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By: Roya Monajem, Tehran royamonajem@yahoo.com Beliefs!In other words, it is Œa state or a habit of mind¹ in which trust, confidence or reliance is placed¹ -- as it often is the case on something outside. Let us use an analogy to visualize what we do when we Œbelieve.¹ When one believes, it is like standing on a firm ground. We can continue standing there for ever, or as long as the ground stays firm and there is no earthquake. It is like walking on thick frozen ice that once we are sure of its firm solidity, we trustfully keep walking on it, unless all of a sudden we hear a cracking sound and the ice under our feet opens out and we sink. We sink into cold freezing water. And, let us not forget that according to the above definition, once in that cold water, we simultaneously lose our Œtrust and confidence¹ too. What happens then? Naturally, we lose our belief. We come out of that state of Œtrust.¹ We question that Œhabit of mind.¹ At this moment something else happens too. Our Œjudgment¹ changes too. Some person or thing or cause, which we used to consider as Œgood or right¹ turns to something Œevil or wrong.¹ So we start to believe in something else. In other words, we usually replace a belief with another belief. That means we now place our Œtrust and confidence¹ on another object which is often the opposite pole of the first. A religious person becomes an atheist, an Imperialist becomes a Communist, the materialist becomes spiritualist, the communist becomes religious, and Š. But what if this collapse of beliefs or faith happens in a shockingly rapid speed, one after the other? What would happen then? In order to find some answer to this question, let us first review a real story. The story of those of us that were looking for some kind of ŒUtopia,¹ no matter in which part of the world we have been. Where on earth we were born, where on earth we grew up, where on earth we are going to die! When I read on the front page of a daily newspaper, the huge headline "Foundation of ŒChastity¹ Houses , my head started to go dizzy and I almost fainted! Not that it was something that odd to a grown up person like me who has had far more worse shocks in her lifetime! It was not even unexpected. It was not unforeseeable; it was a subject that was brought up before. But thinking about an event, and actually facing it are two different things. Seeing that headline generated a very strange state of being in me. It was like a part of me being completely shattered. It was not a simple crack on the frozen icy surface I was walking on. It seemed that all of a sudden the whole surface of the ice broke into pieces and fell apart and with it, I fell apart. It was like the last blow to my Œcastle of utopia.¹ The castle that had started its collapse many years ago. Many years ago? No. It was only two decades ago, when they told us that it is bad and dictatorial to have a picture of the ruler of the country hanging from every niche and nook of the land. And in less than sixth months, one could again see that there is a picture in every niche and nook of the country. And the most satiric part was that in many places they were even the same frames only now holding a different picture! And they said the root of all forms of social or personal corruption is Œunreligiosity¹ of the individuals and the rulers of the country, and now one may witness one of the most corrupted state of existence ruling throughout the country. And they said it is the uncovered Œhair of the woman¹ that is the root of all evil, all corruption in the country and now the news of the establishment of the official whore-houses, oh no, sorry I mean chastity houses! My first reaction was a fatal desire to scream! In the past two decades one has learnt not to get surprised by what happens throughout the world. After the advent of the atomic bomb, the collapse of faith in any political system, from liberalism and democracy to communism, the shattering of belief in any "Utopia" andŠ, one has learnt to expect anything in the world of politics, even the most unexpected. That is why I was shocked by my reaction. It was strange. With all the social apathy developed in me, in many of us as the result of Œlosing hope in the possibility of a better country, a better world¹ with all the efforts I am spending to keep away from the world of politics, with all the indifference growing daily towards the outside world, with all that personal Œspiritualism¹ I took refuge to, I wanted to show the most intensive physical reaction that one shows to a shocking news: scream from the bottom of my heart and say NO. Say Œno¹ to who; to what? In a way, the psychology of the Œsuicide bombers¹ is not a complicated psychology at all. It is the state of losing complete hope! The existential experience of the collapse of all Œbeliefs!¹ Total submergence in icy frozen water! Let us go back to the definition of Œbelief¹: ŒA state or a habit of mind in which trust, confidence or reliance is placed on some person or thing?¹ So when all beliefs are gone, all trust and confidence will go with them too. However, the will to live is still there. And the danger is that the state of being in that Œcold freezing water¹ would make one numb Œapathic,¹ Œindifferent,¹ or as Persians say, like Œpotato.¹ It is a kind of self defense, that is beautifully described in a poem by Pastor Martin Neimoller: Œ"First they went after the Communists/and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist./Then they went after the Jews,/and I did not stand up, because I was not a JewŠFinally, they went after me/and there was no one left to stand up for me." The statistics related to the degree of people¹s participation in the presidential elections throughout the world, show that this is the state that a great number of people have reached, Œthey don¹t trust, they don¹t like to be bothered about what is happening outside their private life, in the country, in the world they live in.¹ If you want to feel what I mean, just remember the late sixties and seventies when all branches of human endeavors from music to psychology, to painting, to ideology, to economics, to architecture, to poetryŠ were pulsating with an almost unprecedented quantitative liveliness. Such a beautiful wave was running throughout the world. And look at it now, everything is dead. Except the world of Bad, Tragic News. In other domains Œmass¹ culture, what Nietzche called mediocrity is ruling. Did ever the world have such royal families (take for example, the life of the members of the royal family of England), such presidents, such rulers! Before, any ruler claiming supremacy for his country, whether in ancient times or in the twentieth century (at least up to the seventies), would at least create a happy life in his own country and for his own people, and that was why he was supported in all the violence and cruelty that he usually brought to the Œopposition¹ and other countries and people. But efficient kings and presidents and rulers emerge among the people who would believe if not in them, but in a Œbetter¹ country, in a Œbetter¹ world! And as a good portion of people throughout the world are increasingly becoming Œbelief-less¹ as the result of finding themselves regularly on a shaky ground, on crumbled ice and therefore they have become explicitly apathic, insensitive, insensible, there is the ghost of despair hovering over the earth! We are all badly in need of that last Œstuff¹ in Pandora¹s jar: hope! But in order for the world to change, it seems that we have no alternative except to pull ourselves together and transcend this epidemic apathy, depression, Œnihilism¹ (which is now mainly in the form of spiritualism), insensitivityŠ BUT, in order to resurrect from this fatal state of being, we first need a motivation, we need to have a goal (but not in the form of personal, or Œspiritual¹), we need to have a Œbelief¹ a Œfaith¹ but not in the old sense of the word, that meant Œto place¹ all our Œtrust and confidence in it.¹ And a different sense of Œbelief¹ and Œtrust¹ and Œconfidence,¹ could be to shift their usually Œouter¹ source, to an Œinner one.¹ To believe that as a member of this beautiful planet, we need to wake up from this long slumber. And to have faith in that we all deserve to live in a better world, Here and Now. And we should trust our individual Œself.¹ What would it result to? I don¹t know. I just know that I am sick and tired of this apathy, insensitivity, indifference that I have been suffering for a long time now. And this is going to be my motivation to stir, to resurrect: let me first become sensitive once more, let me come out of this nihilism again, let me regain my senses as sharply as possible first, then I will Œjudge¹ whether this too will be another Œearthquake¹ another Œcrack in the ice¹ another Œmirage¹ or not. ********************************* |
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