From: marand@eagle.wpd.sgi.com (Najmeh Marand)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Recommended reading!! (Re: Food for thought)
Date: 20 Aug 92 05:35:50 GMT
Organization: System Software Technology Center, Silicon Graphics

Afarin, YAshAsin, Bravo and MarhabA Farhad!!!  I am glad I 
happened to be still subscribing to this group (I have silently 
unsubscribed and then come back several times) and that I did not
skip the referenced article like I do more than 90% of articles!
(based on subject line / author / length / amount of available time).  

I have to admit that I did not read every word of the article by 
Farhad, nor did I read the articles it references.  But there were 
certainly parts of the article I enjoyed so much that I decided to 
repeat them (unchanged -- and hopefully with permission of Farhad)
for the benefit of those who may have, for some reason, not noticed
or read the article and would hopefully read this summary. 

As is implied by my posting this summary, I strongly endorse the
following sections of Farhad's article and recommend reading them.
The only changes I have made are replacing "her" and "she" with
"her/his" and/or "she/he".

Najmeh
=========================================================================

In article <7086@charon.cwi.nl>, farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab) writes:
>
> The only things a human being can justifiably be proud of are her/his
> accomplishments.  Feeling proud of the outcomes of accidents and
> statistics is vanity and breeds bigotry.  Every one of us was born of a
> pair of parents, in some geographic area, with specific physical
> characteristics, and had our care and rearing entrusted with some
> adults whose behavior and views affected our physical existence and who
> often implicitly affected our views and patterns of behavior.  None of
> us had any way to influence any of this.
> 
> Many people do not hesitate to
> ridicule a person who feels proud of his physical attributes and
> identify it as vanity.  And yet, most still sanction and even
> promote the same feelings about other results of dumb luck, such
> as one's clan, race, citizenship, and culture.  Like her/his beauty,
> a person's accidental association with a group X may be
> appreciated and even cherished, but it is nothing for she/he to be
> proud of because she/he did not do anything to accomplish it.
> What a person should feel proud of is her/his contributions to the
> group X.  But this puts an onus on most happy-go-lucky people who
> need to feel proud of something and find their citizenship or
> culture an easy target; an onus most of them are unprepared to
> fulfill: that they must first make some contribution.
> 
> Let us all appreciate our own cultures, understand or at least
> tolerate that of the others, and confine our pride in this area to
> our personal contributions that enrich, promote, and perpetuate
> our cultures.  There is something vulgar about me feeling proud
> of the contributions of Molavi, Hafez, Sa'di, Ferdowsi, Khayyam,
> Kharazmi, etc., simply because I was born some 1000 years later
> in the general vicinity of where they lived and speak the same
> language, don't you think?
> 
> I believe, and I would like to persuade others to recognize, that every
> one of us is a full-fledged, complete, intelligent, beautiful,
> precious, loving, caring, and perfect human being.  We don't always
> behave that way, which is sad because it is contrary to our nature.
> But this is only a malady inflicted upon us through hurt, and from
> which we can recover.  No matter how "pure" or "mixed" our heritage,
> each of us is a wonderfully unique individual who deserves appreciation
> of everyone else.  We are very rare: there is exactly one of each of us
> and that is all that there has ever been and that there will ever be.
> 
> Racism has nothing to do with
> race.  Sexism has nothing to do with sex.  Nationalism has nothing to
> do with nationality.  All these "-isms" are hurtful traits of behavior
> that exploit differences in arbitrarily selected attributes of
> individuals for the soul purpose of subjugation and oppression of one
> group by another.  There is nothing inherent in any nationality that
> leads to or can justify nationalism.  There is nothing inherent in the
> differences between the sexes that leads to or can justify sexism.
> There is nothing inherent in the differences between the races that
> leads to or can justify racism.  It is always the other way around:
> every form of oppression always looks for differences that it can
> exploit to perpetuate itself.  Every form of oppression is hurtful to
> all of its victims:  not only the oppressed group who suffers the most,
> but also those who play the role of its perpetrators are hurt by being
> deprived of a part of their own humanity.
> 
> What is so scary about our differences as individuals and as groups?
> Why is homogeneity desirable (if it is), even if possible?  (There is
> plenty in anthropology, linguistics, behavioral sciences, and history
> to suggest that it is not even possible, but that is a different
> subject.)  It is NOT our differences that give rise to various forms of
> oppression; it is the oppression that uses our differences as excuses
> for its survival, and as there is no shortage of differences among
> people, the supply of excuses will never run out.  The only way to stop
> oppression is to oppose it in every form, not fall victim to it in the
> role of its perpetrators, and to help its victims to fight it.
> 
> Its non-existence and unattainability aside, homogeneity is boring.  We
> must recognize, acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate our differences,
> not turn them into ammunition to hurt each other, wage wars, and
> perpetuate bigotry and oppression.  Unity of individuals and nations is
> meaningless if we ignore or deny their differences.  Denying the
> differences that people associate with their own individual or group
> identities is disrespectful of their dignity as human beings.  Denying
> the differences between individuals or nations to force a union
> invariably either fails, or robs them of the very identity that made
> them interesting candidates for the union in the first place and makes
> the union meaningless.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian