Review of the complex, powerful History of Modern Iran by Abbas Amanat

IRAN: A MODERN HISTORY by Historian Abbas Amanat

A few months back, I had only a superficial modern media-based understanding of Iran.

Based on misinformation from the past, I had thought Iran/Persia had had a great history before modern times. One very different from the current fanatical Islamic dictatorship.

Iran's worst troubles seemed to have come about because of the revolution against the Shah and the U.S. in 1979 and the previous overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran by the U.S. CIA in 1953 which had put the current Shah in power.

But in this deep, biographically detailed, suspenseful, reflective history by the brilliant scholar Abbas Amanat, I quickly learned that these modern events were but a horrific continuation of hundreds of years of immoral and unjust actions by religious and secular Iranian leaders.

And that often Iran has suffered repeated invasions, manipulations, destructions, and slaughters by other nations.

The U.S. overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 was only the latest in hundreds of years of destructive actions by other nations against Iran. By far the worst invasions of foreign powers were the attacks covering several hundred years by the British Empire and Czarist Russia.

Also, tragically, like so many nations in history, Iran's dictatorial leaders often lived in arrogant, self-centered opulence, extravagant glut, and were guilty of vicious actions oppressing the poor illiterate masses, leveling oppressive taxes on farmers, etc.

While outwardly the aristocratic leaders claimed to adhere to Shia Islam, strongly supporting the fanatical mullahs in their persecution and executing of Iranians, the leaders actually lived degenerate, evil lives contrary to what any civilized human would do.

Even dictators who accomplished much that was good for average Iranians were sociopathic in their behaviors. For example after the Great War, Reza Shah came to power (1925-1941), restricted the oppression of Islamic mullahs, modernized the crimial code and economics of the nation.

But he was very paranoid like Stalin of the Soviet Union, cruel, and draconian in his actions to make Iran a modern secular society. One might call him a secular mullah.

HOWEVER, despite these hundreds of years of civil wars, oppressions, persecutions, small movments for justice, compassion, and human rights sometimes managed to arise. One of the most exciting, inspiring movements was the democratic one before the Great War!

IF only modern Iranians could overcome the present oppressive theocracy of the mullahs and begin again plans for a democratic, human-rights based society.

IF you have any interest in the Middle East and its complex history, don't miss this tour de force.

Best history I have read since The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World--1788-1800 by the historian Jay Winik.

from Amazon blurb: "Political history is the driving narrative force, given impetus by Amanat's decades of research and study. He layers the book with discussions of literature, music, and the arts; ideology and religion; economy and society; and cultural identity and heritage."
©2017 Yale University (P)2018 Tantor


In the Light of Goodness, Truth, and Justice,

Dan Wilcox

Book Review: LIONESS: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel by Francie Klagsbrun

Lioness is well worth reading. One learns a lot about the history and leaders of Israel from a different perspective, a different angle than the usual history of a nation.

From Golda Meir's inpoverished, troubled early life in the Soviet Ukraine, to about 10 years as an immigrant in the U.S., to her abandoning that middle class life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to go pioneering in the British ruled Palestine after the Great War--what a fascinating life journey.

She left the conveniences of American life in Milwaukee to live in a tiny rental in Palestine where conditions were primitive, worse than her childhood in the Ukraine. She had to handwash all of her clothes, and do laundry for others for meager pay, etc. The Palestine Mandate for immigrants were harsh, impoverished, with diseases such as malaria, and dangerous.

Arabs resented and opposed the huge numbers of European Jews who were immigrating into what had been their Muslins' land for almost a 1,000 years (since the Muslim Conquest). The population in the 19th century had been 85% Muslim, 11% Christian, and 4% Jewish.

The area was often lawless, though administered by the British as a mandate. It was like living pioneering days of the 19th century on the Oregon Trail in America. But instead of Apaches and other indigenous tribes, there were Arab raiders and Muslim mobs who attacked and massacred Jewish civilians. And during the 1930's and later, Arab leaders supported Nazi Germany.

I learned and understand so much about that era and about Golda Meir, and have already started to reflect upon various important themes in the biography. Francie Klagsbrun has written a powerful account of her life.

The most vitally important theme is about the nature of Golda Meir's (and other famous immigrants) absolute devotion to establishing and focusing on the state of Israel. They were extremely dedicated to Zionism. Too much so thought the German Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt who wrote that Golda Meir’s total commitment to Jewish nationalism was an “idol.”

Though, fortunately, Golda, didn’t take her absolute commitment to Zionism to the murderous length that Irgun, Lehi, and other Jewish extremists did.

But she did seem to relegate nearly everything and everyone to Zionism's commitment to create the state of Israel, and to a secondary degree to worldwide socialism. Her fervent dedication led her many times to unhealthy personal sacrifice, to such deep involvement and obsession that she mostly ignored and failed her young children, was unfaithful to her husband, and then abandoned him.

Sometimes, she made immoral and unjust decisions. One was to abort her first infant, because naving a child would have gotten in the way of her fervent political goals. Besides, she knew she had to work much harder than other leaders because she was the sole woman in a male-dominated group. Her life does show how choosing a finite object to ‘worship’ such as one's nation or one's ethnic-culture is an idolatrous form of group egotism.

Though Klagsbrun’s book is a very good effort, and is mostly interesting, definitely well worth reading, and isn’t as dry and is seldom boring, it does slow down at times. Like so many government-leader biographies, the book spends many pages describing the bureaucratic meetings, political-infighting, political procedures, propaganda and deception, etc.

One serious lack in the volume is there is hardly any of details or stories of Golda’s personal life other than hints of her adulteries against her husband, affairs with other Israeli leaders, etc. Evidently, Klagsbrun was unable to find significant evidence and stories of her private life.

Good biography.

Evaluation: B

Dan Wilcox

Revisiting Death Boat Ethics

At times, doesn’t much of religion and politics seem like a lot of crock? Yes, and so it did through most of history, though few humans realized it. And, even now, not much has changed. Billions still rush pell-mell into religious and political debacles and horrors. Abyss after abyss.

The current slaughter, such as the one in an Egyptian mosque 2 days ago, usually involves devout Muslims killing devout Muslims, a very delusionary, destructive life-stance Speaking historically, however, most worldviews have engaged in destruction, including the killing of children.

And then there are the modern views which also justify killing for the good.
A prominent one is Integral Theory, a secular version of Hindu philosophy.
Consider the books of its religious thinker Ken Wilber. At first, Wilbur's
modern synthesis sounds positive. His writing is lucid, and he makes plenty
of insightful points in the Vision and his other books.

Wilbur shows the fusion of a vast amount of learning and much creativity, and has a light-hearted sense of humor as well.
His Integral Theory seeks to combine modern psychology, spirituality, and science into an integrated whole. No small undertaking!

BUT Integral Theory is a modern re-envisioning of "death boat ethics."

What of stopping massacres? According to Wilber, killing is necessary that the nations of the world stop tyrants if they are killing unarmed civilians. Yet at the same time, Wilbur claims that it is really God, in the Hindu sense, who is using the tyrants to do the slaughtering. Furthermore, Wilbur emphasizes that war is necessary.

According to Integral Theory, it is God who brought about 9/11, slaughtering the helpless civilians in the Twin Towers.
See, God, is playing both sides of the fence. See, God is both good guy and bad guy.
From Wilbur: "Totally insignificant, infinitely significant--no difference, truly. Atoms and Gods are all the same, here in the world of One Taste; the smallest insult is equal to the greatest; I am happy beyond description with every act of torture, I am sad beyond compare with every act of goodness."
No, I don’t get it. I don’t see that at all.

But, of course, this is only another horrific version of the hard determinism of Augustinianism, Reformed Christianity, Islamic theology, and modern Atheistic determinism.

The only difference is Wilbur promotes his philosophy with vivid secular prose and throws a few sacred bones to spiritually inclined humans.

Then Wilbur begins to argue for his “Life Boat ethics.” According to him, NOT all humans can live on this earth; so we higher ones must decide which lesser humans—people of less value--
to cast over the sides to their deaths.

This is according to his “depth and span” ethical system. We should/must throw out lesser people from the Life Boat to their deaths! (from Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness Interview tapes)

Here we have the fallacious view that the “end justifies the means.” It is from such ethical systems that so much of the horrific tragedies and mass slaughters of the 19th and 20th centuries came about.

Haven’t you noticed that when the “end justifies the means," it is always to the advantage of the killing nation or ideology, never for the enemies?

If other countries torture, that is horribly wrong, but if we do it, well, it’s not really torture, and, besides, the end justifies the means for us.

If someone else lies, how wrong, but, of course, if we lie, it is necessary. Yes, Wilber defends some forms of lying! As do most religious and nontheistic humans.

And then, his views get really weird, definitely not of the puritanical Gandhi sort: For Wilber says that it’s okay for husbands and wives to have sex with individual outside of their marriage in an "open marriage”!
(Ken Wilber website)

Furthermore, he seems to agree with another author that Jesus may have had sex with Mary Magdalene.
(“The Meaning of Mary Magdalene” by Cynthia Bourgeault and Ken Wiber, kenwilber.com)

These “Life Boat” ethics are really anti-life. They go against the moral views of Jesus and Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh and Abdul Ghaffar Khan and many other ethical leaders.

It’s time to realize that all such “Life Boat” ethical systems are really moral death boats.

Of course, according to Wilber most of the humans who oppose his system are lowly “oranges” on his rating scale of human development. What is an “orange”? Don’t ask; it’s not good; a large number of stages down below Wilber’s own advanced spiritual trans-human stage.

Well, at least it’s better for us to be “orange” rather than being “red.” Reds are even worse.

Later, Wilber points out that we do need to include the lesser valued humans, up to a point, (unless we have already bombed/executed them, of course).

And besides, according to him, they will be reincarnated.

Doesn’t this sound a bit like the designations of humans in the highly satiric novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? Or George Orwell's very bitter fable, Animal Farm?

What about Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kurt Vonnegut, and others who emphasize that humans ought to learn to show benevolence their enemies?

No, Wilber emphasizes. On the contrary, he thinks that even in a thousand years humankind probably won't overcome the need to war.

In his novel, he has one character say “turning the other cheek is exactly what you don’t want to do with pre-orange memes.”

But Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, in contrast, reached out to the marginalized “less integral” humans, to their political enemies, even to terrorists.

But as mentioned above, Wilber emphasizes that it is all humans’ duty to kill.
Like in the Hindu religious classic, the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna doesn’t want to kill his relatives in war, but the God Krishna tells him it is his duty to go into battle and kill his relatives.

So the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria are justified and so are other wars which our particular nation thinks we ought to fight out of duty.

Again, the end justifies the means.

Are we to forget about the nonviolent ethics of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Palestinian Eli Chacour?

Jesus dealt with the powerful immoral Roman Empire, with ruthless Roman soldiers who crucified thousands of Jewish individuals, yet Jesus didn't become a zealot and slit Roman throats saying they hadn’t reached his level of spiritual development.

So have many other spiritual leaders down through history, going against the dominant human way of slaughter.

In contrast, Ken Wilber’s view (as expressed by his characters at wilber.shambhala.com and in an extended interview in Kosmic Consciousness by Sounds True) is that nonviolence only works when your nation’s enemies are, basically, nice people.

Also, Wilber emphasizes that humans shouldn’t live by nonviolence because, not only does peace-living not work, but “your death doesn’t even buy you good karma, but the karma of the coward”!!! (wilber.shambhala.com).

Wilber claims if we don’t kill in war, then we are responsible for what the enemy does! So were the Jewish people of Europe responsible for what the Nazis did? Etc.?

And what makes this all the more confusing is that Wilber has one of his characters later say that God is actually ‘behind’ all such human evil:

"Precisely because I am not this, not that, I am fully this, fully that. Beyond nature, I am nature; beyond God, I am God; beyond the Kosmos altogether, I am the Kosmos in its every gesture. Where there is pain, I am there; where there is love, I am present; where there is death, I breathe easily; where there is suffering, I move unconstrained."

"On September 11, 2001, I attacked me in a distant part of the galaxy on an unremarkable planet in a speck of dust in the corner of manifestation, all of which are wrinkles in the fold of what I am. And none of which affects me in the slightest, and therefore I am totally undone, I cry endlessly, the sadness is infinite, the despair dwarfs galaxies, my heart weeps monsoons, I can't breathe in this torture."

"Totally insignificant, infinitely significant--no difference, truly. Atoms and Gods are all the same, here in the world of One Taste; the smallest insult is equal to the greatest; I am happy beyond description with every act of torture, I am sad beyond compare with every act of goodness."

"I delight in seeing pain, I despise seeing love. Do those words confuse you? Are you still caught in those opposites? Must I believe the dualistic nonsense that the world takes as real? Victims and murderers, good and evil, innocence and guilt, love and hatred? What dream walkers we all are!”
(Ken Wilber Website)

Wilber’s God is the One behind all the evil (as well as the good)!

Yet Ken Wilber thinks the “God” of Christian Fundamentalism is a “nightmare”!
(Page 155)

Whew!

Think about it: Somehow in Wilber’s philosophy humans need to be executed and bombed, but
behind all those horrendous evil actions is really Ultimate Reality playing:-(!

“until I decided to play this round of hide and seek, and get lost in the objects of my own creation.” (Page 204)

Finally, Wilber states, "Well, it does if you use the W-C Lattice...
Begin using IOS and suddenly it all starts to make sense, at least enough to climb out of the nightmare of fundamentalism…”
from The Integral Vision by philosopher Ken Wilber (pages 147 and 155)

The devil in the “Integral Vision” is hidden in the ethical details. Wilber’s worldview turns out to be much worse than the fundamentalist Christianity he thinks is a “nightmare.” His own philosophical dream makes even less compassionate sense.

How can such a brilliant, knowledgeable, insightful individual be so deceived?

Some ethical issues are so difficult, so ambiguous that morally concerned individuals may disagree.
For example, I could agree to disagree with Wilber’s strong support for execution.

His adamant support for capital punishment doesn’t seem to square with his own spiritual philosophy, but every ethical system has its conundrums. And, besides, capital punishment is a tough, ambiguous issue.

However, Wilber’s attitude is very troubling. When asked if he thought that criminals guilty of murder should be helped to turn from their actions, to change ethically, he said that he didn’t think it was worth society’s effort to help them.

And besides, with reincarnation, the criminals would be reincarnated anyway, so it’s time to “recycle” them. (Ken Wilber’s answer in Kosmic Consciousness tapes)

Again, here is displayed a tragic, uncaring attitude that has often clung like dung to the belief of reincarnation in the past, where the doctrine contributes to the problem of human evil rather than encourages humans to try and solve unjust systems and to help those who do wrong.

Wilbur's view is, Why help the low class, low caste? Why help criminals? Why help the poor? They are all paying for bad karma!

Those humans did something wrong in their past lives. Or since ‘they’ do evil now; why help them? They’ll be back soon with another life.

That’s definitely not the way of the Light. Jesus showed compassion for all the lost, even for criminals and terrorists. While no one should be excused for murder, (like often happens in U.S. courts today, where intentional murderers sometimes get off with only serving as little as 4 years in prison), mercy to help is vital.

All of us need to keep in mind that something like 80% of criminals in prison were abused as children. As Thich Nhat Hanh so wisely pointed out, how do we know that we wouldn't be like the individuals we condemn if we had grown up in their abusive environment?

Though their evil actions as adults are inexcusable, and they do need to be separated from society to prevent harm to others, surely these morally deformed individuals (some of whom had their arms burned by their mother’s cigarettes or were bashed in the face, or sexually abused, etc.)--surely, they do deserve to be rescued.

Hopefully, they will choose to change. At least that is the philosophy of psychologist Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis and other forms of human hope and creative change.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Good Friday?

Isn’t that like saying Good Assassination?

Good Murder?

Good Holocaust?!

Yes. This is so as the Jewish writer and Holocaust-survivor Elie Wiesel so powerfully and cogently demonstrates in one excruciating story in his memoir of the Holocaust—Night.*


How can there be good-evil?

Yes what an oxymoron.

What a contradiction and ethical absurdity where human grieving never ceases.

At first, all of this may seem like past history. Most people know about the Shoah (Holocaust). And many probably have heard of "Good Friday" since it still occurs on calendars. But nowadays most people put little focus on history unless forced to do so, and most work or study or spring-break party right through “Good Friday,” unless they are devoutly liturgical in their religion.

Years ago back in the 1950’s in the Midwest, all religious people commemorated the special Friday, and many attended very long services. I remember as kid sitting through 3-4 hour services where 4-5 ministers took turns preaching on and on. But that was then, this is now.

Looking back on that yearly event now seems very strange: how those religious leaders taught us about the torture and execution of a Jewish leader by the Romans 2000 years ago and why it was vitally important to us, even elementary children.

Even more baffling—at least to everyone not convinced of the Christian faith—is why speak to the general populace in the present of such a capital punishment by ancient governing authorities so long ago? And why claim this execution has anything, indeed everything, to do with humans today?

Last and most incomprehensible of all, why claim that this execution is “good”?!

How can moral evil, especially when conducted by civilization’s leaders ever be considered “good”?

How as human beings can we ever deal with moral atrocities—so many horrendous massacres throughout blood-gushed/disgusting history?

This is the beginning of the philosophical and ethical question that Elie Wiesel asked in his book Night, speaking of the murder of so many by the Nazi death camps including his father, mother, and sister:

“Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

Then Wiesel tells the story of a young boy executed by the Nazis:
"The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. ‘Long live Liberty!’ cried the adults. But the child was silent.

"'Where is God? Where is He?’ someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

"'Bare your heads!' yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. ‘Cover your heads!’ Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive..."

"For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed."

"Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows'"

"Where is God? Where is He?"

And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows..."


To be continued

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox