On Cannes 2016 and the Iranian Cinema

It seems that recent achievements in the Iranian cinema have dethroned some long-lasting stereo-typical Iranian products in representing the country in international fora. In my conversations with people of different nationalities in the last 2-3 years, I can hardly remember a dialogue in which the Iranian cinema was not mentioned.

As someone without any expertise in the film industry, I have two modest (and perhaps crude) observations about cinema.

There seems to be an antifragile aspect to cinema. The more you suppress it and put it under constraints, the more it thrives. That might explain why some of the best movies I have seen were made in an era during which the directors’ political views were suppressed or were dominated by the opposing political ideologies, or were about an era during which individual and political freedoms did not fare very well.

The second observation, which to a certain degree flows from the first one, is that the best movies of all times were made by the artists belonging to the left side of the political spectrum (Marxists, communists, lefties or whatever label you prefer). These movies are exceptionally effective at casting some light on certain genuine concerns and poignant aspects of human life which cannot be captured by the narrow calculus of an economist or a policy maker. But the caveat is that a movie is probably the last thing by which a policy maker or an economist should be inspired. Though these genres of movies and their artists are incredibly powerful at highlighting ‘some’ problematic aspects of the status quo or reality, they often are as hopeless as economists or policy makers in explaining what to do about it.

Anyway, off-topic basta! I just wanted to congratulate the Iranian artists on their recent success and I hope that the Iranian cinema will continue to contribute to human civilization and its wealth of cultural heritage.

I take my hat off to these Iranian artists and salute their achievement.

Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium)

Growing old, getting educated, wealthy, and married may satisfy most of our worldly needs, but satisfaction of one specific need has an inverse relationship with our age, and that is the need for getting advice from our friends and acquaintances. For some reason, our entourage deprive us from their advice when we pass certain age thresholds, even if they find us in a desperate need for it. However, such a reticence on the part of our family, friends and acquaintances should not give us the illusion of being perfect and should not deter us from searching for substitutes.

Not surprisingly, for grown-ups, books can make excellent substitutes for such a want. One such book, which I recently read, is Seneca’s “Moral Letters to Lucilius” also translated as “Letters from a Stoic”.

This book shares a notable feature with a few other excellent books in that it is the distilled wisdom of an aged and experienced statesman, written when the author’s life was drawing to a close. These genres are often replete with fascinatingly profound insights about life. Overall, no matter how good you are, this book will make you a slightly better person.

As an example of why reading the book would make the world a better place, let me provide a reason from the book for why I am introducing this book to you. On sharing knowledge, the book reads:

“Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.”

One great feature of the book is that almost all 124 letters are stand-alone and can be read separately, making it a great bedtime-book choice.

Fortunately, the book is in public domain. On the left-hand column of this webpage, under Download/Print you can download the book in the format of your choice.

In the end, I am willing to bet that reading a letter a day would keep anguish away.

Stray Dogs, Public Policy Blunders, and Entrepreneurial Response

Stray dogs, sometimes strolling in herds on the streets of Zanjan, have raised ethical as well as public policy issues since I have become self-conscious about the policy issues of my hometown. In the extremely cold nights of January, you have to get used to the continuous sound of barks that steal sleep from your eyes. It is as if you are living in a village with lots of watch dogs warning you against potential threats. 

A few years ago, as a public policy response to the influx of stray dogs into the city, the authorities put up bounties for killing stray dogs. A few years later, the number of dogs on the streets showed that the policy was a big failure, partly because hardly any bounty hunter, willing to kill dogs to earn a living, could be found. But such a brutal policy towards stray dogs, who reportedly attacked no human beings, raised sympathy towards them, and activists condemned such abnormally harsh policies of the city authorities.

The unintended consequence of such a policy was that it raised considerable awareness about animal welfare and people became kinder and more sympathetic to animals compared to the feelings people had at the time of my childhood towards such animals.

Today, the word of mouth is that a lady, who is an environmental activist and entrepreneur, has proposed to the city authorities that a bounty to be paid to anyone or any company that captures any stray dogs. Then, she buys dogs from the authorities and after taking all necessary veterinary steps, her company exports those dogs to Western countries, particularly Germany, where they are trained and sold to customers.

This is one of the greatest examples of achieving Pareto improvement with a bit of thinking and effort. I understand that the lady has had to overcome so many legal and cultural barriers, especially those related to the trade on dogs, to start that business. Although the number of stray dogs on the streets of the city suggests that the initiative was of a limited success, I salute her achievement in introducing such a humane way of addressing the problem and am proud to be a concitoyen of such an entrepreneurial lady.

On the Doers and the Losers

On the turn of the year, I see that some Iranian friends, who post New Year’s Eve wishes, are being subject to ridicule by some others. There might be a lot of different reasons for that ridicule, an important one being the western or occidental values expressed by the ones, who are oriental, posting such wishes.

It is absolutely legitimate to be funny, of good sense of humor, and make people laugh. But making fun of people for being open to new cultures and amenable to cultural changes is simply a signal of cultural regress and having a mind full of prejudices and bigotry. Those satirists, if we may call them so, often project cultural protectionist attitudes as well, the same sorts of attitudes that have found their way to the public policy. Compare the weekends in Iran (Thursdays and Fridays) with those in the rest of the world!

The world is changing fast and one has to be agile in his adaptations. Waves of globalization have swept away many barriers and if we are fearful of facing the forces of globalization, for whatever reason, we will soon become irrelevant. Adaptation is and will be the key for the survival of any nation as well as any individual. To paraphrase Keynes, when the world changes, I change my mind, manners, demeanors, and customs and adapt my life style accordingly. What do you do, Sir/Madam?

We know of the old adage, “if you can’t beat them, join them”. If a country or a culture cannot establish its norms as the dominant one with the greatest number of countries and cultures in its network, it is imperative for that country to shift to the norms of the dominant culture, and to shift quickly. Do we know how much it costs to have different weekends (Thursdays and Fridays) from those of the rest of the world? 

If we do not join them in time, we will become, to borrow from Thomas Friedman, roadkills of global highway. After the killing, it is not important to know who killed the roadkill, but it is important to learn the lesson on how not to come to a standstill or reverse on the global highway.

It is an omnipresent fact that there are always those fainéants who ridicule those who do things. Ignoring the former is the most virtuous and gracious response by the latter. If we are not able to do things, or we are not amenable to changes, perhaps we are the one who is to be ridiculed and criticized. Fortunately enough, throughout history the former (fainéants) are the losers, for had they been winners, we would have been living in antiquity, if not in the Stone Age, for good.

In Praise of Uncertainty or: Should we stop worrying and learn to love uncertainty?

Born ignorant, we start off by pursuing knowledge with the false promise that it leads to certainty. We grow into adulthood with the illusion of knowledge, but midway we settle for an unsettling state of doubt. Further down the road, we mature into a humbling recognition of our ignorance, and finally while stepping into senility, we face yet another tsunami of unpleasant unknown unknowns awaiting us as mortal beings.

But, should we pity the human race for his inescapable haplessness in his uncertain journey? Or should we stop worrying about uncertainty and learn to love it?

Looking back at 33 years of my life, I have realized that whenever I was at the height of my uncertainty curve, I experienced an extraordinary flow in my life. Whenever I wanted to change jobs, places of residence, or fields of study, I was most stressed, but at the same time, most productive, excited, and hopeful. In contrast, when I felt even an infinitesimal grain of certainty in my life, though for brief moments, those days were replaced with unproductive and agonizingly depressing moments.

Though it seems unsettling to be in a state of limbo, the alternative (i.e., certainty) is at best an illusion, on average a depressing melancholy, and at worst a perilous state of mind ripe for intolerance. 

The latter property of certainty comes from an illusion of certainty embedded not in the dynamics of the outside world, but of our inside beliefs. Who can deny the fact that the worst atrocities in human history have been committed by staunch followers of ideas promising certainty in the veracity of ideologies and infallibility of leaders?

Inquietude of uncertainty and doubt, though disagreeable, is to be preferred to the dullness and quietude of certainty. Let’s stop pursuing certainty, for it is degenerating.

A Tale of Two Cities: Why Unequal Attention Is Being Paid to Baghdad and Paris?

A question is raised in the aftermaths of the Paris massacre: why do Paris attacks and similar events in the western world provoke higher levels of hype, while equally comparable attacks in Baghdad and Beirut go unheeded?

The answer seems to be straightforward. Some countries have the soft power to have many people on board supporting them when events like these occur. The soft power is not something with which a country is born; it should be procured through ages of perseverance in creating progressive political and cultural values. This is what makes people more ‘interested’ in the destiny of one country than that of the other.

I am sure most people, who express their solidarity with Parisians, have spent some time in Paris or Parisian cultural products have penetrated their hearts and impacted their minds one way or another. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Baghdad or other isolated cities and countries where comparable events occur. How many people around the world have ever heard of the names of the cities in the Middle East where unspeakable atrocities are being committed?

The equality argument is also raised for paying equal attention to similar events in different parts of the world. Of course, legally speaking, everybody is born equal, but this is not the case from a political or economic standpoint. In politics, save voting rights, equality is almost non-existent. And as we know, in economic life, we are all born unequal. (I am but describing.)

In international law and politics, which is only superficially coated with the idea of equality of nations, there are circumstances under which a country may temporarily lose its right to be treated equally. If a country is a rogue state, it should not expect other countries to treat it equally.

With so many self-imposed sanctions against themselves, which make them more and more isolated and their contribution to human civilization meager and negligible, most Middle Eastern countries and their citizens are far from getting equal attention of the world for comparable events.

It is up to a nation to make itself unequal upwards or downwards.

PS: The concept of attention economics might also be helpful in understanding the unequal attention paid to the events of the same nature. This Econtalk episode can also shed light on the issue. 

Political Economy Lessons from Childhood Stories

One of my favorite childhodood anecdotes, which the passage of time could not wash away from my mind, concerns the story of a young preacher of an ideological creed and an old lay passerby at the dawn of an ideological movement.

The story goes that a new convert to an emerging ideology was passionately preaching about the leader of the ideology in an old town, describing how perfect the world would have looked like had his leader’s ideology prevailed, how beautiful life would have become and how justice would have ruled the land had the leader been in charge…

The passerby who happened to hear those words stopped and asked the preacher:

–  "Son, does your leader have a belly or not?"

–  "Yes." Answered the preacher.

–  "Then, he is no different.” Said the passerby and strolled away indifferently…

So insightful, timeless, and universal are the lessons of our childhood parables.

For more on the insights of the story, listen to this EconTalk episode with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on his book "the Logic of Political Survival". 

Lingua Franca and the Glory of Civilizations

Years ago, I was discussing the miseries of living in an underdeveloped country with a philosopher-to-be friend of mine. For some reasons, we both were mad at the circumstances under which we were living. In between his furious words he quoted a deeply moving hemistich that always resonates with me. Today, I came across that poem by coincidence and could not resist reading it to the end. The poem is penned in Persian by one of the greatest poets of all time, Saadi. It is ineluctable and very unfortunate that its deep insights will be lost in my poor translation.

Neither to a lover nor a country give your heart, 

Boundless is the planet, and countless its crowd.

Having read the poem, which passionately encourages geographic mobility, I wondered what the situation of the civilized world was at the time with respect to borders, intercultural exchanges, and tolerance towards other nations or tribes.

More importantly, I was interested in knowing how on earth at a time with extremely limited means of mobility and limited opportunities for intercultural dialogue, the poet kept encouraging the readers to travel and settle in other places. Having this in the back of my mind, I came to read a passage in the Story of Civilization. 

It is a great passage that shows how the dominance and monopoly of one language (in this case Arabic as the lingua franca of the Muslim world) facilitated mobility, cultural exchange, and mutual understanding, pierced through numerous cultural and linguistic boundaries, and perhaps contributed to the glory of the Islamic civilization at the time. I invite you to enjoy the passage. 

“Every scholar who desired a high standing at home had to hear the master scholars of Mecca, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. This international of letters was made easier by the fact that throughout Islam- through whatever diversity of peoples- the language of learning and literature was Arabic; Latin had no wider realm. When a visitor entered a Moslem city he took it for granted that he could hear a scholarly lecture at the principal mosque at almost any hour of the day…. In a thousand mosques from Cordova to Samarkand scholars were as numerous as pillars, and made the cloisters tremble with their eloquence; the roads of the realm were disturbed by innumerable geographers, historians, and theologians seeking knowledge and wisdom; the courts of a hundred princes resounded with poetry and philosophical debate; and no man dared be a millionaire without supporting literature or art. The old cultures of the conquered were eagerly absorbed by the quick-witted Arabs; and the conquerors showed such tolerance that of the poets, scientists, and philosophers who now made Arabic the most learned and literary tongue in the world only a small minority were of Arab blood.... We gratefully omit their names, and salute their achievement.”

On Methodology in Law

The other days, I was talking to an American Professor of law. He said that during his academic life, he has failed to find a serious legal work in (contract, corporate, and financial) law written by a European legal scholar. In his opinion, in 1930s American legal scholarship stopped doing what European legal scholars are currently doing. And I could not but agree with him. 

Legal scholarship badly suffers from the lack of method(ology). When I compare the seminars I am attending in economics and finance with the ones I am attending in law, the latter seems to me the unintelligible utterances coming from clouded minds. Of course, economics and finance are the most progressive disciplines of social sciences, perhaps because many of their subject matters lend themselves to scientific or quasi-scientific methods. This, unfortunately, is not always the case in law, and expecting the legal scholarship to accommodate such methodologies would be too demanding.

To our regret, not only did the traditional legal scholarship failed to be inspired by the methodologies used in other disciplines such as economics and finance, but also it failed to develop a methodology of its own. Worst of all, some European legal scholars grew deeply pessimistic towards law and economics that tries to employ the methodologies used in economics to analyze legal phenomena. However, despite their deep skepticism towards law and economics, when they are asked for better alternative methods for analyzing legal issues, they seem to be miserably clueless.

A discipline without a methodology is arcane, boring, and, if I may say so, nonsense. As Yogi Berra once said, “If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

Against Warmongering Rhetoric

With the Middle-East in turmoil, the Iran-Saudi rivalry at its peak, rampant manipulated national emotions and zealotry at their historical heights, and the exchange of threats on both Iranian and Saudi sides, all pieces of an impending war puzzle seem to be in place. But as most commentators would suggest, the probability of an all-out war is far-fetched, and Iranian and Saudi military threats are but strategic ruses for gaining an upper hand at the negotiating table over many matters of geopolitical importance.

Though history keeps repeatedly reminding us that many wars started just to gain a strategic advantage at negotiating tables, for the moment, let’s not be very much concerned about the politics of all this. What is disconcerting for me is the rise of hate/war mongering rhetoric among the relatively (and sometimes highly) educated people after the Mina incidents in which many Iranian pilgrims died.

Highly dysfunctional and opaque method of governance in Saudi Arabia is indeed a drag on the Saudi government to effectively and transparently attend to the concerns of all stakeholders of the incident and communicate its messages clearly. Needless to say, no dictatorship is immune to such dysfunctionality and it should not be taken personal. This is a point that needs not be explained as it is evident.

But what is not very clear is that we have to be especially careful where there is a misunderstanding between two undemocratic, non-transparent, and non-meritocratic governments. In open democracies, premature hard-line sentiments to such contentious incidents wither away in the process of open consensus building via institutions that replace sentiments and emotions with reasoned institutional responses. But when an undemocratic government lacking a decentralized deliberative system for decision making faces such an incident, no such mechanisms are in place and the probability of emotionally-driven and wrong reactions with potentially enormous catastrophic consequences is indeed very high.

Not only do those grave consequences originate from the lack of domestic bottom-up consensus building mechanisms, but also they may stem from the absence of proper channels of communication between the two undemocratic, dysfunctional rivals.

It is highly probable that the Mina incident was caused by a simple error. If so, legal mechanisms provide for redress. So far, I have not seen any indication in the media suggesting that there will be a legal or judicial follow-up for the incident. Instead, we see highly irresponsible harsh language and military threats in abundance even prior to any investigation on the causes of the incident being conducted. If anything, what we can learn from our eight-year war with Iraq is that war is and should always be the option of last resort.

Of course, politicians, military officials, and diplomats might have many reasons to use this type of language (mostly for strategic reasons), but ordinary citizens should avoid following suit. What might be right for a nation might not be right for an individual. Let me rephrase the great historian and storyteller of the 20^th century, Will Durant. Prejudice is fatal to an individual, but indispensable to a nation. 

The long term result of the propagation of such threatening language among citizens against other nations will be an epidemic of bigotry, racism, and xenophobia. 

My advice, if I may, to my compatriots is to let the politics and diplomacy take its course. It is indeed imperative not to let the political rivalries lower our moral standards and civic education as citizens, and drag us down into hatemongering. We are already paying politicians handsomely to take care of the corrupt and corrupting political issues in order for us to keep our distance from the toxic touch of politics. So, let the politicians do the dirty job for you.