Society & Culture

SOCIETY & CULTURE is a collection of 42 articles on Arian migration to Iranian Plateau 3000 years ago and their Median, Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian empires from 1st millennium BC to the 2nd millennium AD. Gilgamesh, the 7 Amesha Spenta, Chakra, Irfan hierarchy, Yung's Archetypes, Myth, Iran's religions before Zoroastrianism- are discussed. Iranian music is surveyed in its 3000 years history and 7 dastgah, a musical modal system in chamber Persian music. The second part zooms on the Middle East in terms of slow rate of growth of Capitalism, shariat impediment to modernism, and colonial forces. Shariat is the Islamic canonical law in accordance with verses of the Koran and the Prophet's traditions. A reform is proposed to transform umat Islam to personal belief. This will update the tribal dogmas with regards to the modern Western norms in a capitalist society. In the Middle East collective effervescence is the Durkheim's 1912 theory of religion as a social phenomenon. The beliefs and practices of the sacred book are a way for social organization in the pre-modern society. Now civil societies, parties, government departments organize the people. The Shiite fundamentalism in the form of Velayat Faghih or The Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist and Wahhabism in the form of Emir or Khalif in Saudi Arabia curtail the growth of capitalism and accumulation of capital. The emancipation of women is paramount with secularism, to delete medival capital punishment and dismemberment of a sinner by the State. Shariat overrules both religious and secular duties; retributive penalties for lawbreaking. The modern states in Emirati and Kuwait carry out a tortuous dispute between Islamic fundamentalists and modernists. The last part covers personality, depression and politics, authoritarian, revolution, Intellectuals, Ideology, Goethe, political center, right, and left. Repression and torture, personality cult, holding lifelong to power are other topics. Dr. Baran was born in Tehran, Iran; traveled extensively throughout the ancient plateau, all European countries, some North African cities, and most US states. Museums, cities, and natural spots were his favorite stops. He noticed similarities in the vegetation around the world. In climbing Tuchal heights in Northern Tehran on weekends, once he found a calcite fossil of a fish the size of a palm; later, in the West, he read about the contiguity of the continents under the super-continent Pangaea and the single Sarmatic Sea which covered Caspian, Azov, Aral and Black Seas as the remnants of the evaporated basin. Web search is his choice of accessing the human knowledge around the globe and throughout the history. He has a PhD, MS, and BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Nuclear Engineering all from University of Missouri, Columbia.