You are welcome.
It is not really consequential whether these social LCD's are "imported" or not. Individuals interact with each other in complex social ways. The act of socializing, is itself a manipulation. When you are friends with someone, you are manipulating his/her life on some level and vice versa. When you are in a romantic relationship you are manipulating your partner and vice versa. In your work environment you are manipulating your colleagues, subordinates as well as bosses and vice versa. Even there is scientific evidence that babies manipulate the feelings of their own mothers by using gestures, grimace, smile etc. And here, you have started your post with a manipulative statement, describing the (or even a
) model of me, you have made in your mind and then go on to "sugar coat" it further.
We are a socially manipulative species. In fact, some scholars believe, the conscious part of the brain has solely evolved for this purpose alone, to manipulate others in order to get social advantage. Such is the reality.
Would it now even matter, whether a particular LCD developed because of manipulation and counter-manipulation between a mass of individuals or it came about, because of a single person manipulating others to believe in this LCD, is rather a moot point. It would probably be of interest to historians tracing the timeline of events but from philosophical point of view, I do not see why I should not consider both as the same (after all both are social interactions). Human beings build their self identity and their personal beliefs in relation to other members of society. A completely lonely human being who has never interacted with any other human being, can not form a sophisticated self identity nor sophisticated thoughts. In this aspect, I would rather concentrate on the nature of LCD itself rather than its origins. For instance would this LCD lead to good or bad in short term/long term? If We remove the current LCD, would the equilibrium shift to civil war and bloodshed or to prosperity and heavenly life on earth? Are the individuals of society capable of holding a sophisticated, progressive and complex LCD? These are the important questions.
In the end these questions seem to be very simple, yet no philosopher, social or political scientist will be able answer them with any certainty specially in the case of major LCDs.
Oh, I see. Then you as a thinking person, must have put alot of thoughts into these questions. Right?
I do not want to come harsh here, but I was not impressed by your counter-argument to my thought-provokers. Maybe I was unfairly expecting more. But if I was a philosophy professor (thank God, I am not) and you were my student (thank God, you are not), I would have failed you
. As a free thinker, I expected a genuine thought on your part to my inquiry, rather than the repetition of a common prejudiced LCD. A cliche.
First a few words about prejudice and all, which you raised, then I would like to put a counter argument here to that LCD you brought in. And then a dose of reality.
It is ok to be abit prejudiced. As long as no one is being hurt or the logic of the argument is not suffering. There is no shame in feeling great about Iran's history. After all if a nation has been the first in the world to form an empire and develop central governance over a vast geographic area with diverse ethnic and religious affiliations, these are not small feats. You mentioned naval battles. Well, even the word Navy and Navigation come from Persian word of Nav, meaning battleship. United States Postal Service uses the moto of Iran's royal postmen of 25 centuries ago. Etc etc etc.
But these are immaterial to the questions I raised. My focus was on intellectualism in Iran. Such glorification of history is actually detrimental to the discussion at hand.
Now, about that LCD. I heard it when I was a small kid and I remember, I had felt and thought the same as you have described, with lots of anger I might say. But now I know it is all a cheap LCD devoid of any importance. Just a cheap excuse to whitewash the lack of intellectual performance of a nation. Nothing more. Say for sure, the event did take place and books were indeed burnt in great numbers. Could a small foreign army in a country of several million square kilometer burn every single book? Even the sustained and much more systematic book burning in Europe during the dark and middle ages, could hardly put a dent in abolition of evidence of classical European intellectualism.
Most historical evidence, shows the incident in Iran on the other hand being only a single book/royal archive burning in Ctesiphon. By comparison, Christian zealots in Europe kept burning books for centuries. Here a question arises, what kind of an intellectualism a nation can claim if its entire intellectual capital is in a single royal palace library? Where were the writers? Where were the teachers? Where were the students? And most importantly, where were the polymaths? Were all of these tracked down and hunted and killed? Each and every single one of them? Occam's razor necessitates to choose the most obvious and the least fictitious answer here that, intellectually Iran was always like this as it is today. No need to make excuses.
Now, 13 centuries later, this LCD has become the 'reason' of why we are not amounting to much intellectually. I mean if it is not outright ridiculous to blame an incident 13 centuries back for today's ills, then it is certainly irrational and un-philosophical. We have to accept the reality here. Which is simple. We were never performing at the level of Greeks/West in intellectual affairs. Whether 3000 years ago or now. The examples that you brought with regard to navigation, warfare and such, are all just that. Building wooden dhows, devising shore line navigation, royal postal service, and other such things were just that. They were not intellectual pursuits or systematic analysis of nature. Iran was performing at the level of Egyptian civilization, that built great pyramids and administered a complex social and religious system but without much intellectual pursuit of any importance.
Now the dose of reality.
In old times, philosophers and thinkers had described humans as talking animals. It is an appealing idea, that we are the only animals capable of talking and communicating. But now thanks to science, we know it is not true. Other animals talk with each other too. Other animals think as well, and even make strategies and tools. They have feelings too. And in the case of some like chimpanzee and possibly even dolphins, they are even self aware. So much so that chimpanzee who are about to die, get extremely distressed. Similar to humans, they go to clinical depression with extreme sadness at their imminent demise from this world, stop socializing and even refusing food. But there is one difference between us and all these other animals. It is not talking. It is not thinking. No animal or any other being for that matter has ever been scientifically observed to QUESTION. I asked you why you deserve better? The correct answer would have been: Why shouldn't I deserve better? After all this is what is expected of a questioning human being. At the very minimum.
One way to shutter prejudice and ill-formed concepts is to do experiment and I like to do thought experiments. Let's have one here. Say you are a common man living in your house. One day you notice that a mouse appears to have taken residence in your house and is living off your scraps. Naturally, you get concerned and set about to terminate this unwelcome mouse. You being the ruler of the house, see this as your right.
So you buy a trap. While you are setting up this trap, the mouse suddenly appears, looking right into your eyes and starts to say obscenities to you
, protesting that you are a filthy murdering dictator
. You get shocked, having never expected a mouse being able to TALK in a grammatical language. Shocked at a mouse to be intelligent enough to protest his impending execution. Even to hold you responsible for it as well. But there is another level of reality beyond your shock. The reality of this talking mouse. If he was truly smart, he should have left, or at least kept a low profile, with his head down, keeping out of your way. But now, he wants a war. He wants bloodshed. He is an emotional and reactionary mouse. Not much thinking but a bigmouth.
If I was you, I would call in the Sepah of pest control to terminate not only him but the entire mass of his community. The mass of such mice, will eventually either take over you, and when they terminate you, then they will start fighting amongst each other. They have to be controlled with iron fist. At an individual level, you can see them on every street corner, fighting each other. You can see them stealing from each other. You can see them living their reactionary lives in society. At a mass level when granted with a LCD they will become Isis or SS. At first they start by demands such as Assad has to go or Qaddafi has to go and then they will be at each others throats. Murderers and rapists are all in this category. As are other animals.
Now lets go back to our experiment, only this time, the mouse is different. This time, when you are setting up the trap, a mouse will jump beside you, looking right into your eyes and ASKS, why me? What have I done to deserve this? I am just living off your scraps, and you can not even tolerate this? Again you get very shocked
. A questioning mouse. That is the holy grail of zoology, you wonder. This mouse, you wonder is very intelligent. You might even reconsider your decision to terminate her. You might even befriend her. After all, why not. At an individual level, this is how most friendships are in society as are romances. So are the professional rivalries and competitions. True revolutions fall under this category as well as do many international wars. Almost all divorces are also in this category: why I have to put up with him? Why me? Why should I do it? Why should I tolerate/compromise? The shallow questions never end. Some day, you might just get fed up and grab your mouse friend by her tiny tail and drive her long way from home and kick her out of the car. Eventually you will have had enough of her. The cuteness of such shallow questions do not remain forever. Given a LCD of good nature, the mass of such a mice can form a non-violent safe society but without much prosperity. Given a bad LCD they will quickly descend to become that talking, big mouth mouse above. The outright animal variety.
Now lets return to our experiment one last time. This time as you are about to set the trap, a mouse appears and walks right beside you, without as much even glancing at you. Then to your final shock
, he not only asks questions but the nature of questions are of meta-thinking quality.
Mouse: Now that you have decided to kill me, rather even murder me, I have come to think of afterlife and if there is really a God out there and whether we will ever meet again in afterlife, after all you are also going to die sooner than later. But it is not all. I also wonder if we have any free choice (free will) in what is going on between us here. Do you really think things could have been any different with regard to this equilibrium between us? Do you think our meta-physical purpose here was for you to murder me and me getting murdered? What is really our purpose?
This last mouse is the most dangerous one. You can call him, Aristotle among many other names. Who studies your naval techniques to teach his student Alexander. He has mental abilities that exceed your superior physical size. He can build a meta-meta-thinking man of war, out of a young prince of a fiefdom of 5 thousand square kilometers who then conquers an empire of 5 million square kilometers. He is great. He even instructs this prince to send him all knowledge related material back to him from his conquests. But even then such a great thinker does not find any intellectually stimulating thing in this huge empire as the story goes. Such is the reality of history.
So now, do you still believe in a topos noetos of Iran?
