Let us take the word undignifying to point to a certain behavioral pattern when someone strips the other off its dignity and behaves accordingly. Undignifying is based on a perceptual pattern, giving birth to personal and social behaviors that have been established as normal in many societies, including the Iranian society in this age. Let us look at some examples to make undignifying more visible:
- Through out the life of the government that calls itself Islamic Republic of Iran, the society has been divided to us and not-us, in their own words Hezbollahi (the party of Allah) and Taghooti (on the wrong-path). The first party has been systematically undignifying the other side in the name of implementing Islamic values. A few examples that I have experienced personally are, cutting the long hair of boys and men in public, taking and ripping off “American” baseball caps, searching cars and breaking music cassettes, extensive body search in schools and universities for no specific reason, physical and verbal violence towards men and women who do not follow the enforced dress codes.
- Behavior of the colonisers with the local and indigenous people of the colonized countries, in American continent, India, Africa, South Asia and everywhere else.
- Behavior of the occupiers and apartheid regimes, for example in south Africa or occupied Palestine towards the local people.
- Enforcing the removal of Islamic hijab in Iran and Turkey.
- During the “Covid” period, behavior of institutions of political, scientific and economical power towards those who did not agree with the implemented policies.
- At a deeper level, the posture of the modern man towards the not-yet-civilized.
- The behavior of the freedom-fighters in Iran, showing physical and verbal violence towards mullahs and supporters of the establishment.
All these examples arise from the same pattern, when a person or a group of humans consider themselves at a higher state than the other, a higher level of truth, knowledge, faith, evolution, quality of race etc… Lower ego, or undeveloped personality, uses that unjust perception to justify undignifying the other. While recognizing dignity in the other translates into qualities such as respect, tolerance, kindness, patience and a sense of wonder, undignifying opens the door to behaving with disrespect, intolerance, violence, impatience and arrogance.
Where does the need to undignifying the other comes from?
With an undeveloped personality, where there is no recognition of the presence of an absolute source of truth and beauty in every being, the ego is prone to self-righteousness, perceiving itself as totally correct and morally superior to the others and specially the enemy. By not knowing its natural position in relation to the great spirit, it allows itself to define the level of the dignity of the other, and behaving according to its own measures.
Now let us look at the situation in Iran. Undignifying has been one of the major behavioral patterns of a government that is justly labeled as a dictatorship. In fact, one can claim that the undignifying behavior itself gives birth to the dictatorship. If the society’s desired change is about stepping over the dictatorship to a space where qualities such as tolerance, respect for the other, and kindness can be embraced, the way forward would include stepping over the behavioral pattern of undignifying the other. Fighting the dictatorship while acting out from the same pattern that gives birth to the dictatorship is rooted in a blindness. The blindness towards the inner side of the reality.
The question is about the direction of this revolution. Is it towards removing the dictator government as the external face of this behavioral pattern, while keeping the established behavioral patterns intact? Or is it towards shifting the pattern that gives birth to the dictatorships? Facing this question can also help in understanding why the Iranian community is stuck in cycles of revolutions for over a century, while pointing to possible ways out of these destructive cycles.
