This will make me unpopular, but I’m truly not able to decide if Trump was right to assassinate General Qasem Soleimani last week. Was it a deliberate provocation to Iran, an arrogant Western meddling in the Middle East, or the legitimate defence of American lives in the region? Or even defending us from a threat of terrorism in the USA and Europe? I would really like to know; but I don’t, and I don’t think I’m going to be qualified to judge.
One thing I do know, and it’s come from an unexpected source – Facebook, the notorious home of Fake News – but this is only my reaction, which is definitely not fake.
For a while, after a long time of campaigning on Facebook, I was tired out and never wanted to see it again. It had seemed to eat into my precious time, and instead of a leisure activity it had become nothing but hard work. Now the campaign is over (we won! It paid off! But that’s a story for another day). After a rest from Facebook I’ve started to dip my toe in the water again. And a post from an American Iranian made me realise something fundamental to my attitude to the Other. In a sense it doesn’t even matter whether it’s ‘fake’ or not, although I can’t really see how it would in all probability be. But that’s not the issue.
The woman’s Facebook post was an album of about forty photos from around Iran. Other than the sheer beauty which overwhelmed me by these picture-postcard views from around the country, there were a number of things which struck me.
First, perhaps most obviously, the sheer wonder of intricate and complex historical architecture and art, both Islamic and Christian. What a feat of glorious design and gorgeous colours there was there. What a cultural and historic treasure.
Second, I was deeply struck by the vibrancy of contemporary sculpture and civil engineering; cutting edge, imaginative and daring, rather than backward and stale.
Third, women in headscarves but also looking pretty sharp in Western fashion – and clearly smiling and having fun as they strode down the street talking and laughing.
But the fourth thing, which might seem odd to select as the most impactful, was a number of scenic views of the mountains and forests. Yes, they were as lovely as the hills of my own country, but there was something strange which struck me.
Forests are places full of colour and natural ecological variety; and hills are not flat.
When I look at an unknown country on a map, all I see is a colourless two-dimensional shape on a piece of flat paper. And unconsciously, I perceive that unknown country (which I’ve never visited or read about) as equally flat and colourless. Now, I’m deeply thinking; may Gxd forgive me for (even unconsciously) seeing Iran as a stereotypical flat desert of primitive, lifeless people.
My point is that ignorance supports the process of dehumanising the Other, making it easier for us to bomb the villages and cities because we’re somehow not killing and maiming ‘real’ people.
Another, but this time quite funny example comes to mind. I love the unconscious humour of what I call Grammatical Malapropism, when an adjectival clause or an attribution is ambiguous and lends itself to ridiculous interpretation.
On BBC Radio Four (which I love) this morning, I heard an earnest reporter telling us that ‘we see melting glaciers on our tv screens.’ He’s right, and it’s absolutely serious, but something lateral in my brain made me laugh. I imagined hearing dripping water downstairs, and rushing downstairs to see an enormous glacier perched on top of my precious 58 inch HD television (that bit’s made up; my tv is small, old, and not HD – but you take my point). I imagined it slowly melting, and the water flowing into the electrics of the tv set. I could see a glacier melting onto my tv screen.
And that did something strange. Suddenly, melting glaciers weren’t just a distant image on my tv screen, but something which could be real.
In Iran, just as in the melting glaciers, there are real, three dimensional things and people beyond the images, and somehow it sunk in how very easy it is to pigeon-hole them as somehow less real, because less close to me. And, perhaps crucially, unknown to me.
I won’t quote Jesus asking me who is my neighbour (oops, I just did).
Instead, I want to ask how ignorant do I want to remain, to help me dehumanise the Other, and make nature and planet equally unreal in my emotional focus.
Is it possible for me to do the joyful work of knowing enough to rehumanise Iranian people, and to re-realise my world? No, not HD; 3D.
If you want some help, try watching BBC’s mini-series Ages and Ages. That’s all I’m saying.
