The following is a short essay I wrote on Monday, December 28th 2009 in the wake of the election protests in Iran. Sadly many readers took it as a cry for help, which it was not. Rather it is a piece of self exploration. It helps to indirectly illustrate the stress of not owning your successes yet still bearing the burden of your failures; something that I think a lot of people growing up in the middle class can appreciate. But I digress...
Purpose
I just read the news about the most recent bout of protests in Iran. My interest was piqued when a friend of mine posted a video of protesters smashing open a Basiji van to save someone who was arrested (if you don’t know who the Basiji are look it up on Wikipedia, it’s some scary shit). Watching the video reminded me of the video of Neda, the Iranian woman who was shot and killed by a Basiji marksman while she stood as a bystander at a protest. That video made me sick to the same degree that this most recent video made me feel emboldened and hopeful.
Recently I also read an article in Newsweek by one of their writers about his four-month detention as an Iranian political prisoner. It was both heartbreaking and baffling as he described the tortures he endured and the completely stupid reasons he was ever even arrested (he appeared on The Daily Show and made some jokes so the Iranian Intelligence pegged him as anti-government and had him scooped up). I won’t go into details but to say that it was as fascinating as it was terrifying to behold. Literally like watching a train wreck.
This juxtaposition of the videos to the article got me thinking about what I would be willing to do to protect the freedoms of myself and those I care about. Would I take to the streets and risk life and limb in support of my liberty? I like to think so but in a strange way I feel envious of those students and protesters in Tehran and throughout the rest of Iran. They have the opportunity to see what they truly believe in, and to fight for it with everything they have. They risk beatings, arrests, torture, home invasion and death just for their right to have the freedoms that we take for granted. Americans start shouting when someone so much as mentions the idea of impeding our rights, and we take the right to complain for granted. But these Iranians are an example of what I hope Americans could become to be should the need ever arise.
It is even in the Declaration of Independance, the right to forcibly overthrow a tyrannical government. I think a lot of Americans fancy that as an invitation to act against opposing political groups (I’m thinking of some of those tea-party yahoos shortly after Obama got elected, although they were gracious enough not to take things too far); but in Iran we have the opportunity to see an example of what this really means. I’m not going to take sides as to whether the elections were or were not rigged, but the evidence is overwhelming that the Iranian leadership, legitimate or not, is disastrously corrupt and inhumane. The foreign minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt said, "A regime secure in its own legitimacy has no reason to fear individuals' rights to express their opinions freely and peacefully."
Like I mentioned earlier, I am in a way envious of the opportunity that the protesters have. This is not to say that I invite the situation they are in, but rather I admire their purpose. I think it is something that many of us lack. We have our passions and our commitments, but what can we say of our purpose? I’m not talking about some divine or cosmic purpose, but a humanistic one. What is our purpose in relation to the people around us; what can we do in our brief lives that will make us a vibrant flash of lightning and not just a dying ember left on the ground?
I wish there was some easy remedy to all this. I escape into fiction; books, movies, games, all to fill that void that I feel where purpose should neatly fit. How marvelous it would be to have one thing, however fleeting, that overrode everything else in life. Something so powerful you would rather pursue its completion than sleep or eat. I try to think what such a thing could be. Revenge, love, adventure… all of these stem from the stories I read and watch. I admire the simple plots of cheap fantasy novels. Such plots are by necessity fantastic, I know; but in our increasingly intertwined and complex lives I just want to find that one thing that will let me look back on my life and think to myself I was part of something great.
Here are the links to the videos if you are interested...
Neda (caution, very graphic): http://www.youtube.com/wat
Basiji Van: http://www.youtube.com/wat
