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March 2022
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Iranians are the nicest people in the world?29/12/2021 I have never traveled to Iran although I have been to many places in the world. I have however a reliable source of information, my mother. First, let me provide a little background. My mother was a career educator in Hong Kong. She retired thirty years ago and since then had traveled the world. She loved traveling and had visited every nook and cranny on earth. Another thing about my mother is that she is a diehard redneck to the right of Proud Boys. America is paradise, it is being destroyed by evil China and illegal immigrants from Mexico, and Dubya Bush and MAGA Trump are her heroes who will save America. This is no joke. My mother belonged to a large, maybe a majority, group of people who had been teaching the young minds of Hong Kong. They are also government employees paid with public funds. Anyone who had visited the Hong Kong Teachers Association and seen the vitriolic anti-China propaganda there would understand. The organization had decided to disband after the implementation of the China Sedition Law.
With this in mind, we should understand that before visiting Iran, my mother had already been inculcated with an ingrained and immutable idea of the evil Iran in her mind, thanks to the excellent work of the mainstream media (MSM) of the West. She probably wanted to go and see for herself, so that she could tell others she had seen and experienced the evil Iran in person. In fact, she visited while there was an upheaval in Iran. The mainstream news was filled with images of angry protesters demonstrating in Tehran (that was over 10 years ago, and I don’t remember the exact occasion or timing). There were travel warnings for people wanting to visit Iran, and tour groups were canceling left and right. My mother was, and still is at 95 years of age, a fearless traveler (in the midst of Covid explosion, she just flew to Newark by herself, and then to Florida and back with my sister’s family, now spending New Year’s Eve at Princeton). Her Iran tour group had been delayed earlier, but this time she insisted on going and somehow there were just enough people to form a group. So away she went. My mother has a failing memory now. She has also mellowed somewhat. Only about a month ago, I asked her of all the places she visited, and that’s like, everywhere, which country had the nicest people. To my surprise, the answer was Iran. Not only Iran, but she said by far Iran. I said, What? Explain. Interestingly, the first thing my mother said was after her Iran trip, she would not trust mainstream news anymore. That’s a good start! She said after landing in Tehran, the group was told not to visit a certain district where the protesters were restricted to hold their demonstrations. Otherwise, the city was calm, peaceful, and fun. At no time did she notice or feel any dangers or disquiet. The mainstream media were warping the reality to make it seem like Iran had descended into a war zone. Okay, for some of us who have visited and even lived in evil China, we know about the all encompassing and relentless mainstream media lies of the West, but what makes my mother think Iranians are the nicest? Has she been brainwashed by evil Iranians? Although my mother sometimes traveled to different countries with tour groups (she actually traveled to many places by herself; but at 95, her adventuring days are pretty much over), she seldom, if not never, took local tours to visit the regular tourist traps. To her credit, she liked to interact and observe people. So while others in her group would visit the museums, historical sites, and shops, my mother would wander off by herself to the nearest park, for example, and checked out the ordinary people living their regular life. So on this day in Tehran, my mother was sitting by herself on a bench in a park watching the children play. A young Iranian lady sat down on the bench beside my mother. The young lady noticed that my mother’s shawl was not properly covering her head. It was a scarf that was not meant to be a hijab. She dug out a spare shawl from her handbag and put it over my mother’s head properly. They only communicated by hand signals. After a while, my mother wanted to walk around, and she thanked the young lady and tried to return the shawl. She was very surprised when the Iranian stranger told her to keep it. That was not just good luck. The next day, she was invited by another stranger (an English teacher) to visit her home and have tea with her family. The day after, a young boy brought over tasty snacks for her. She was an old Chinese lady sitting in a Tehran park all by herself being pampered. This was in a country which had been severely sanctioned by Western countries and vilified by Western mainstream media for decades, and the people were made to suffer for it. But everyone treated her with the utmost respect as if she was the matriarch of the family. My mother was utterly amazed. Iranians are the best, this is my mother’s conclusion. So how does that reconcile with her understanding of Iran as promulgated by the American beacon on a hill which always wags their sanctimonious finger at evil countries like China, Russia, and Iran? My mother quickly found her answer. The Iranian government and the religious leadership are evil but the people are nice. That explains the apparent contradiction. Since all human beings suffer from a psychological condition known as “confirmation bias,” which you will notice when some people basically say, “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts,” making it impossible to carry on an intelligent conversation, I would therefore give up and leave it at that. This is a personal anecdote of course, and does not represent some statistical research based on measurable metrics. But there may be a moral lesson somewhere that we can all learn from.
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