IRAN ABOUT

In the first trip I made home after moving to Norway, I divided my Facebook pictures into two categories: Private, and Public. It happened naturally and I didn’t even think of that. Since then I was asked about the reason by my Norwegian friends quite a few times.

This movie shows the dual life in the past three decades of Islamic dominance in Iran, but still doesn’t show how natural and normal it has become.  It fails to picture how adaptive the human nature is, to cope with a forced situation at the least harm and cost.

Freedom of Expression in Iran, Transfering the Memes of Democracy

A Rising Hope – The People Have Spoken The human rights situation in Iran

  • Where: Samfundet, Klubben, Trondheim, Norway
  • When: Wednesday 13.10.2010, 19:00 – 21:00

Why is one of the most educated countries in the Middle East constantly troubled by Human Rights abuses and suffering? Can they change this? Can we change this? Amnesty International Student Network in Trondheim welcomes you to a theme meeting about the past, presence and future of Iran and democracy development. Speakers:

  • Ulrika Mårtensson (PhD) – Assistant Professor in religious studies at NTNU. Spesializing in Islam.
  • Nima Darabi (PhD student, NTNU) – Student activist and blogger from Iran.
  • Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam (PhD) – is an Iranian human rights activist, University of Oslo, Norway. He was awarded the Norwegian Amnesty International’s Human Rights Prize in 2007.

[nggallery id=6] I just had a talk at the event “A Rising Hope – The People Have Spoken” held by amnesty international in Trondheim. You can download my presentation entitled “Freedom of Expression in Iran, Transfering the Memes of Democracy” here:

The Others

Could these virtual people at some point jam together? Or could I ask the avatar if he knows the answer to this? If he knows, can he also research how we can jam with him? And then can he at some point own a TV and designs another avatar by his own?

This actually reminded me of an idea I had in childhood. A movie about people living great lives and at the end they sadly understand that they are game avatars created by more “real” creatures. Fictionists should write more on this topic.

Internal self-consciousness?

Read this real story and tell me if you also believe that it could be more than a coincidence:

Shortly, it is about a neuroscientist who had studied the criminal brain for 20 years and had shown that orbital cortex (or whatever) is inactive in those rare people. And after all when he scans his own brain, he happens to be one of them, himself!

But what, other than chance, can be behind this? I bring up this question:

Is it possible for different parts of the brain to directly communicate “inside the skull” and inform each other about their condition? We know that different brain circuits “inform” each other about signals and stuff but I am questioning about a higher level of informing.

Today Mr. Fallon knows that his orbital cortex is abnormally inactive. He knows this by looking at his brain scans, provided through the world outside (scanning devices and the rest, outside of his skull). Now his brain has externally revealed something about itself. Wouldn’t it then be possible that his brain already “knew” it internally, but not consciously?

Let’s map it from the physical brain domain to the mind domain: A part of his mind (call it the researcher part) is now externally aware of a disorder in another part (the criminal part). Now, is it imaginable that the “conscious researcher part” had internally had some clues about the “unconscious criminal part”?

This is a philosopher sending a query to the experimental scientists: Is there such an internal awareness? Back to the hard-wired brain domain, it could be a result of some internal nervous connections between such brain regions. Or I don’t know. Any sort of connection that has in some way inspired, motivated and driven him to perform such study, by the means available in the “outside” world.

Related on brain and mind: Symmetric mind, bilateral brain.

Watch, it’s a trap!

Akbar Ganji dreams of a Free Iran:

The misfortune of the people who live in the Middle East, the region from which I come, is that the international conditions have never been conducive to achieving democracy. Quite to the contrary, these conditions have always been to the benefit of the enemies of freedom.

[…]

People of the Middle East had been living under the tyranny of secular and corrupt governments, which were all supported by the United States and other Western countries. This context left them recourse to only one political alternative: religious fundamentalism. The United States and the Western world reaped the first fruit of their own deeds with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and today they face fully grown and powerful trees of violent fundamentalism.

What comes is something in agreement with Ganji that I’d written while ago – before I got to read this article – with few corrections in the terminology:

Here is the warning: As a reaction to secular dictatorship, I think we Iranians were the first nation in the contemporary middle east who actually went into a trap called religious fundamentalism as a political system. We’ve experienced it now for more than three decades and now as the counter-reaction we are about to survive. Sooner or later we’ll overcome a totalitarian religious form of a regime. What concerns me the most is actually about our neighbors: a possible dark future for some other middle eastern states. Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks, other potential nations should not remake our mistakes; democracy is still the only way to resolve. Or else, the failures of the Bush administration will remain in the middle east for a century.

Related @ Nim:

I drew Muhammad

First I preferred to stay neutral in a call for cartoon on May 20th: Everybody Draw Muhammed Day. At the first glance as usual, it looked to me a bit immature to provoke people and to mess with their holy pictures. But now that it’s a real competition with so much of angry offensive Muslim reactions towards it, I eventually need to take “my” side and break the silence existing among many people like me.

I join this page in Facebook not because I do not believe in Muhammad and his lecture notes, or not because it’s fun to mess with other people, those I may not understand quite well. It’s not even because it looks cool to stay calm while somebody is angry at you.

I join this campaign because I’ve lived my whole youth in Iran, after an Islamic revolution, where we were systematically fed up with religion. There many of my friends and I came to believe that it’s the religion, particularly Islam, that has ruined our beautiful land and has wasted many of its great resources. It has not only been the reason behind death of millions of innocent people throughout the history, but also has kept up all this shit till the 21st century.

Yes, it’s true that even though I do not often insult others, in an unconscious level I enjoy all this blasphemy with its harsh contents. This sense of humor satires the truth and spices up the reality. And it thus makes me happy and turns me on.

The absolute majority of the Muslims within my social network have been cool enough not to give a damn to my blasphemous contents I post on my wall every now and then. The fundamental minority who usually make trouble seem to have a considerable social network distance, but let’s help them to learn it too. Nothing happens if someone draws a cartoon of their prophet. They please have to understand through this process: It’s just a picture! They may try to grow up, calm down and by doing it they will buy credit for their beliefs, whatsoever it is. And the majority of Muslims, those who are still discriminated while being cute and nice and peaceful; they better put the blame on those of their own faith before others.

They won’t get offended or else somebody should insult them to that point to end up with peace. It’s true. Honestly, if I’ve learned one thing about fundamental Islam during the past three decades, it’s that there is absolutely no end to its demands. The more you step back the more they come further. The more you respect the more they are hurt by your few faults. Enough is enough and that’s it!

Yes, I think it’s my very right to post this and I then invite those who feel like drawing something to join this cause. Enjoy:

Prophet Mohammed's cartoon - May 19, 2010
Prophet Muhammad's cartoon - May 19, 2010

Thinking loud

This video is the very first one of its kind that eventually made some sense to me; however, considering mainstream’s motivation behind sharing this, I strongly believe that the video can not be brought as an alibi for any of us men or women who don’t wanna dare to be rich, successful, and beautiful – by any existing definition.

Within the human kind, to a great extent, beauty is absolute and objective, and our species has improved culturally in the way us human look, which is good.

Wisdom can’t and should not overcome the instinct, which is the most real and concrete aspect of existence. Super-normal stimulus still makes sense, and it will. We just need to bring it to public, make it fair and reachable by everyone, and meanwhile indeed have our demands not to exceed the reality.

Frighteningly, in the mean time that we ideally make the mainstream look like the celebrities of the past generation, higher greedy standards grow. And those new desires are imaginable however unreachable for the ever-unsatisfied public.

The world is greedy, unfair and unequal by nature. We should control it and to become less unfair, just like decreasing the entropy in a living organism by causing an entropy increase outside. The question is how far we can go with our limited resources?

Victory

This is a victorious variation of Rossini’s barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) [I think] in the middle eastern Homayoon scale played by hot chicks two centuries later! kitschy, but still delightful:

My auditory processing unit seems to be too melody-oriented. Styles, accompaniments and orchestration, and even the lyrics are usually filtered out. A brilliant sequence of notes can’t be cheesy or kitsch anyhow. And seriously, that’s not really cheesy compared to what I listen in some saddest and deepest moments of life!