may find it informative.
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I seize this opportunity to bring forward some of my old and
new thoughts by
sewing some of the new thoughts to my very old postings. These are
mostly free thoughts, much I am sure are not original and at the
first glance they may appear incoherent and unstructured. But then I
give you the enjoyable task of finding the red thread so you
won't go sleeping :)
I have tried to look on the very surface at the psychology of crisis,
transition and development hurdles which face a country and its people
and the malaise and maladies these bring about, i.e. insecurity,
fundamentalism, identity crisis and also the extreme example: the
birth of fascistic movements. Stitching all these together,
I speak of our own recent history and our identity in the
middle of all this, rather coarsely but these are
my unprocessed thoughts. I know I had to work more on it but
I have had very little time lately. My apologies, and by
all means please attack mercilessly my ideas :)
And this is going to be a very very long thread of thoughts
in which I often seemingly go astray :)
Fundamentalism & Irrationalism
(The machine breaking movement!!)
Remember reading about the machine breaking movement in England ?
It is not anymore hidden that another industrial revolution is
taking its toll and automation eventually is eating into the job market,
thus reducing middle-wage jobs. In Europe unemployment is gaining a strong
foothold in the continent and doesn't any longer solely depend on the
economical upheavals and conjunctures. Unemployment has become a
structural problem. Even in good times, the corporate Europe sheds
weight by reducing the working staff. In U.S., the new jobs are often
created in the low-wage sector of the job market on short term basis.
The losers today are specialized workers similar to the ones in the car
industry. Computers are taking their places and laborers with no specific
industrial background can be trained in a very short time to
replace these people. The real wages are nosing downward
and a sense of insecurity is winning over the hearts.
It is this insecurity hitting the U.S. that helps the populists'
message to pierce through the ears. This is why Buchanan did
comparably well in the primary
or Ross Perot is thinking of running again. Overall, whether it is
in Russia today or the Weimar republic in Germany between
the two world wars, the fast process of old paradigms breaking down,
rapid industrialization, floating social concepts and loss of traditional
moral and economical and cultural reference points, all introduce
inbalance in and the stretching of the system. With the constituent
individuals in the community fearful, they may opt for irrationalism
and from there the appearance of movements of the kinds that appeared
during the two World Wars in Europe may not be that far-fetched !!
Semi-fascistic ideologies and sometimes very popular, feeds on the fear
and insecurity. Still, the pressure which brings these movements
to the afront, building up under these movements may eventually
dethrone them or pressure them to normalize if they come in a power
position, since by their irrationalism these movements
only manage to exacerbate the structural problems. The movements are
pregnant with their own demise. One option for their further development is
their total loss of sense of reality which engages them in a completely
destructive behavior (e.g. the ones led by Hitler or Mussolini.) The other
option is a gradual normalization.
Industrial revolution in England and the introduction of steam machines
in the manufacturing created an uproar against the technology among the
workers. Everyday they saw the loss of their jobs to the newly
introduced machines. The expressions for this insecurity, caused by the
loss of a known paradigm, have taken different forms throughout history.
In England, for two centuries ago, this anxiety and the harsh realities
of the time created the machine-breaking movement; one of the first worker
uprisings.
Even if it seems to be a far analogy, one of the roots to the growth of
fundamentalism may be the same !! Though the nations of the Islamic
countries are labeled more and more as international villains by the
established world
powers, what is happening in many of these countries falls into categories
of similar historical parallels, no more esoteric than what many
want to make it !! To make a perfect enemy of these nations, the logic
of the events are presented as incomprehensible. Yet, the logic clearly isn't
that alien !! To understand the events as the consequences of a past
history, many become implicated and then everybody feels threatened !!
The movements in all of these countries with all their diversities,
have some reconziable
common features. These features can be understood in terms of
development hurdles like preservation of cultural identity, resistance
to change, structural complexities concerning economical relations
and very human parameters as cultural confusion or even psychological
stress due to the introduced rapid changes in the social environment
surrounding the
indviduals. To identify the system we need sometimes to break down the
issues to smaller entities but we should not forget the entirety of the
reality, an interconnected web of relations which have defined the historical
pretext and the present of these social movements. Yet, we have
to mention a few of these factors explicitly. One is the huge demographical
pressure, the other is the information and cultural invasion made
possible by the introduction of the Information Technologies
and the third is the consequences in the ideological realm;
the mingling of nationalism with fundametalism. In many cases
these two share concerns and aspirations and also
share the same anguishes though they may have diagonally different
strategies. This mingling makes the task of painting a classical
picture of people involved difficult.
The patchwork of ideas and emotions makes using the
classical concepts an abuse. Every action is multiple-edged.
Industrialization breaks down the traditional
feudal socio-economic web of production. The social relations
which are based on the old economy dissolves inside the new.
In the third world countries the process from the old to new
came not as an outcome of a natural development, out of the native economies
but as a reality which imposed itself from the outside. The transition from
a feudal economic formation to an industrial one could perhaps
take another millennium if it was to develop by itself !! Everything
then happened in a short historical time span. Urbanization with new cultural
imperatives, new social relations based on urban
life, huge oil revenues and a government
inclined to the free import of cultural values, all created a dangerous
mixture of antagonistic lifestyles in a transitory period of our history.
Many traditional businesses disappeared. When plastic and aluminum utensils
appeared who wanted the products of a copper-smith?
The anxiety for the change and the unknown development and the
nostalgia make people to yearn for the past, making them traditionalists
and conservationist. Our revolution was also a counter-revolution against
the fast industrialization, against
the breaking-down of the social, cultural and economical relations of the
feudalism. The movement started exactly after the land reforms and the white
revolution which tended to remove the agrarian-type economic hinderings for
industrialization. It was designed and encouraged by Americans and was
similar to the reforms forced on Japan by MacArthur after the WWII. Much of
the 1362 uprising exploited the disaffection of the poor with the regime and
the nostalgia for the past. But in essence, at that time, it went against
the land reforms and against giving more rights to women.
The uprising in Afghanistan against the Taraki coup is another example of
how the reforms can be resisted. Those reforms which were introduced by
Khalgh and Parcham parties were actually
tended to modernize the infrastructure of the country and bring the economy
into line with a soviet style statism. This
alienated the clergy and the big land lords. The war was the war of the
agrarian Afghanistan against the urban Afghanistan. Unfortunately
nationalism in Afghanistan and modernization happened under the banner of
communism which gave the clergy and feudals an extra point for
destroying the modernization attempts and made the conflict global by
introducing the rivalry between the soviets and Americans. The whole war
became simply a brick in an imperial play.
In countries with intricate traditional social patterns this fast
industrialization causes cultural conflicts. The social relations needed
by industries and the urbanization put a lot of strain on the cultural
grounds of the country. Metropoles tend to open up to the cosmopolitan
cultural impulses.
This scared the hierarchy among the clergy and also many intellectuals like
a some writers. The outcry of people like jalAl Al Ahmad or plays like "shahre
ghese" dealt with cultural alienation and cultural mutilation that they
believed the new life brought about. It is important to notice
that the rise of fundamentalism in Iran was subtly different from its
rise in Egypt or Algeria. In
Iran it was modernization and its consequences as those mentioned that
resulted in the growth of fundamentalism while in Algeria in addition to that
it is the despair and the standstill that has created the
nostalgia. In Iran, the unstructured fast growth in parts of the economy,
the thoughtless capricious cultural policies and a regime heedless
to the social consequences and tinted with elitistic views on
leading and governing issues, together with
the falling apart of old social structures in a relatively short
time span which cried havoc in the sense of security of many simply brought
the system out of balance. The way to fast development is covered
with pitfalls and lures.
As every
movement needs an ideological glue so does these ones (i.e. resisting
unstructured fast development and modernism), and the most natural
ideologies have been the domestic ones or the politicized religion.
Religious establishments often developed by
feudal standards and its traditionalism are best suited for exploiting
this kind of disaffection and nostalgia . This is specially true when no
democratic alternative is allowed into the open in the Middle East.
The revolution in Iran was a reaction to the social consequences of
changes, particularly when no special social consideration was taken by those
who engineered those changes. Even if, like any other historical event,
fundamentalist
movements are understandable but they are in many ways reactionary
in essence, since the
nucleus of their ideology is resisting a renewal of socio-economic
structure. They often speak of guarding the cultural heritage attacked by
alien cultures and are driven by xenophobia in encountering foreign
cultures. The
essence of these reactions is the inertia in the society for moving
forward, inherent in every society. But since the urge for moving does not
come in a natural pace from the inside, like the one in the developed
countries, but are exerted from the outside, it simply creates an uproar
when it becomes too much to take. Where the limit goes
depends on the historical constraints, cultural heritage, religious tolerance
and overall traditions. This is also true in the modern societies where the
developed countries push each other forward as an aggregate. It is not always
easy to get peasants in France to agree peacefully with GATT or EU decisions
even if the general impact of those policies maybe good for France or for
the farmers in a long run.
As an example on resistance to change let us look at the opposition
against European Union (EU) in Norway. It is not easy to get Norway
into EU as long as
people does not grasp the inevitability of it. For example Opponents
of EU in Norway talk about losing their cultural heritage
in the case of entering into the EU. The anti-EU movements have even
become fanatical and acquired religious dimensions as some
groups have declared the EU as Anti-Christ (analogous to Dajal).
The real reason
is the fear for changes which may remove the subsidies to the agrarian areas!
Then there is no wonder that the protest movement in Iran took those
dimensions (Industrial growth in the 70s in Iran were up to 16%) where
the land reforms caused millions to migrate to the cities. In the developed
societies the pace of changes are less and there is the political mechanism
which subtly adjust and take into account the grass-root movements
in order to avoid explosive events. They have all these polls everyday!
I also mentioned the rise of Fundamentalism in countries
where it actually seems that there is a standstill in economy- no moving
forward. It may look a paradox but it is not. There has actually been changes
and great ones in the social and economical structures of these countries too
(like Algeria). First of all there are the demographical changes.
The traditional economies can not anymore sustain the population growth.
Specially there is this migration to the cities from the agrarian regions
which is common to many of the third world countries. In a country
like Algeria the
fall of the oil prices in the 80s was the last straw. Population growth has
inflated the cities with unemployed youth who are the first prays for the
fundamentalists, this because of their desperate situation and a future
without hope.
The higher interest rates on foreign borrowings in the start of 80s and
the general deflated international economy created similar problems
for countries like Egypt (even if some of the Egypt's foreign loans where
written off after the operation desert storm, Egypt has lost more by the return
of Egyptian guest workers from Iraq and Kuwait. As democratic alternatives
have been nonexistent or have failed in the region, people have gone for
the liberation theology and as the established theology has not evolved
as a liberation ideology the outcome can not be exactly liberation in
its classical definition!!!
These are a few of those reasons that why while 30 years
ago it was nationalism or panArabism which swept over the Middle East today
it is fundamentalism (nationalism gone astray) has taken its place.
A historical review of Iranian revolution shows that
evenif it was economical growth which was primary in bringing about social
unrest, however, the secondry effect of this economical transformation was at
least as important. Though it is naive to look at the psychological
ground as an independent phenomenon, yet without the knowledge of the
socialpsychology the cause of Iranian revolution may appear vague.
Iran at the time was the most liberal in the middle east and with a growing
economy. Nobody could foresee that an Islamic revolution would start from
there. But Iranian revolution was first of all also a reevaluation of the
values. An idelogical backlash against the introduction of modernity and the
values of a modern society.The value system of our society was based on the
pathernalistic rural value system with its collectivism. In a modern post
industrial society it is not the collective values which rule but
individualism. The cultural texture is defined according to this
individualism.
An individual in a modern society is much more aggressive against the
society and the collective values than in a rural economy.
He/she is always in offensive to protect himself and to make it through.
It is competting at all levels. In this urban value system the sense of
belonging to a family and to a clan disappears. The modern man is
fearful and anxious to have lost this sense of belonging and anchorage.
He/she is alone. It is the reason that at times of crises
social outcasts and even the whole populations appear to seek
autority and security by an urge to be led in order
to acquire pathernal protection! Mass movements are often
mass neurosis! They are brought about by the fear of a common loneliness
and anxiety.
Nationalism, ideological or religious belief, war and etc. ease this anxiety.
It creates a sense of belonging to a common cause or community. Freedom is not
always taken positively. It gives the plague of choice, making the
future not anymore predestined but vague and insecure. Many lose their sense of
purposefulness when becoming absolutely responsible for their own actions.
Don't we often seek some kind of moral authority by believing in some cause
or something to give us a sense of purposefulness ? I guess the concious
or unconcious attempt by journalists or politicians in the industrialized
countries to create an ideological enemy in Islam by replacing
communism with it and the
revival of a form of ideological crusade also is a search for keeping the
cohesiveness among the populace in these countries through lashing up a
tribal sense of kinship.
During the Shah regime millions of people lost their secure rural
habitat and migrated to the faceless cities with an unknown future.
It was this initialization and the process of being born again as
a modern individual which became so deadly for Iran in entering the
modern age. The cultural and the psychological interia
was not calculated by a regime which feared the social
sciences on the ground that they could in theory criticize
the oligarchy and their elitism.
In today's Algeria or Egypt there is also this helplessness and the anxiety
for the future of a young generation which is the dynamo for the growth of
fundametalism. Overpopulation and the bleak economical prognosis in
no way ease this initialization to an urban modern economy. The backlash
was bound to happen.
More than half of the population of these countries are under 20. The
question is whether fundamentalism solve any of the structural problems
these countries are grappling with? The reality will dethrone these
ideologies as long as they have no answers to real problems.
Best regards
Kambiz Iranpour
Comp...@jk-o.demon.co.uk
m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no "Kambiz Iranpour" writes:
> As an example on resistance to change let us look at the opposition
> against European Union (EU) in Norway. It is not easy to get Norway
> into EU as long as
> people does not grasp the inevitability of it. For example Opponents
> of EU in Norway talk about losing their cultural heritage
> in the case of entering into the EU. The anti-EU movements have even
> become fanatical and acquired religious dimensions as some
> groups have declared the EU as Anti-Christ (analogous to Dajal).
> The real reason
> is the fear for changes which may remove the subsidies to the agrarian areas!
>
> Best regards
> Kambiz Iranpour
So, isn't it a fanatical view to promote the idea of Norway sharing her
rich fishing grounds with hundreds of millions of EU-citizens, and at the
same time write off most of Norwegian agriculture? For the same reason
( ie. fishing rights ) Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Isles are not in
the EU!
There is nothing inevitable about Norway or for that matter Switzerland
joining the EU. The will of the people is expressed through a referendum.
On two occasions Norwegians have voted NO, and the Swiss have even refused
to enter into an association agreement with the EU.
The Treaty of Rome is a stumbling block to sovereignty. Swiss democracy
enjoys an enviable track record, so it makes no sense at all to jeopardize
that part of Swiss identity through ceding power to Bruxelles. And the
separate identity of Norwegians is emphasized in the Norwegian national
anthem, which proudly announces how the people of Norway 'talte Roma mitt
imot'. Although this refers to the Reformation, you should not take it
for granted that Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson's choice of words was totally
unrelated to the political situation this century :-)
--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen