- Joined
- Apr 27, 2021
- Messages
- 93
- Reaction score
- 661
- Points
- 17
- Age
- 30
- 💎VM
- 431.50
- Gender
- Male
- Ashram resident
- Yes
- Academy training
- KEY
In this thread, I will share comments from ordinary people on various topics. The comments aren’t mine; I’m simply highlighting interesting thoughts for myself...
The current protests in Iran offer us a glimpse of what may be—though it is not yet predetermined, it is highly likely to be—the end of a forty-five-year search by what was once one of the region’s most promising powers for its “special path,” “sovereignty,” and “the highest degree of spirituality,” a search that ultimately led to economic, social, and environmental collapse and a major political crisis.
It led from the Shah’s absurd, corrupt, and haphazard attempt at modernization to the current grim situation through an entire succession of wars and conflicts. It carried the country through confrontation with the West and with most local players. This is what “rising from our knees” looks like with a local twist.
What, in the end, remains of the “special path”? Trillions of dollars in oil revenues squandered pointlessly; a new generation of thoroughly entrenched—not Shah-era, but perfectly “sovereign”—corrupt officials, often from the most “enlightened and spiritual” dynasties; mountains of money and weapons scattered across the steppes and deserts from the Mediterranean to the Yemeni mountains and Iraqi deserts in an attempt to build a “Shiite world”; agents and influence networks on several continents. Is any of this helping now, or is it merely dragging the country even further down? The question is rhetorical.
Another version of the “special path” is Venezuela: from a promising country fully integrated into the global economy to its current miserable condition, from which a quarter of the population has been forced to flee.
Another “samurai path” is the Cuban one, involving an eternal search for an elder protector and sponsor—from the Soviet Union to the notorious Venezuela. Such is the sovereignty that cannot exist without external support and the search for something to parasitize.
North Korean Juche, which survives only through a powerful repressive apparatus and the population’s ignorance of how far behind their relatives living south of the 38th parallel they have fallen.
A whole parade of different countries, united by one thing: they decided to leave humanity’s common, well-trodden, if difficult, path and seek out their own trails. In the end, they became stuck in the surrounding swamps. What else unites these countries? Not a single success story for ordinary people, supposedly the very people for whose benefit such experiments were undertaken. What they do have is the absolute power of local elites, often growing fatter while the rest of the nation grows thinner.
Post automatically merged:
The current protests in Iran offer us a glimpse of what may be—though it is not yet predetermined, it is highly likely to be—the end of a forty-five-year search by what was once one of the region’s most promising powers for its “special path,” “sovereignty,” and “the highest degree of spirituality,” a search that ultimately led to economic, social, and environmental collapse and a major political crisis.
It led from the Shah’s absurd, corrupt, and haphazard attempt at modernization to the current grim situation through an entire succession of wars and conflicts. It carried the country through confrontation with the West and with most local players. This is what “rising from our knees” looks like with a local twist.
What, in the end, remains of the “special path”? Trillions of dollars in oil revenues squandered pointlessly; a new generation of thoroughly entrenched—not Shah-era, but perfectly “sovereign”—corrupt officials, often from the most “enlightened and spiritual” dynasties; mountains of money and weapons scattered across the steppes and deserts from the Mediterranean to the Yemeni mountains and Iraqi deserts in an attempt to build a “Shiite world”; agents and influence networks on several continents. Is any of this helping now, or is it merely dragging the country even further down? The question is rhetorical.
Another version of the “special path” is Venezuela: from a promising country fully integrated into the global economy to its current miserable condition, from which a quarter of the population has been forced to flee.
Another “samurai path” is the Cuban one, involving an eternal search for an elder protector and sponsor—from the Soviet Union to the notorious Venezuela. Such is the sovereignty that cannot exist without external support and the search for something to parasitize.
North Korean Juche, which survives only through a powerful repressive apparatus and the population’s ignorance of how far behind their relatives living south of the 38th parallel they have fallen.
A whole parade of different countries, united by one thing: they decided to leave humanity’s common, well-trodden, if difficult, path and seek out their own trails. In the end, they became stuck in the surrounding swamps. What else unites these countries? Not a single success story for ordinary people, supposedly the very people for whose benefit such experiments were undertaken. What they do have is the absolute power of local elites, often growing fatter while the rest of the nation grows thinner.
Матрица (The Matrix)
