"I went to the gambling-house, witnessed all the losers, but honest and sincere
When I came to this temple, all hypocritical-devouts." [1]
Mohammad Ghazalli

This famous French proverb, "People are the way(s) that they are" gnaws at my mind. Are we that immutable as hard rocks?... Can we not change ourselves for better?...`

I have in mind those educated, worldly intelligent individuals in the Iranian society and outside their Motherland and NOT the unfortunate ignorants. Those who have vast personal and sociological experiences, are well-read, have profound knowledge in most fields of Sciences, History, Arts and Literature, etc., etc.,... but underneath those massive 'wealth' harbor, to put it mildly, their not so healthy characteristic minds and psychs. Their obsessiveness, jealousy, meanness, stinginess, especially their emotional stinginess, their deep sense of unhealthy rivalry are hidden under that wealth of knowledge. And yes, wealth is a cover for most of human's faults. But for how long?...

They hurt their society more than and worse than any other internal and external enemies, and in the long run they will be exposed and are hurt themselves.

Our history is full of these characters. Hence, and mostly by our great poets, they are named or labeled as hypocrites, demagogues, individuals with thousand faces.

In modern times it is much easier and faster to recognize such 'intelligentsia.' How long did it take time, for example, to know who the real Ahmed Challabi, or Fowad Ajami who actually has published books and articles here and there, is the head of a department in a university here, to be exposed and known as hypocrites, cheaters, liars and sold-souls?... Well, believe me they are highly educated and 'intelligent.' So are their likes or their counterparts inside and outside Iran. And in the end they all loose their believers, their friends and acquaintances and worse, their respect in their societies and in the world.

Do they wonder why?... I wonder!... I hope they do. They surely blame 'others' rather than themselves. Perhaps it is because they are "hard rocks" and immutable. I name them "arrogant blinds" who never wish to look at themselves in the fast revealing mirror of history. They throw dusts at it and see only dust. And they project their own dusts on everyone who sees and exposes their-real-selves.

These dusty-minded types if even ask 'why', but they do not want or are afraid to examine some of those massive dusts which have covered their mirrors. Their mirrors are road to their salvation, their cure. They don't want to see WHY "they are the way they are." They are proud of it.

It is such a shame when the so known as "Healers" for inside and outside Iran are sick themselves. "How a bunch of rotten salt can preserve something else from rotting ?..."

Then, "what is to be done?"--this famous question of Lenin.

I am afraid the answer lies on the conscious of those types, the "wealthy Intellectuals" that I am addressing in this short article:

1)- To look and see inside, underneath their 'Wealthy knowledge.'
2)- What are there?... Monsters?...
3)- Face them and admit to themselves that these are their enemies and not "others" outside them.
4)- Change, change and Change: to better themselves.

Iranian society can no longer afford to harbor sick healers with sick-deeds who cloak their behaviors by beautifully superficial utterances. Too many thieves have come to Our Homeland and have stolen the best we had here throughout the Persian History. Arabs, Turks, Moguls, Tattars, They came though with swords but also wit 'beautiful' utterances too which have become like our second nature. No wonder that today we have become, as the Persian proverb goes, " The pottage hotter than the Pot."

Nothing is immutable in this world. We must change our ways of thinking, our bad habits and deeds and change for better. Otherwise we shall remain in the vast prison of all the inside and outside demagogues longer than fourteen hundred years.

Only us and us only can save us from that prison which for such a long history we are addicted to stay in and seek some other Saviors. How could those Thorn-Crowned-Saviors be our Salvagers who were and are just Pretenders?

Are we going to re-read the history and those "sacred books" with open minds and critically without fanaticism and without superstitious and mostly without fear?

Let us become realistic in this modern Twenty-first Century. The so many bloody wars and revolutions did not make of us a realistic Nation. Indeed after each era we curled back to our 'safe' spots and took refuge into our many-fold- monasteries (Khaneghah). There we were served better to look other way than to this Real World that we live in. Such beautiful illusions. Every scientific revolution that shook other places and nations we remained in the happy illusional world of our minds, until we became hands-out beggars for the need of all sciences. Those very few who realized our county's poverty and started to alert the people were labeled as "Westomaniacs" and we parroted all the words uttered by our psuedo-intellectuals.

The rest is this quarter century that like an everlasting nightmare has fallen on our country and on our nation.

It is a revolution in our minds that we need to bring forth.

Or are we still immutable?...

[1] under the two verse-poem (by Ghazalli) : A free translation of two verses. M. M.