Regardless of how long it takes, these days, Iranians have started building up a new form of government. Iranian people are looking for equity and freedom. I can not convince my self that this movement is necessarily heading toward democracy. Democracy includes impartial justice and freedom and should be studied in the context of public virtues. Some doubt that “democracy” yet fits Iranian society.I assume that the process of choosing a government, by people, should first meet the concerns of Iranians due to their experiences and expectations. Secondly, meets emerging social trends and finally, should be a technology-based process according to the recently exhibited capabilities of the society.
The term “democracy” with all of its fabulous trends and advantages seems more like a brand to me. Once it starts exporting itself to other countries huge advertising campaigns surround it. Commercialized often as a product of western intellectuality while, supplying the package, knowledge of eastern cultures has not grown as fast as the demands do. I adore the idea and I agree with the fact that it is functioning where it has been accepted. By the way, I am firmly of the belief that it will hardly fit within the cultural frameworks of eastern societies while the commercial aspect is so lustrous and provocative. Political democracy, as a process of choosing government by people is associated with other social and public virtues. As long as the associating elements do not match other virtues of a nation, the democracy will lose it essence. Democracy must adapt itself to sociocultural frameworks of a nation and not the other way around. Iranian people showed a strong desire for change and used social networking websites as a tool for delivering news and organizing the demonstrations and events. They exhibited a profound intention toward finding a new reliable way of selecting “what-to-do” concepts. People have lost their trust to elections and rely more on self-organized and socially-derived ways of decision making. Democracy for Iran, can provide solutions for such concerns. The new process of selecting the government should contribute to increase the role of individuals in the decision making process.
Secondly, why democracy is not updated while one may fall behind the daily advances of technology? A problem with current democratic systems is that it still produces centralized powers while technology can support decentralized powers perform not only reliable but also more advantageous. For example, media and news agencies relied on You tube movies and Twitts of Iranian citizens for covering the news of after election crisis. Individuals performed as small news agencies to cover the news. Besides, they performed well in delivering the news about the time and places which demonstrations supposed to be held. The so called “twitter revolution” revealed that decentralizing the power is also reliable. Once a member of a network manifests a high performance it becomes the center of attention and as another high performing member reveals the attention moves toward that spot. Needless of an election being held, the network chooses its most reliable members for conducting a certain task. Therefore, the technology can facilitate new ways of selection.
In case of the success of the green movement, the outcome might be an customized version of democracy or a beta version of a form of government which does not carry the name of Democracy any more. No surprise to see an Iranized form of government beside all other similarly digested cultures and ideologies.
Filed under: politics, Social networking, ahmadinejad, democracy, design, green movement, Iran election
