Ali Delforoush: 31 Years of Embarrassing a Civilization

Last Updated on Tuesday, 9 March 2010 12:45 Written by Daisy Harley Tuesday, 9 March 2010 12:45

In less than two weeks Iranians every where will be celebrating one of the most ancient celebrations known to the human calendar. Nowrūz or the Iranian New Year has been celebrated for over 3000 years and it is this antiquity along with a rich plethora of empires, philosophers, poets and an extraordinary culture that makes Iranians proud of their contributions to humanity.

However, it is with great sadness to endure that for the past 31 years the only contributions that have occurred at the hands of the Iranian regime towards the people of Iran and humanity as a whole have resembled a dimension that is best described as the opposite of civilized. The tenure of the Islamic Republic began through the efforts of idealistic Iranians who brought down an autocratic regime in the hope of replacing it with a better system and yet the fruits of their labor led to the creation of an administration engaged in a hostage crisis, a long and futile war with Iraq, a failing economy, enforcing world wide backlash, a controversial nuclear program and most recently a fraudulent election that led to the incarceration and death of many innocent Iranians.

Yet just when you think nothing more can be done to add further embarrassment steps in the ever so ludicrous Mahmud Ahmadinejad who over the weekend decided to add a new number to his repertoire of rubbish by labeling the horrific events that took place on September 11, 2001 as a “big lie paving the way for the invasion of Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting terrorism”.

It is important to note that the controversy that has been spewing by the Islamic Republic over and over in the past 31 years has been strategically done in order to conceal obvious truths and divert the attention of both domestic and the international community from significant issues.

Domestically, despite the rising price of oil (Iran’s main export) the Iranian economy has been in ruins for almost as long as this regime has been in power. For being the second larges oil and petroleum producing nation, Iran’s foreign debt stands at $20 billion. Productivity is low; underemployment and outright joblessness are at an all time high. Each year, more than 750,000 Iranians enter a labor market that has been adding only about 300,000 positions at best. Inflation has become rampant ranging from 20 to 50 percent while eating away at the buying power of those who are employed. Ironically the living standards of most Iranians are now below what people enjoyed before the 1979 revolution.

These harsh economic implications have resulted in a significant brain drain in which most of the skilled and bright minds have left their native land to seek employment and higher standard of living elsewhere. The other unfortunate yet predictable outcome of the failing Iranian economy has resulted in distressing social costs of substantial increases in drug addiction, crime, depression and prostitution.

Yet the deceitful nature of this administration has no ends and sadly no shame as it has always blamed the social ills and the recent popular discontent on “a sinister Western agenda” working to undo the Islamic Republic. Let me be clear, I am not a conspiracy theorist; I am a part of a sinister Western scheme and I do not belong to any colored movements. But what I am is an Iranian forced to leave his country and like millions of others both inside Iran and outside I have had enough of this regime bringing disgrace and humiliation to a proud land and its people. More importantly we have had enough of the incompetence that is the Islamic Republic, the blatant human right violations, a three decade old infrastructure, a failing economy and a lack of democratic ideals and rights just to name a few.

During the past five years Iran has enjoyed selling oil at the highest selling price and yet unfortunately it has very little to show for it. My guess is Mr. Ahmadinejad skipped the management seminar when he was getting his doctorate in “traffic management and transportation planning”. Ironically if the Iranian regime was replaced today, the new administration would inherit a nation which is below par to every standard that existed before the 1979 revolution.

There is a popular saying in Iran that says “I am an Iranian before I am a Muslim but more importantly I am a human before I am an Iranian”. Sadly it seems that this concept is foreign to the bulk of the Iranian regime as they are certainly threatening the very concept of humanity. One thing that is for certain is that Ahmadinejad will have nothing more to contribute but for controversy and further humiliation of Iran and Iranians for the next four years unless this regime is replaced.

More on Iranian Election

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-delforoush/31-years-of-embarrassing_b_491699.html

‘Empathic Civilization’ LIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW With Author Jeremy Rifkin Today At 3pm EST

Last Updated on Thursday, 4 March 2010 03:15 Written by Daisy Harley Thursday, 4 March 2010 03:15

All throughout February, Arianna’s been reading Jeremy Rifkin’s “The Empathic Civilization”–the historical argument that empathy has helped us survive and thrive, and that we are evolving from Homo Sapiens to Homo Empathicus. Arianna, Jeremy Rifkin, and a host of other guest bloggers have been talking about the necessary shift to an “age of empathy” that Rifkin believes we are already moving towards. The blogs — highlighted below — have shown that we are wired for empathy from birth. We need to activate that wiring in order to save ourselves and the planet.

We’re wrapping up our discussion of “The Empathic Civilization” today, March 4, with a live video interview with Jeremy Rifkin, conducted by HuffPost blogger Robbie Vorhaus. JOIN US HERE at 3pm EST to participate in the discussion!

Read an excerpt from “The Empathic Civilization,” and check out some highlights from the blogs:

Arianna Huffington, Only Empathy Can Save Us

The Empathic Civilization is a fascinating book that boldly challenges the conventional view of human nature embedded in our educational systems, business practices, and political culture — a view that sees human nature as detached, rational, and objective, and sees individuals as autonomous agents in pursuit primarily of material self-interest. And it seeks to replace that view with a counter-narrative that allows humanity to see itself as an extended family living in a shared and interconnected world.

Jeremy Rifkin, Economic Recovery Will Fail Without Our Trust

We can no longer afford to limit our notion of extended family to national boundaries, with Americans empathizing with fellow Americans, Chinese with Chinese, and the like. A truly global biosphere economy will require a global empathic embrace. We will need to think as a species − as homo empathicus − and prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilization embedded in a shared biosphere.

Jeremy Rifkin, Why Have We Become So Uncivil?

Reimagining freedom, equality, and democracy from an empathic perspective has far-ranging consequences for the kind of society that we choose to live in. We would need to rethink our parenting styles, educational systems, business practices and, even governance itself to reflect our empathic nature. This would constitute nothing less than a cultural revolution.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, The Young Pioneers of the Empathic Generation

Today’s emerging adults see themselves as international citizens to an extent rarely experienced before. Coming of age in the era of the Internet, cheap travel, and surging study abroad programs, they’re drawn to global music, sports, fashion, and service.

Jean M. Twenge, Narcissism or Empathy? The Me Generation or the We Generation?

Not that long ago, the goal of raising children was to socialize them — to replace the natural narcissism of children with restraint and consideration for others. These days, we instead build further narcissism, an inflated sense of self characterized by overconfidence, entitlement, unbridled competitiveness, and lack of empathy.

Robbie Vorhaus, Can Limbaugh and Obama Both Be Right?

The universe is a great wonder to me. I am so grateful to be here, walking this earth among such a diverse group of people with so many fascinating stories and points of views, that I choose not to be right, but simply curious. One of my favorite sayings is, “You might be right.”

Richard Restak, Our Brains Were Built for Feeling Each Other’s Pain

In our culture we’re taught to think of ourselves as independent and self-actualizing. In reality, our brain is uniquely constructed for experiencing other people’s thoughts, emotions and actions as if they were our own.

Jeremy Rifkin, Where the Jobs Are

The irony is that President Obama, who was elected, in large part, by a generation who is growing up on Facebook and the vast distributed power of the Internet, appears to not understand the job potential of a distributed Third Industrial Revolution. Today, the information and communications technologies that gave rise to the Internet are being used to reconfigure the world’s business models and power grids, enabling millions of people to collect renewable energy and produce their own electricity in their homes, offices, retail stores, factories, and technology parks and share it peer-to-peer across smart grids, just as they now produce and share their own information in cyberspace. This is a Third Industrial Revolution and will create millions of new jobs.

Mary Gordon, Building a New World, One Child At a Time

Our ecosystems are withering on the vine without empathic input from a globalized, interconnected, citizenry. We may be on the verge of the Age of Empathy, but we still have a long journey ahead. In fact, I would argue that we are in still in our infancy, and that we live in an emotionally illiterate North America.

Jeremy Rifkin, Is It Time to Replace the American Dream?

Although American history is peppered with lamentations about the souring of the dream, the criticism never extends to the assumptions that underlie the dream, but only to political, economic and social forces that thwart its realization. To suggest that the dream itself is misguided, outdated, and even damaging to the American psyche, would be considered almost treasonous. Yet, I would like to suggest just that.

Alison Gopnik, Amazing Empathic Babies

Even the youngest babies imitate the facial expressions of other people and take on their emotions — a kind of empathy. This ability is NOT just the result of the much-hyped “mirror neurons” since, for one thing, mirror neurons have been found in monkeys who rarely imitate others. But it does show that human babies, in particular, are tuned in to other people in an especially close way.

Jeremy Rifkin, When Both Faith and Reason Fail: Stepping Up to the Age of Empathy

The empathic advocates argue that, for the most part, both earlier narratives about human nature fail to plumb the depths of what makes us human and therefore leave us with cosmologies that are incomplete stories–that is, they fail to touch the deepest realities of existence. That’s not to dismiss the critical elements that make the stories of faith and reason so compelling. It’s only that something essential is missing–and that something is “embodied experience.”

More on Arianna’s Reading

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/empathic-civilization-liv_n_484053.html

Simon Baron-Cohen: ‘Empathic Civilization’: Do We Have Empathy Or Are We Just Good Rule Followers?

Last Updated on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 08:45 Written by Daisy Harley Wednesday, 3 March 2010 08:45

In the movie “Blade Runner,” the earth becomes populated by a species that looks and behaves just like humans, except they lack empathy. The problem becomes how to identify who is truly human, and who is an impostor. In the movie there was an empathy test. If you took a photo of the person’s iris, when presented with an emotional stimulus (a loving phrase, an expression of pain), the true human showed a pupil-dilation reflex only visible using a sensitive camera. The human impostor did not.

Is there an unambiguous test to identify if someone has empathy? Empathy seems straight-forward to identify because, countless times each day, we observe surface behaviour that we take to be empathy. A man holds the door open for the person behind him. A woman gives her friend a birthday present. A policeman slows down the cars for a blind man crossing the street. A child hands in a wallet he found in the road. Such simple, ordinary acts are assumed to reflect empathy. So is empathy just a synonym for acts of kindness? And if alien impostors produced such acts, without a special empathy-detector camera, wouldn’t we just assume they were true acts of empathy?

The problem is that the above examples could reflect at least four processes other than empathy. First, they could be acts of moral behaviour, and not all moral acts involve empathy. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ may be part of our moral behaviour because we have empathy, but it might be we follow this commandment simply because it is part of our set of rules for how to be good. Rule-following doesn’t require empathy. Secondly, the above examples might simply reflect convention, and adhering to conventions need not involve empathy. What if we hold doors open, or hand in wallets, or give birthday presents for the same reasons we use a knife and fork to eat, or drive on the left, or stop at a red traffic light? Following rules of morality, or adhering to convention are important for our social system to function smoothly, but they may not reflect empathy. Detecting unambiguous examples of empathy may not be as straight-forward as we first thought.

Thirdly, such behaviour could just be convincing acting. Jane may be said to have good empathy because she appears so sympathetic. She says all the right things. But just because when a speaker is describing something distressing she makes all the right sorts of soothing sounds (‘Oh, how awful! You poor thing! You must have been so angry/afraid/upset/shocked/etc’), this doesn’t prove she has good empathy. She might just be a very good mimic of an empathic person, and have picked up that empathic people make these sorts of sounds. Or she might have ‘hacked out’ how to appear empathic. For example, she may have picked up that someone seems empathic if they are a good listener, so she learnt not to interrupt. Or maybe she seems a good listener not because she has good empathy but because she is shy. But shyness is not empathy.

As yet there is no fool-proof test of empathy, yet given its growing importance within cognitive neuroscience, it won’t be long before there is one. The advent of functional neuroimaging is making it possible to see beneath surface behaviour, to establish if the typical neural circuitry for empathy is (or is not) being employed, when someone says they care.

More on Health

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-baroncohen/empathic-civilization-do_b_483106.html