This is an essay that’s been brooding in my head for a long time.  I hadn’t experienced the motivation to write about it, until last night.  You need a little background for this article to make sense.  It will be good reading, a little bit of history and possibly new information you never had access to about the inside of Persian (Iranian) culture in America.  I really recommend you make the time to watch the video.  It is an hour long but very educational and informative if you want a concise primer on Persian history, and understand what makes Iranians who they are.

I came to this country 27 years ago.  We left in England in the prime of the revolution that was going on in Iran.  The reach of the craziness from this was far.  Far enough that Iranians who opposed the Islamic Fundamentalist movement were becoming targets for violence and even death.  My family decided to leave England and bring us to America to give us safe harbor from the dangers of being a Non-fundamentalist Iranian family.

I remember coming to America as a child and being completely in awe.  Everywhere I went, I was amazed at the magnitude and advancement of this great new home of ours.  America was everything a little boy with a vivid imagination needed to grow and advance.  I remember when my dad would take trips to the U.S. before we came here, I would do hours of reading on America and their powerful advancements in science and technology.  I was so intrigued by this great country, that I organized a viewing for my 4th grade class to watch the launching of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

We moved around a lot, looking for the right fit.  We lived in Minnesota, but it was too cold.  Dallas was too hot and humid.  Los Angeles had everything we were looking for.  Good business opportunities for my father, temperate climate, and a diverse multicultural city.  When we got to L.A., the most sought after destination was a place called Cabaret Tehran.  This was an Iranian nightclub/restaurant that had been around 10 years at that time.  So the owner of the place, Mr. Ahmad Masrour had been a reputable, well known icon for the (at the time) very small Iranian community in Los Angeles.  We would go to Cabaret Tehran as a special event.  The family would get dressed up in our nice clothes, and go to here the best singers of our community, and have dinner, and socialize with other Iranians.

This icon however, was more than a just a place to experience Iranian culture in ghorbat (a refugee from your own country).  Cabaret Tehran was a symbol of the old image Iranians had in the world: the people who have a history of 3000 years of culture, literature, music, art, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and were the very creators of human rights and the scaffolding for modern democracy.  Our new image in the late 70’s, early 80’s was smeared with pictures of American hostages, beared protestors burning tires in cities, and women covered from head to toe in black drapes (chadors).  My father would always grumble, “there used to be a time you would go anywhere in the world, put your Iranian passport on the counter, and they would roll a red carpet in front of you.  Now these mullahs have reduced us to a level lower than the average criminal, where you have to hand your passport over in shame.”

Persians are an ancient, and evolved culture.  The average Iranian is very shrewd compared to other cultures.  This cultural “speed of thought” is a result of years of political, philosophical, and religious invasion in their country.  Persians have ruled an empire that spanned from Spain to China, and also been conquered by almost every other empire.  What is unique about these people however is that despite all the comings and goings of other empires, Persians never lost their identities.  They were always Persian.  In fact, history shows that all of the empires that ruled over Persia were influenced by their host.  This is because the culture is very similar to the culture that spawned what we call “Westernization”.  Persians were poets, artists, musicians, scientists, and astronomers.  These people gave humanity the great works of Rumi, Hafez, and the medical knowledge of greats like Avicenna.  Politics were influenced by the ideas of leaders like Cyrus who drafted the first document to detail basic, inalienable rights of a human being, which eventually led to the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.

Religion, or Islam was brought into Iran by the Arabs who conquered Iran shortly after Islam started to spread across the middle east around YEAR. Before this, Persians were pagan, worshiping the Earth, the Sun, and Nature.

I remember learning our rich history from my parents, and what is means to be Persian.  Our cultural ideals are warm.  We love to dance.  A Persian family would open their door and extend their table to a visitor without consideration.  We take care of our elders.  We never put our family members in nursing homes and live in extended families.  Our language like some others, has two different versions, one used for conversation with elders (which is very strict and respectful) and the casual form which is used with friends and same age relations.  Respect for family, women and integrity are fundamentals of what makes you Persian.  As kids trying to assimilate in a new country, I remember hearing from elders in the family “don’t act like that, you are becoming Americanized”.  Ultimately, as the kids of that generation grew into the adults of this generation, and I thought, or hoped that we would merge the pluses of our culture with the pluses of American culture and create a new super culture, much the immigrants of America past.

But I was wrong.

Being a product of what I call “The Ellis Island” generation of Iranians, I grew up assimilating myself into American culture.  I couldn’t read enough American History and loved the stories of our country’s independence, the forging of the Constitution, the Civil War and even the modern shift of American politics post Monroe Doctrine.  So I grew up combining my cultural background of being 100% Iranian, with the grandeur and advancement that American culture had brought to modern mankind. This is a unique perspective, because I observe Persians from a different lens than most “Americans” or Persians do.

Our culture is now diseased, as is American culture.  The disease that is infected almost every culture has taken a firm strong hold on Iranians in America.  Don’t look at Iranians as what you see here in Los Angeles.  These people are a product of runaway materialism and media idiocracy.  It’s sad actually.  Census data shows that Iranians comprise a higher socioeconomic percentage in large cities where they are densely populated.  This is because most of the wealthy business owners, and educated families left Iran during the revolution.

But with all this wealth, and education, our culture pumps out crap every day and night on 20+ channels of 24 hour sewage via satellite.  All you have to do is go to one of your Iranian friends homes and ask if they have a Persian Satellite, and tune in.  Any given moment, what you will see is some charlatan host, either answering pointless phone calls requesting music videos that all send the same message as Mass Media brainwashing corporations like Clear Channel, or selling carpets, or talking heads about the regime and how to bring the Shah back.  All this wealth and none of the leaders of our society (people who are in charge of the Persian media outlets) have put away their greed to create programs of worth.  Programs to teach children in “ghorbat” Farsi (our language).  Programs that cover history, Iranian and Western.  Programs on science, literature, music.  Nothing.  Only music videos that are about girls, partying, rims, fancy cars and a bunch of other useless crap.

These so called leaders, like Alireza Amirghassemi, Hamid Shabkheez, and a list of other robotic money machines, just fill up their programming hours with junk entertainment (much like American TV) and continue to stupefy and bring down their people.
I usually don’t participate in Persian functions, but last night, I went to the new Cabaret Tehran.  A well known Persian singer (Moein) was performing there.  It is no longer located on the second story of the ADDRESS building on Ventura boulevard in the heart of Studio City.  That place is now owned by a Russian Armenian business man who turned it into a Russian Cabaret, Romanov.  The new Cabaret Tehran is in a strip mall, on the bottom floor.  And at the reception they have young Iranian girls working, who are the results of what I explained a few paragraphs ago.  A cultural retardation has taken over Iranians in America.  These kids have no courtesy.  They don’t understand respect and professionalism.  I was shocked to be dealt with in a manner that I have never addressed an older person.

Just more proof that our current entertainment based culture is in serious need of an awakening.  Not only is America itself suffering from it, but rich, strong, scientific cultures that relocate to America, are  infected rapidly with this idiocracy and their history is extinguished in a generation.

I argue that it is the duty of social, political, and economic leaders of every culture to give back and contribute to their society; of not to improve their own situation, to stand against the degeneration of humanity as a whole.  Rich and well known men like Mr. Amirghassemi and Shabkheez can use their influence and control of a very powerful medium to educate and elevate their cultures to levels only dreamed of by great leaders of the past like Dr. Martin Luther King.  I often wonder why we don’t have great men like Dr. King, or Ben Franklin, or Mhatma Ghandhi anymore?  People who stood with conviction for what is right, regardless of what was the common path.

Is it too much to ask for people to give back a little?  Have we become so ugly in our greed that we no longer even care about our own history?  I think that we live in a unprecedented era.  One that holds a choice for all mankind.  The fork in the road is clear.  There are millions of nay sayers and deniers.  They will wind up extinct.  This is because the truth always prevails.  You can believe that you won’t fall when you step off your 4th story balcony, but in the end, you will.  That is because the truth, which is science, will always prevail.  That is the only truth.  Science rules everything in the universe.  And the science of our current situation is that we are creating idiots for the next generation.  Children can’t carry on intelligent conversations with adults?  Why is that?  In the village, children would interact with adults and elders at all times, which raised their level of consciousness quickly.  Nw we promote staying immature and childlike.  We create movies like “17 Again” which joke and romanticize the notion of “staying young” forever.  We mortgage our houses to get a face lift so we don’t look as old as we really are?  Why are we so confused?  Well, we can start by looking at our entertainment.

Music videos and songs about cars, girls, clubs and parties don’t add up to a very intelligent generation.  What happened to the songs of the 60’s and 70’s that sent had lyrics with complex messages dealing with peace, poverty, and liberty?  We’ve replaced all that with “go shorty, it’s yer berf-day…”  Oh boy, we really are in for a ride now!

This essay is not a complaint, or a negative perspective.  Rather, it’s a call to wake up, and bring back what made America, Iran and every other culture in this world great.  Integrity, truth, education, science, astronomy, and the never ending vigilant pursuit of liberty.  You can make this happen.  You are an important player in this game.  It starts with how you talk to your children.  It starts with what you decide to put on your programs.  It begins with your patronage or ethical businesses, and your non-patronage of unethical businesses.
Think about this: every person reading this is the results of thousands of individuals (ancestors) in the past who have suffered, and strived to create a better place for their children.  That is what we do… we try to leave a better world for our children.  But now, because of our helpless addiction to entertainment, we have disengaged from being involved in our children’s futures, and left that to the media.  You owe it to the thousands of people in your lineage to leave this temporary home you call Earth, better than you found it.  That includes you too Mr. Masrour, Mr. Amirghassemi, and Mr. Shabkheez

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