Twenty Factors Behind Iranians' Backwardness, Mostafa Malekian

Mostafa Malekian: Over the past hundred years, those who have spoken and studied about society's problems have usually explored the set of causes and factors that have created all these scientific problems and theoretical issues for society, and the helplessness and misery of our society, along three main axes. The first axis has been the intervention of foreign countries, colonialism, and various forms of domination. The second point has been the ruling political regimes, and the third issue has been the people's conception of religion. These three factors have been emphasized more so far, and depending on different perspectives, one of these factors has been stressed more. Although there is usually no one who has denied the other two factors. But the issue that is more important than these three factors is the cultural condition of the people. In other words, the cultural pathology of the Iranian people, and what undesirable things have become entrenched in their minds and consciousness from a cultural standpoint. Therefore, my words do not mean a denial of the other three factors. But the emphasis is that our cultural attitudes are more important than that. Regarding cultural attitudes, I also have a dual interpretation. I believe that when it is said "it is from us that is upon us," and when it is said that we must change from within, two types of change are meant, and I will address one type. Sometimes when it is said that we must change, it means that as long as we do not have sound moral behavior, our situation will not improve, and this point is made that the ultimate and eschatological benefit lies entirely in living ethically. This ethical living is one of the two parts of the matter I am referring to. But the cultural condition does not depend on our ethical discussion; it also depends on a series of mental attitudes, and I want to address these mental attitudes. Mental attitudes are things that have become entrenched in us, consciously or unconsciously, and we are under the influence of these attitudes in all our actions and reactions, which do not necessarily have a moral aspect, and to change them, our moral behavior does not need to change. On the contrary, it is these attitudes that pull our morality toward unhealthiness. These attitudes could be discussed under the title of the sociology of the Iranian people. But the subject of my discussion is not about the sociology of contemporary Iran. In other words, I am not entering into the discussion that a branch of psychology is the psychology of peoples, and a branch of sociology and psychology relates to peoples. Therefore, these words should not be placed alongside Siegfried's book *The Spirit of Nations* or the writings of the late Bazargan, who said Siegfried did not address the spirit of the Iranian nation, and I will address the spirit of the Iranian nation to make it a more complete work. Regarding that part of cultural issues related to the attitudes of Iranians, I have enumerated twenty factors. My arguments on these matters are also mostly introspective. That is, the audience must look within themselves and see if such a state exists in them, and if it does, it can be said that the speech is on the right track.

Twenty Factors Behind Iranians' Backwardness

1- Prejudice

The first characteristic that exists in us is abundant prejudices toward many matters. If each of us looks within ourselves, we see numerous prejudices. These prejudices have many negative effects on our social actions and reactions. Usually, when prejudice is mentioned, negative prejudice is mostly what is considered, but the destructive effects of prejudice are not limited to negative prejudice. Positive prejudices also have their own destructive effects. Including the misplaced optimism we have toward certain individuals, strata, and social layers.

2- Dogmatism and Rigidity

A kind of dogmatism and rigidity has taken root in us. I have no psychological or historical research at all on why the Iranian nation is so prone to dogmatism and rigidity. That is to say, the reality of it is undeniable to me, even though explaining it is beyond my reach. What exists within us, which is described as dogmatism and rigidity, is that our belief has an appendage. That is, we may believe that a certain proposition is true—this is healthy—but if we believe that it is impossible for that proposition not to be true, this “impossibility” turns a person into a dogmatic human being. And it is rare for us to believe something without an “impossibility” being attached to that belief. In other words, when we hold the opinion that a certain proposition is correct, we hold a second opinion that it is inescapable for that proposition not to be correct.

3. Superstition

Another characteristic of ours is superstition, both superstition in a religious and denominational context and in non-religious and non-denominational contexts. Superstition in a religious context means something that was not in the religion and has been introduced into it. But more importantly, we are also superstitious in the secular sense of the word. Superstition in the sense of believing in ideas for which there is no evidence in their favor, yet we still hold onto those ideas. These three issues can be considered the three offspring of our aversion to reasoning. Whoever is not given to reasoning is given to these three; therefore, the solution to curing these three is strengthening the spirit of rationalism.

4. Valuing the Judgments of Others About Oneself

We rarely live in the “self” that we imagine for ourselves, and our attention is always on the “self” that others imagine of us, and our scale is always outside of us. This valuing of the judgments of others is the root cause of a series of cultural problems in our society.

5. Conformity with the Crowd

The fifth point arises from the fourth, in the sense that we have never been able to speak in opposition to the crowd we deal with; what has always been important to us is conforming to the crowd.

6. Susceptibility to Indoctrination

Indoctrination means expressing one opinion and not expressing opposing opinions, and exposing the audience solely to that opinion. Whenever, in the face of any belief, you also seek out the views of its opponents, it shows that you are not susceptible to indoctrination. Susceptibility to indoctrination means accepting a single voice.

7. Susceptibility to Suggestion

Susceptibility to suggestion is psychologically different from susceptibility to indoctrination. In suggestion, an opinion is repeated so much that repetition takes the place of reason. If I say a certain proposition is correct, you expect a reason from me, but instead of providing a reason, I repeat that proposition 200 times, and gradually we come to think that repeating the claim takes the place of reason. That is, instead of adducing a reason, the claim itself is repeated, and this is an art that exists in propaganda or agitation. The fact that when the media falls into the hands of powers, they become happy, is due to the existence of this very spirit of susceptibility to suggestion among the people. Otherwise, if a nation were not susceptible to suggestion, no matter what the media said, since they would constantly demand reasons, no one would express happiness at taking control of radio and television.

8. Imitation

By imitation I do not mean what is meant in jurisprudence. I mean imitation in its psychological sense. That is, consciously or unconsciously being under the model of another person. That is, I make myself like you, I seek to resemble you, and imitation means I have taken you as a model. What is said in mysticism, that you should seek resemblance to God, if we do this with human beings it is called imitation, and this imitation is also condemned in religions, sects, and mysticism.

9- Subservience

Subservience means accepting a statement solely because a certain person has said it. That is, if the argumentative form in my mind does not trouble me that a certain proposition is correct because a certain person has said that proposition is correct, I am a person of subservience. There is a verse in the Quran that is usually less frequently quoted: "They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords apart from God..." which is about the clergy of the Christians and Jews, and it frequently says that the Jews and Christians worshipped their clergy, whether "apart from God" means instead of God or in addition to God. A companion asks Imam Baqir, did they really worship them? The Imam replies, it is never like that; the Christian clergy did not tell the people to worship us, and even if they had said so, no one would have worshipped them. But the reason the Quran attributes this to them is that they behaved toward their clergy in the way they should have behaved toward God. The set of factors in the second category stems from a single act, and that is that we do not have an authentic life. An authentic life, in the terms of humanistic psychologists and in the terms of mystics, means living based on one's own understanding and discernment. An authentic life is only lived by those who possess two assets: reason in theoretical matters and conscience in practical matters.

10- Personality Worship

Few peoples are as prone to personality worship as we are, and personality worship is nothing other than a personality presenting themselves to us, and we, out of delusion, attribute to them the good qualities we do not see in the life around us, and we make them great by our own hands.

11- Fanaticism

Fanaticism is on the same horizon as personality worship. Fanaticism means clinging to what we have and not looking at the many things we do not have. If I become infatuated with what I have and think it also takes the place of what I lack, I have become fanatical about it, and this is where I develop two views toward those who are not loyal to it. One group becomes insiders and another group becomes outsiders. The Quran has rejected insider and outsider distinctions, for it says about love and hatred: when you are enemies with a group, let not your enmity cause you to forget justice and fairness concerning them. About friendship, it also says: do not let the zeal of ignorance seize you. The zeal of ignorance means that because someone is from my tribe, I take his side whether he is an oppressor or just. In other words, his own characteristics are not important; rather, his affiliative characteristics are important.

12- Belief in Chosenness

Each of us, if we look into ourselves, sees that we somehow think we are somehow favored by God. That is, it is true that our situation may be hanging by a thread, but it will not break, and most negligence and carelessness stem from this very point. Leibniz had a term he used for other cases. This term was pre-established harmony, meaning as if all matters have been settled in advance, but it seems we hold this pre-established harmony to be true regarding ourselves.

13- Not Learning from the Past

After the humanitarian actions of figures like Mandela and Václav Havel, and the efforts of humanitarians who worked on the culturalization of politics, we have often heard the phrases forgive and forget, or forgive and don't forget. But the story is that if you forgive and forget, you will be struck from the same place again. Healthy human beings are those who can, inwardly, forgive their greatest enemies emotionally, because one must forgive emotionally, but one must not forget mentally. Unfortunately, we do the opposite: we do not forgive emotionally, and vengefulness remains alive within us, yet we forget mentally, because our nation's historical memory is very slow and blurred.

14- Not Taking Life Seriously

Socrates asked us to take life seriously while maintaining a sense of humor. Those who take life seriously believe in two points. 1- Believing in being an exception to the laws governing the world. The reason for every instance of not taking things seriously is not considering oneself an exception to the laws of existence.

2- Proportionality in affairs Psychologists have a term with this meaning: a person must be able to weigh the importance of matters relative to one another. People who do not take life seriously abandon more important things for important ones. There are many people who make no tactical errors throughout life but commit a massive strategic error; that is, they lose the whole of life but are obsessive about minutiae.

15- A Vulgar View of Work

Few peoples' view of work is as vulgar as our view of work. We want work only for income, and therefore, if we could obtain income through idleness as well, we would not welcome work. In reality, we consider work unavoidable, whereas we should hold the view of Rumi regarding work, who believed that work is the essence of the human being.

16- Not Believing in Ascetic Discipline

Ascetic discipline here does not mean what ascetics do; ascetic discipline means that in life, one cannot have everything, so one must sacrifice some things to obtain more valuable ones. Our ancients said the world is a realm of conflict, meaning all virtues cannot be gathered in one place. In the words of Nima Yushij, until you give things away, they will not give you a thing. In European languages, sanctity comes from the root of sacrifice. Christian mystics said that sacrifice and sanctity share the same root because sanctity is not attained except at the price of losing many things. But we want to have everything, and when our view of work is like that, our view of consumption also becomes like this and causes us to suffer from consumerism. When we raise the issue of consumerism, they raise the point that you are unaware of the state of society and poverty. It must be said that consumerism is a viewpoint, not a possibility. That is, even a poor person says in their heart, 'I wish I had more and could consume more.' Which one of us is willing to suffice with the bare necessities for the sake of our ideals? This consumerism drags us into baseness; if we only had the necessities of life, we would not be forced to grovel.

17- The Loss of the Faculty of Distinguishing Between the Pleasant and the Expedient

A people who see short-term interests and lack the ability to see long-term interests are susceptible to being deceived. The reason for the success of populist policies in the country, which have also become prevalent in the last year, is this failure to see long-term interests. When long-term interests are not seen, short-term interests are secured at the cost of long-term misery and misfortune.

18- Verbosity

We are, quite contrary to what is said in religions and creeds, verbose and talkative. It is narrated that mystics also had spiritual exchange in silence, but we are a loquacious nation, and the easiest thing for us is to talk.

19- Aphasia of Language

Worse than our loquacity is our aphasia of language. Aphasia of language means that a person does not even understand their own words; that is, if a psychological analysis were conducted on our speech, some sentences would have no meaning at all. Everyone's words are like movie sets, which during the film are full of forts and castles, but collapse when pressure is applied. In other words, our words have no backing, and all of us, from top to bottom, speak nonsense. And for this very reason, we are so mentally scattered. Those who suffer from mental wandering must first refine their language. That is, they must speak with understanding and demand comprehensible speech from the other party. Noam Chomsky, to prove that not every sentence whose syntactic and morphological rules are observed is meaningful, would utter sentences; for example, he would say: "The brother of our triangle has fallen in love with your oval." Its morphological and syntactic rules are observed, but it is meaningless.

20- Superficiality

Superficiality has cast a shadow over all our affairs due to the dominance of a jurisprudential spirit in religion. That is, instead of paying attention to the value and motivation of an action, we are captivated by appearances. This superficiality prepares us for deception by appearances. Wherever ethics, mysticism, and psychology are sacrificed for jurisprudence and outward forms, this spirit prevails.

In conclusion, I have a suggestion that contains two points:

First, regarding each of the issues raised, let us think about whether it is true or not. If it is true, the first thing to do is to examine it in ourselves personally. That is, let us not turn these points into a magnifying glass and focus it on others, but first focus the magnifying glass on ourselves. Second, if the matters stated are true, intellectuals and social reformers, instead of always flattering the people and thinking that all problems are due to the political regime, must stop flattering the people and tell the people: because you are like this, the rulers are also like that. Rulers are born of this culture; a society whose culture is like this will inevitably have politics like that and an economy like that. It is a mistake for intellectuals and social reformers, in seeking popularity and social standing, to flatter the people and say that the people have no faults or flaws, because the political regime is born of the people, and a better political regime requires a better culture.

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Twenty Factors Behind Iranians' Backwardness

Author: Mostafa Malekian

Source: Mah-e No Magazine (Mehregan Special Issue), publication of the Islamic Association of the Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Mehr 1387

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