How to Protect Freedom of Thought
The great joy of a free society is the personal not having to be political. Here's how to protect that historically rare right.
“It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing.”
This is how Azar Nafisi begins part four, chapter six of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Part four is built around Jane Austen, an author whose frustrations with the limitations placed on her led her to write fiction where women occupied their own spaces and made their own decisions.
Nafisi wrote her book reflecting on life as a university professor in Tehran after the Islamic Revolution. Consequently, she begins and ends her book with arguments against politicizing the personal. Only 25 pages in, she writes:
“This was a country where all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms. The colors of my head scarf or my father’s tie were symbols of Western decadence and imperialist tendencies. Not wearing a beard, shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, clapping or whistling in public meetings, were likewise considered Western and therefore decadent, part of the plot by imperialists to bring down our culture.”
That was a stretch. The threat to Iranian culture came from the group of religious extremists who stifled free expression and drained Iran of its art, literature, and freedom of thought. No threats came from couples holding hands or public joy.
Nafisi offers several lessons for anyone who’s politically active. The greatest one is to put the real world above ideology.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Applied Knowledge to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.