I don’t intend to make a habit of commenting on current affairs but it just so happens that the current government election fracas in Iran fits into my train of thought on ignorance and irrationality.

The complete lack of human rights in Iran is not a new thing. People, usually those from the fortunate West, forget that the fabled Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a treaty; it’s not something that countries sign at a summit and abide by. It’s a declaration, like the USA’s declaration of independence. It is a statement of the rights that should be granted to every human on this planet. These rights are not privileges to be earnt or bartered from an oppressive institution, league or government; they are to be given unconditionally upon birth.

And for many Westerners, like you and I, they are. In Iran, as with most of the developing world, these rights are merely a mythical concept afforded to only a handful of lucky, aristocratic or autocratic individuals. We don’t know how lucky we are, nor do we appreciate just how recent the concept of human rights actually are. Speaking out of turn 100 years ago would result in being caned as a child, or beaten into a bloody pulp as an adult. Falling pregnant out of wedlock would throw you into social exile. Believing or acting upon religious beliefs outside the norm would get you stoned, drowned or burnt to death.

For the longest time we didn’t even own our bodies: nominally under our control, but only during peacetime, or when not under duress and whipped into chain gangs. Historically, we were under the singular jurisdiction of the local Lord, or owned by whoever employed us. This only changed with the form of trade unions and the downfall of antiquated European feudal systems, but for centuries this was sadly the case across what we now consider ‘the Western world’.

Just one thing has remained entirely ours: our mind and our thoughts. As long as we didn’t vocalise those thoughts, our minds have long been the last remaining stronghold of freedom. Of course, religious dogma and torture are usually employed to wean out any remaining free-thinkers — usually those that made the mistake of opening their mouths. But some people kept on dreaming, kept on fighting. Enough of us fought back against the Dark Age’s oppression so that we might one day experience our Renaissance and Enlightenment. Without either golden age we wouldn’t be living in this world today.  Those brave souls that kept thinking outside the box, even after being brutally tortured or their families were killed — when all seemed truly lost, they kept on sticking it to the man, hoping for change. To those men and women we have a debt of immeasurable gratitude.

I have a theory (and it deserves its own blog entry): the Middle East is simply behind the times — from a Western point of view. To us Europeans and Americans the atrocities and injustices occurring in Iran are backward. We decry and condemn the unfairness of it all. We break down in tears at the thought of free people being brutally beaten and unfairly subdued by an oppressive force. And to us, it is inhumane and immoral: to deny their rights of thought and expression, refusing  their right take part in the government and arbitrarily arresting those that try — these are breaches of important, fundamental human rights that we Westerners take for granted.

But to them it is the norm. This is the bit we don’t agree with, but we must get our heads around: the Middle East is, to us, akin to antiquity — that’s how we used to do things, centuries ago. We used to have slaves, and deny the vote to certain classes and castes. Not so long ago, making a public stand would get you shot. Once upon a time we had as few rights as our persecuted brothers and sisters in Iran. That’s why it hurts so much. That’s why it feels so incredibly unfair, so unjust. We turn on our TVs to see centuries of hard work spent on gaining our human rights pissed on by the government of Iran.

I hope those in the Middle East keep on fighting. Those that oppress you are afraid of losing control, and believe it or not, that’s progress. That’s the beginning of a revolution and history has shown that freedom will be yours. Eventually.

I’m going to attempt to tackle the tricky and turbulent subject of racism. I’m not going to cover its entire history. I’m not going to pretend that I’m entirely objective — no one is — though I will try my best to be as neutral as possible. If I say something upsetting, apologies; this a sensitive topic, one that most people tend to stay well away from.

As always, we’ll start at the beginning. Not many people know where racism actually begun. The slave trade? No. Eugenics and ultimately the Holocaust? No. Religion? Getting warmer, but still not quite.

Racism begun way back in tribal times. Racism is effectively synonymous with tribalism, which is itself similar to the concept of nationalism. It’s all about selfishness.  Racism can take many forms: religious, cultural, skin-colour and are all equally ‘bad’ — but at one time, they weren’t. They were a matter of self-preservation. It’s you or them. Insular tribes and their inbreeding reaffirmed genetic and physical traits and thus ‘races’ were created — but even the term ‘race’ is, ironically, racist! Race is an American term coined hundreds of years ago to describe the difference between blacks and whites. It sadly gained credibility and traction, and was then exported around the world. It was borrowed from the French razza which means ‘lineage’.

Racism is all about lineage — all about blood, and the purity thereof. Racism is the act of erroneous differentiation of humans into different species. It’s about the justification of maliciousness and unfair, unfounded prejudice to those of different colour, culture, heritage or lineage.

We have the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview to thank for this little gem. For 500 years now we’ve been living in a world governed by the laws of physics. Action and reaction, cause and effect. Mechanics. Gravity. Cold, cool calculation of calculus. The control, utilisation and abuse of energy. The last five centuries have been all about physicality; it’s been all about what we can see and touch and push and stretch. Racism existed before of course, but it wasn’t the kind we see today — it was religious. For 1500 years racism was religious — though back then it wasn’t called racism of course. It would’ve been ‘persecution’ or ‘religious intolerance’.

Did you know that when Columbus first landed on what would become Mexico, the Portuguese and Spanish sailors did not hesitate to mate and marry the Indians, the native Americans? As long as they converted to Christianity via baptism, colour didn’t matter one iota. Only their religious beliefs mattered.

But that’s a topic unto itself and I’m not going to go into it here. The rise of contemporary racism is more interesting.

Let’s go back to skin colour. Other than the Holocaust, almost all modern examples of racism have stemmed from the concept of White supremacy and superiority. How on earth did those of white skin end up at the top of the food chain?

The Declaration of Independence, that’s how. But don’t stop reading yet, my dear American friends! You probably wouldn’t have drafted the Declaration if it wasn’t for the British.

The Declaration of Independence was the pinnacle of The Enlightenment. The single most important period for philosophical and scientific advancement ever also created racism. All it took one was one theory-treated-as-fact: Dr Charles White (what a name…) scientifically reasoned that Blacks were the stop-gap between monkeys and Whites. Voltaire and Kames — both bigwigs of the Enlightenment — proposed the idea of separate human species.  Hume and Kant, Jefferson and Washington — almost every big name of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were White supremacists.

Here were the most influential thinkers, scholars and scientists the world has ever seen. It was their thoughts, mental machinations and ideologies that formed the world we live in today. And they were racists. They thought of Blacks as not-quite-human.

And I dare say… it’s not a very big surprise that they arrived at such a conclusion.

The Enlightenment was about culture; a big damn celebration of art and science and thinking — in essence, it was a riotous exaltation of everything that makes us human and not monkeys.

And Blacks didn’t have that culture. American Indians didn’t have that culture. Or, rather, they didn’t have any that we could see. So we subjugated them. We made them our bitches. We justified our brutal abuse of fellow man by declaring them sub-human — after all, would a fellow white man allow himself to be forced into slavery? God no, his intelligence and tenacity would prevent it.

We’re talking about a group of intellectuals that ranted and raved about the benefits of liberty and equality; freedom from tyranny and the virtues of democracy and representative government. Later, they even drafted a declaration formed from the tenets and axioms of these great thinkers. They formed a new, mighty nation that, at its very core, ratified slavery.

As Thomas Jefferson scrawled out the fundament, lynch-pin and rock-solid bastion of the New World, as he illustrated his idyllic imaginings on the loose paper that would later become the Declaration of Independence… he was writing it for the whites. There was just no way their way of life could continue if non-whites were afforded the same rights and privileges as the whites. Think about it.

But it wasn’t really Jefferson’s fault. Science had told him that blacks were little more than apes devoid of culture and intellect. Or perhaps science merely suggested it and human nature enforced it. I suppose we’ll never know.

But how do we fix it?

Racism is a pathological contagion. It passes from parent to child. That can never be changed.

What we need is a new worldview. We need to shift our perspective through 90 degrees and move towards a new frontier. I hesitate to say that we need to ‘re-find our spirituality’, because there are issues associated with organised religion: intolerance, persecution, zealotry. Oour infatuation with the physical nature of the world needs to change. Never again must we single-out and tunnel-vision a sole strand of science.

What we need is another Enlightenment…