Purpose... Part One

One of the things that has intrigued me most about this latest adventure is the mixed bag of feedback and reaction from friends and strangers alike that it has delivered to my doorstep. Some are enthusiastic and thrilled. Some blase' and silent. And some are downright confrontational and negative about the idea of me and the other Americans entering the country of Iran at this time in history. One guesses that reaction is fairly normal and to be expected; not just during these times, but at almost any time throughout recorded human history. The proverbial 'we' has always had a proverbial 'them' as an 'enemy' of some sort. It is one of the last few pitiable symptoms of the human condition.

Of course where and when one is born determines which 'we' they are and relate to and just who exactly the 'enemy' is. It is all rather arbitrary if one dares contemplate it for any length of time. It was The Earl of Rochester, the enviably witty and perceptive Sir John Wilmot, who once commented "Life has no purpose. It is undone by arbitrariness. I do this. I do that. And it matters not whether I do the opposite. But in art every action has its impact and consequence."

His words may be notable when defending the arts; and indeed in a life left unexamined you couldn't blame a person for wandering through life with that attitude. I am Russian. I am American. I am Chilean. I am Canadian. In the end, what does it really matter? But we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit.

Let us stop and ponder for a moment the matter at hand. A delegation of 14 Americans are deliberately heading into a country who's current president has publicly stated that he wants to see the destruction of their own native country AND the nation of Israel. Our own president refuses to communicate at all with the government of this other country except to issue strongly-worded public threats and economic sanctions against this 'other country' to the international media. And on and on it goes. It makes for a great puppet show for the masses and it fills the hearts and minds of millions around the globe with disarming distraction so intriguing that they forget for a moment everything around them except that 'we' are 'we' and 'they' are 'they'.

Americans of course are not welcomed into Iran with open arms exactly. And yet, we know that the people of that great ancient country are no more responsible for their president's words than the people of America or Britain are responsible for the 24,000 Iraqi civilians who were killed in 2007 alone due to the invasion of Iraq by aforesaid countries. 24,000 innocent civilians killed in one year. Is the figure even imaginable to us? I dare say it is not. And yet 14 Americans are still willingly going to pay money to go to this other country of 'thems' knowing full well that they may or may not be fully welcomed. So just what exatly IS the purpose?

When one thinks about it, it is the Greek, British, and Roman Empires we fashion ourselves after here in the States and the majority of the Western World. Not the Islamic Empires. From very young ages in the West we learn of Plato and Socrates and Churchill and Caesar and Constantine and King Henry VIII even. But we don't hear much about the Islamic Empires or the rulers or kings or scientists or poets or much of anything about anything relating to Islamic thought or history.

It is an unfortunate result of whatever defect that one chooses to label it in the thinking and planning of our chosen officials and leaders. In school I, like many, was forced to read Aristotle but had to discover Rumi on my own. I was forced to read Shakespeare but had to discover Khalil Gibran on my own. I had to learn that Baghdad had the greatest library in the world on my own, before the Mongols destroyed it, along with the fact that Muslims at their peak were forerunners of the Italian Renaissance, innovators of modern day hospitals, paper making, textiles, soap, transcribed many of the most important writings of the ancient Greeks, and that their sophisticated bureaucracy is often credited as the basis of modern constitutions.

Of course there is more. There always is. As much as one cares to 'major' in things Christian or American or Western or British or Greek or Roman, there is just as much to study in the way of things Islamic or Babylonian, Arabian, Persian, or even Syrian. Much of it depends on where one is born and the indoctrination they receive as youngsters from those whose hands feed them their food. But don't go admitting simple truths such as these in public. For obvious reasons. People are very emotionally reactive regarding their home-country. Whether justifiably so or not. Some call it patriotism. Some call it jingoism. Some call it nationalism. Some call it terrorism. Some call it treason. I don't call it anything. I just observe that it is so.