If a living system is fixated in a behavior of facing outwards and calling for support, either its core is not generative, or the connection of many of its parts to each other and to its generative core is compromised. This posture of extending hands outwards can become habitual, if there is no invitation and discipline to return towards the sun of meaning at the core, and the inherent interconnectedness of all the parts around that sun.
Not that anything is wrong with the act of asking for support when it is needed, yet if the system as a whole has a latent capacity to re-center itself with its own means, to heal itself and to regenerate its new forms from its own core, ignoring that capacity and facing outwards for support is not a mature posture. It resembles the lower ego’s posture. With ignorance to the sun, it behaves like a blackhole of need-for-attention and a never ending chain of momentary satisfactions.
A human is a living system. A family is a living system. A culture is a living system, and a nation is a living system. Examining the inner capacities and the quality of internal connections, working towards activating / strengthening them are core functions of a living system. If these functions are abandoned, the system has fallen into an illusion of being a mechanical system within a mechanical paradigm. It is not aware of its own soulfulness, and the qualities that stem from the soul, such as self-healing capacity.
“To create better health in a living system, connect it to more of itself. When a system is failing, or performing poorly, the solution will be discovered within the system if more and better connections are created. A failing system needs to start talking to itself, especially to those it didn’t know were even part of itself. ” – M. J. Wheatley
How much of this model of coming to streets, chanting death to dictator, and occupying every aspect of life with the need for “regime change” first-of-all, is based on the french revolution and the mechanical / materialistic world view that has dominated the world of humans in the past couple of centuries? Isn’t it interesting that many of the main keywords we Iranians use these days have no Persian equivalents? How come this process of “freedom” has no interest in voices that call for attention to ancient wisdom of the land in these critical moments? In creating this suffocating atmosphere, what is the role of our own inability, even our unwillingness, to listen and to talk to those within the nation who do not think like us?
For those curious about Iran who need a different perspective, this is a revolution for sure, but a major underlying blue print of the “process” and the paradigm that shapes it, is influenced by internalized colonialism more than anything else. A major unstated and unnoticed source of it is the desire to fit into the modern image of humanity. An image whose gaze is fixated almost at the opposite direction of the image we have inherited in our cultural heritage. The modern image of being a successful human, racing on the road towards purely-materialistic progress, versus an image that invites our gaze towards the sun of meaning sitting at the heart of every matter.
The ancient presence of the second image is undeniable, still standing upright, embedded in carpet patterns, Sufi poetry, sacred architectures and musical patterns that have survived through out centuries. Yet, we might benefit from noticing that we have rubbed it from its main functions, which is to lead a wise and meaningful life, misunderstanding it and therefore reducing it to a purely ornamental feature, while the central and leading figure of our daily lives have become the modern man’s image.
It is beneficial to remember that, these cycles of never-ending revolutions started when groups of intellectuals, mostly returning home after studying in France or UK, framed our minds with questions such as: “Why did the west move forward and we are left behind?” Hidden in that framing is a universal direction and an image of humanity, which are still working in the background, like a venom cycling through our thinking veins, and even with more power and more subtlety these days.
This writing is not intending to undermine bravery, standing up for human dignity, or the value of roaring at a group of corrupt-to-the-core people who have exhibited a perfect example of ruling with injustice and cruelty. The point is, there are regimes below regimes at operation, that by design, prevent people from genuinely facing regenerative questions like “who are we? what is our deep nature as humans? what do we really want?” Regimes that are hiding behind the thick curtain of evilization but carry the seeds for the next cycle. The curtain of evilization, projecting the evil onto one aspect of this whole system by the others, in Iran’s case the “freedom-fighters” evilizing the government, creates a blind spot for seeing deeper sources of the imbalance at the level of the whole system. If the curtains are not dropped, the outcome of this “freedom” movement might turn out to become the opposite of the flagship it carries.
“Anything will be better than this…” is a door to escape from facing the mirroring effect of this strong habitual evilizing behavior, similar to the begging for support behavior.
“Let us get over with this, then we will find a new way…” is rooted in another blindness. ‘How’ we engage in getting rid of something, and the place within us FROM which we engage in the change process, sets the undertone for the next cycles to come. For a change to have depth, we can not escape looking at the how and the inner sources of those engaged within the change process.
“This is pessimistic, what we need now is hope…” well, it may be pessimistic depending on what our hopes are hooked on to. If the Iranian community prefers to continue spinning left and right with fists in the air, chanting death to the king and the mulla and the who-knows-next… while trying to fit itself in the outfits of a civilization that is unstable, soul-phobic and unjust by its very nature, then let it be pessimistic. On the other side of it, there is an invitation and a hope, to take facing ourselves as a revolutionary act within a deeper regime of thought, that dictates facing the “other” with a million subtle, unnoticeable and deeply manipulative ways.
