Announcement

There will be a two day meeting on high energy physics phenomenology. PhD students working on high energy physics are especially encouraged to participate. The topics include:

- Neutrino Physics
- Leptogenesis
- Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
- Various Higgs Models.

For more information, visit the website at here.

Priorities

To make a reasonable choice for voting, we have to first determine what are our priorities and what are the most important plans we expect the politicians to carry out.

From any perspective I look, my first priority is stability and then economic growth. Of course, stability is a pre-requisite for both economic and scientific sustainable development.

As a result, I would not vote for any radical candidate whose controversial policies might stir turmoil. I will vote to candidates that tend to give firm plans rather than disclose the misdeeds of their rivals even if they are right about their claims.

As far as disclosing family and personal scandals are concerned, I believe nobody's personal life is my business! About financial scandals, I still think such kind of revelation is more destructive than preventive. What is the outcome of all these revelations?! Experience shows that the "big" heads will transfer their money to Swiss banks and only minor accomplices receive punishments. In the process, the subsequent instability deteriorates the economy.

Such kind of revelations are also harmful from the political perspective. A politician must be a master of compromise. S/he should compromise with anybody who wields power to meet demands of the citizens who have voted for her/him.

So I will vote for someone who although herself/himself from financial point of view is fairly decent but is willing to compromise with all wo/men of power and capital.

Perhaps, what I am saying sounds like a surprize to those who know me in person , because I am an individual who very hardly compromises, even if that means I will lose many privileges. But this is as far as all is at stake is my own personal privileges. If I am in a situation that my decision might put some other individual's privileges at risk, I certainly reconsider being stubborn.

It is not just politics. When you assume some responsibilty, even as small as the chairmanship of a science department, that involves other people, you do not have the luxury to boast " I never compromise

You are a failure if you don't and your failure makes others suffer.

The school

In reply to one of the comments on the previous post, I mentioned that the nationalist movement and its achievements could not be possible without the constitutional movement taking place half a century earlier. I should explain what I meant by this claim, especially that we all know that the leaders of the movement had all sorts of ups and downs with the parliament and even attempted acts which were considered an infringement of the constituition at the time.

What I mean is that the leaders, long before the movement, had learned the necessary skills as parliament members. Of course the parliament was not perfect. It had many shortcomings and was harassed by the king and other powers over and over; however it served as a school for the talented ones.

Suppose the constituinal movement had not taken place and Mosaddeq and his friends after obtaining their PhD in Europe returned to the same backward feudal society of before the consititutional movement. No matter how smart and illuminated they were, after a while they would lose their spirit and would become one like many others. Even that restricted democracy brought about the opportuinity to learn the skills and find out how in practice what they have learned in classroom has to be applied in real political life.

That is very important! Only those can bring about profound reform that have already rolled up their sleeves and done something at a smaller scale. I am skeptical of all who promise to change the world up-side down without any practical experience as an insider before. Even if they are not imposters, in practice they will find out things are not so easy that they had thought of. I prefer someone who already worked in the system and displayed reasonable competence and knows the unwritten laws of the sophisticated mechanisms behind the scenes.

Exactly because of such considerations, I personally prefer to stay out of politics and

restrict my activity in this field to voting for those who, in my opinion, are better than the rest.

Back in my time...

Although in the early years after revolution and during Khatami's term in office, atmosphere of the universities in Iran was extremely politics-oriented and politically polarized, in the first half of 70's (right before Khatami elected for presidency) political apathy prevailed in universities.

When I entered Sharif Univ. most of my colleauges were more indifferent about politics than they are now. In those years, I read a book on the history of the constitutional movement (Engelaab-e mashroote) and became aware that how much sacrifice has been made to make the vote a possibility, I started to believe that ignoring this right is a sort of ingratefulness to those men and women who have put everything they possessed at risk to make this happen.We are taught not to throw away even smallest fragments of bread. Of course, we know that small parts of bread will not solve the food crisis in the world. But, bread is a symbol of blessing and has to be respected. Symbols are important! For me, my vote holds the same place of honour as fragments of bread do. I would have been particular about storing the fragements of bread even if, while I had only bare bread for dinner, the rest of the world were enjoying lobster and caviar.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting voting is a religious or even patriotic duty.

For me voting is completely a personal choice. For me, voting is a symbol and symbols are important! I emphasize again that I am not trying to convince anybody to vote. Otherwise, I would have chosen a different wording! I am just expressing my personal opinion.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the present post, the indifferent mindset of early 70's passed and was replaced by politics-dominated atmosphere of after the "dovvom-e khordaad" era. It is likely that the present phase will also pass and lead to another politically polarized period. Learning each other's opinions on politics in a cool atmosphere can make us immune against potential clashes in a heated one.

Balance and maturity

In early years after revolution as well as during Khatami's administration, the Iranian society was quite politically sensitive. They closely followed the political news and engaged in heated political debates in many occasions. Politics dominated the mindset of educated class and undermined non-political arts, peotry, literature, humanity sciences and, to some extent, unfortuantely, even physics.In early months that Shahin and I had returned from abroad to Iran (which was the last year of Khatami's presidency), it often happened that some people in the middle of a quite serious physics seminar started talking politics. Shahin and I strongly protested against such a trend and (at the cost of falling from grace!!) we put an end to it. Yes, in fact we fought to make this change but this change would not be possible if the younger generation did not support us.

Too much of politics can pollute scientific atmosphere. On the other hand, complete apathy towards politics has its negative consequences, too. There must be a balance. The question is what is the balance and who has the right to determine it. As Sa@di has said "hame kas aql-e khod be kamaal binad-o farzand-e khod be jamaal!"But, we must be aware that anybody who proclaims himself as the gauge for "balance is no different from the one who claims he has the truth and the whole truth and therefore has a divine right to lead. Such people and such claims are dangerous.

In an established scientific atmosphere where there is a natural academic hierarchy, balance is in the air and this question does not arise.
Let me explain what I mean by natural academic hierarchy. In an established stable scientific institute, more senior people (even though might not anymore be active)have considerably higher insight about both science and science administration. No matter how smart younger ones are or how hard they work and educate themselves, still their insight does not equal those of the more senior people. The reason is simple. In such institutes,only the professors reach seniority that are smart, devoted to work and have accumlated experience in research and scientific administration for a lifetime. Of course, younger generation can have new ideas that are encouraged by the senior people if their insight tells them the idea is worth investing on. Such senior people "aardhaashoon-o bikhtand, alakaashoon-o aavikhtand". They are mature enough not to wage war against junior people or make a fuss over nothing. In case the junior ones make a mistake or cross a line, through a face to face conversation and a little of explanation they make them aware of their mistakes.
In such an atmosphere and with such seniors who can set the example, the balance is already determined.

In a less established atmosphere, the balance should be determined through discussion and reaching a consensus.

New year is approaching. Happy new year to all of you. As the new year's wish,I hope that we can work next year towards achieving a better established atmosphere such as the one I described. This is not possible unless we try to have a more mature behavior than we had before.
I am telling this mostly to myself rather than anyone else.By making it public, I will feel stronger obligation to keep trying.

Motivation for writing

I am not writing these series of posts on my political standpoints to persuade the readers to agree with me. First, I know that I will not be able to do so and second, it is pointless because a few votes do not change much the outcome of any national election. I am writing these series to achieve a better mutual understanding. Considerable number of people within my circle read Hamvarda so if we reach a mutual understanding, it is less likely to have tensions on political issues in future. Such tensions, as you can imagine, are quite harmful for any progress so it is worth spending time and energy to reach a mutual understanding.Notice that mutual understanding is different from having consensus.I may disagree with your viewpoint and you may disagree with mine.But, if we have mutual understanding we also aknowledge that each of us has own reasons. I should appreciate that you are not a traitor by voting or not voting to someone or some party that I support. You are not stupid or ignorant, either. You just think differently and you have the right to do so.

Second reason for writing is a practice for constructive debate.I am no politician but eventually I have to sit down in many councils of smaller scale for decision making.So, I have to practice for that. We should practice to be able to debate to reach a reasonable solution without letting emotions or our egos come before the undertaking.One of the shortcoming of fellow Iranians (especially physicists among them) is that they do not debate to reach a solution or even expand their horizons.Their primary goal from debating is to show off their skills in conversation and their ability in finding fault in the arguement of the person sitting before them and then attack him/her through this fault. This might be a good game but does not lead to any constructive result. I am writing these series to learn how to deal with such debaters.

Last but not least, I write because I like writing.

Fresh from ballot

Well, voting must be over now. Unlike the previous elections, this time, as far as I know there was not so many heated debates and clashes around the election. Despite all the drawbacks that we all are aware of, I believe the lack of emotional behavour is a blessing. It means we can sit down and think more profoundly about what we actually want. What are our priorities? To achieve our goal what kind of politicians we should elect.Then we can check how much the available options can fulfill our expectation.

In retrospect, I think all the emotions that were excited during previous elections were bound to end in disappointment. Most voters did not know what they were looking for. They were looking for change but did not know in what direction.

They were uttering words like democracy, without having a clear perception of its meaning.

In a series of posts I would like to address this question.

I will tell you what I, as a citizen living inside Iran and as a physicist, expect from the politicians that I vote for.

I will not point out any special person or party. I have not taken an oath of supporting any of them. I will vote for any candidate who I believe can fulfill a larger part of my expectations.

My posts are going to be in English so non-Iranians are also welcome to join the discussion.