Regarding the Willfully Enslaved
Jun 29, 2009 in theocracy
Earlier today, I tweeted: “they protest in the streets, on rooftops. chanting their devotion to the very faith that enslaves them and from which they beg deliverance.”
This is a thought that has been coming upon me for several days. Even with all the Twitter support for new elections in Iran, or at least a full recount of the vote, we are forgetting, if not simply outright ignoring, that the populace, in large part (even if proven not to be a technical majority), does not seek emancipation from its theocratic republic. All this outcry is, instead, the expression of a desire for a slightly more emotionally digestible form of theocratic rule.
Another way of saying that is: The protesters in Iran don’t want freedom. They are simply demanding that the shackles be loosened slightly so that they can scratch a philosophical itch or two.
And that, really, is it.
After some considerable consideration (pardon the redundancy), I changed my twitter avatar from a green one (Green is, as you might remember, the official color of Islam anyway), to a regular one a few days ago. In retrospect, I don’t support this Free Iran charade at all. Because it’s a charade. It’s pompous blowhardiness. Sure, if the elections were rigged, that’s wrong. Undoubtedly, if votes were ignored or uncounted, that’s wrong. But the desired end result is far too closely related to the status quo to be worthy of this much angst and bloodshed. How incredibly, unfortunately, disappointingly…
…ignorant.
“Save us from our self-imposed delusion with a slightly different form of self-imposed delusion” is precisely what this is all about. That ain’t freedom, friends and neighbors. That’s self-perpetuated willful enslavement. Iran will only begin to be “free” when the majority requires the government to remove the yolk of religious oppression. And it’ll still be a long way from there for them to go as a country.
And it’s this faulty, delusional presumption that makes the senseless, needless deaths, injuries, and property damage all the more depressing.
Humanity: the perpetually incessant bane of human progress.
