Being Free or Feeling Free

1
Which one is more important: the right “to be free” or the right “to be alive”? What about the right to “be happy”. What is the point of living or freedom if you are feeling horrible? Wouldn’t we all (or most of us) prefer to be happy but not really free? It seems that the right to have a happy life is the most important goal for the majority of people.

2
If we believe that human behavior is determined by external causes, the process of decision making also becomes a part of this chain of cause and effects and there wouldn’t be such a thing as “free choice” in an ultimate analysis.
Some people might argue that humans can get out of the vicious circle of causes and effects by the help of their conscious decisions. Even if we accept the argument, the majority of people don’t want to go for “conscience choice”; not only don’t they want to be ruling other people’s destiny, but also they don’t want to take charge of their own life. I have the slightest idea about lots of critical scientific issues and I might not be even interested to read about them. Most of the people are like me and there is a minority of scientists who rule and define the field. That is the same with politics. The majority of people can’t or don’t want to take control of their political destiny.

3
We still can practice some sort of political freedom which can be translated to “being legally allowed to”; through liberal political system, a society gives an arbitrary definition for “self” and “other” first, and then prevents any physical force by “other” on “self”. This type of freedom sets the “self” free from lots of external causes (for example other’s physical force, other’s legal privilege, etc.);

4
I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but there is still one untreatable problem with this type of political freedom; it stays helpless about elusive forces such as the force of persuasion which easily acts as an external force. I call this problem an untreatable one, since those Utopians (I can think of religious states and communism) who tried to cure it, ended up with tyranny.
I don’t see any alternative for liberal political system, but I am wondering if this system provides us with freedom or makes us feel free?!

Discourse on Method

1
In my previous post on “zero privilege” I mentioned that "the western culture is an organic whole and in order to acquire one part of it, we have to accept other parts as well”. I think this statement is too vague to be defendable and useful. In that post, I was trying to understand the essential element(s) of the modern western culture and to examine the kind of association between these elements. If I find an imperative associate between these elements, I refer them as an organic whole and a package deal.

2
I think there is confusion among Iranians (including me) in their discourse on modernization. Iranian intellectuals started pondering on modernization when they found their culture dysfunctional in confrontation with Europeans. Accordingly, it seems to be normal to use terms such as “westernization” and “modernization” instead of talking about the “exact nature of Iranian cultural problem” and the “exact nature of Iranians’ desired/alternative culture”. In order to revise our methodology on this issue (which is the most important issue for Iranian intellectuals), I think we have to clarify: A) what are the Xs’ we want to achieve? B) Why do we want to achieve Xs’?

A) By saying that we want to be “modern”, we are not giving any defined information about what we want. We have to pin point what we want to gain in our cultural/social strive; democracy? Economic prosperity? Or social order? If we define our Xs’, we don’t need to talk about vague concepts such as modernity or tradition as our goal, and we will switch the discourse from “modernization” to X-ization (i.e. “Democratization”, “liberalization”, etc.)
B) We have to clarify the reason we are interest in the Xs’. Are we interested in democracy since it is the dominant political paradigm of the day (and we have to accept it even if we don’t like it) or because it is desirable for us? If the acquired Xs’ are also desirable for us, we don’t have to talk about unclear concepts of the west and westernization, and we will again switch the discourse from “westernization” to X-ization.

3
We have to clarify the “imperative condition for the possibility of Xs" as well. What are the imperative “states of mind” and “states of affair” for our desired/doomed Xs’? Are they just historically associated or imperatively related? For example, if our desired/doomed X is democracy, is it necessarily associated with religious tolerance (sate of mind) or free trade (state of affair)? Or are they just possible routs to democracy?

Political Paranoia

My parents came from Iran last week and I am having a refreshing course on Iranian's political psyche. We talk about lots of different issues and my father's political analysis follows the same rules over and over again. I am trying to list the main principles of his approach:

1—Impossibility of political understanding: My father believes that politics is so complicated which makes any political analysis absurd. Accordingly, he doesn't give any credit to anyone who tries to explain the political events through understandable terms (there should be some behind-the-scene talks and invisible hands as the main cause of any political event).

2— Shadow government is the most important element of [political] power: In all his analysis, my father gives the most important role to governments. The nature of government in his mind is ambiguous (rather mysterious) and is similar to the concept of a mafia type shadow government.

3— The world is ruled by three main powers: America, Britain and Russia. My father may agree to add China to the equation; however, he wouldn't negotiation on the omnipotent nature of these powers; he believes that there is no possibility of political mistake by these powers (and of course by referring to these powers, he is meaning shadow governments). Accordingly, everything (including the stuff going on in Iran) is precisely calculated by these political powers.

My father’s political mindset reminds me of the Iranians I knew back in Iran. In the States, we refer to this type of political approach as “conspiracy theory”. I prefer to refer to this mindset as “Political Paranoia” instead, and I think it deeply influences the political psyche of Iranians. I am trying to think if Iranians' religious tendencies are as decisive as their political paranoia…I am still thinking…

Synthesis or Antithesis

1
Religious intellectuals in Iran are the synthesis of a confrontation- confrontation of traditional Islam and the modern era. They want to be modern without sacrifying their piety. In this perspective, it is important to see how [far] modern these intellectuals are, in order to examine the success of their project.

2
What is the real nature of modernity? We can list the achievements of the new era (science, rule of law, democracy, etc.), but is it possible to trace these attributions back to some basic mind-sets as the “adequate basis for modernity”?
Some people try to show that modernity is not standing on anything and is just a dynamic force of negation. It is in this context that they put freedom as the real nature of modernity, since freedom is nothing but “being allowed to do…” and it doesn’t provide any content. It is the same with rationality which is “being congruent with…” You can fill the blank as you wish and it doesn’t really jeopardize our definition of freedom and rationality.

3
I don’t think that modernity is just about frameworks and I believe it provides some contents as well. I see continuity and order in modernity, which I can not explain it just with a void framework. I think beyond the modernity’s respect for freedom or congruity, there is a grater respect for individual’s values and drives, namely “individualism”. Rationality is nothing but congruity of “individuals’” drives and perceptions; and freedom is targeted to “individuals’” will. According to this model, individualism takes precedence to rationalism or liberalism.

4
Iranian religious intellectuals are willing to adopt some achievements of modernity; however, as long as they haven’t adopted the humanistic backbone of modernity, they won’t succeed in their project of modernization.
These intellectuals are quit bashful when it comes to deciding about “individualism”. They talk about the crisis of morality in the west and bring up post modern thinkers to support (or cover up!) their fear of a “full-fledge modernization”. I think all of these criticisms are nothing but defeating the entire purpose of Muslim intellectualism.

5
I think it is easy to sense a “latent individualism” in Dr. Soroush’s “doctrine of temporal interpretation of Islam” (and probably that is why it makes fundamentalis mullas frearful). The activation of this latent individaulism depends on lots of different causes and conditions with a little share left for intellectuals. However, as far as logose is concened, religious intellectuals should stop being bashing about individualism.