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We should be able to redirect our jokes from negative to positive, from subjective to objective, from biased to unbiased and from racist to non-racist.

Now we may get scared from ever telling any jokes. The purpose of this article is to emphasize the positive aspects of joke-telling in our culture.

A majority of our people tend to be happy, positive, and energetic people who love to sing, dance, laugh, and have fun. We have to appreciate anything that supports the notion of happiness in our culture, anything that makes our people resilient and strong in dealing with many complex life situations.

We may remember those winter evenings when we were tucked in the Korsi (the fireplace in the middle of the room) and stream of stories, jokes, and funny oral narratives would make us warm and happy.

Granparents would read from Ferdousi and stories of Shahnameh, or just take their time to say funny stories about their own childhood. We have a history of making jokes of hard moments of life and this is resiliency.

Sigmund Freud writes about jokes in 1905. I guess jokes have always had functions in human story. Freud in his work “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” argues tat jokes are “judgments which produces a comic contrast” (1963).

With judgments (gezavat, pishdavari) he means of course all the things that we relate to someone or some group of people, while these are only our ideas not the reality necessary.

The contrast is about the differences between what people perceive something be like and how the event unfolds in that joke. In our Persian cultural of jokes, we make fun of someone who is being depicted as less than us, we as modern, educated, and wise people who know more than the person doing wrongful things. The contrast or the distance to what is perceived as “normal” makes the story supposedly “funny.”

Freud talks about the relation to the unconscious, the things that we are not aware of or do not know about their whereabouts. If we joke about a woman who is pictured as a sex object, would this mean that our men like that idea of a “free woman”? This is a huge discussion. I am not sure what the answer is, yet we can think about what is going on behind those walls we create in our jokes. We can question the world of “ugliness” that may exist in the collective thoughts when these jokes are being heard without any reaction.

Freud also argues that joking is playing with ideas, it is about attitudes toward the object of our jokes, and it is about a playful judgment. Jokes looks at the differences between people rather than similarities, why it is important to be objective, non-discriminatory, and non-biased when we deal with our differences.

For sure we are all different and we can celebrate those differences with funny, non-harming, and non-directive jokes.

What if we could give the funny spirit back to our our jokes? If we could say jokes about “someone” without referring to any nation, ethnical group or even any gender (male/female)?

What if we could make jokes without referring to a certain accent, or without attributing women to sex objects or else?

What if we could use our ancestor’s method of telling funny stories about things we do? This is a way of self reflecting, a way of self-criticizing and a way of showing that we have tolerance. We all need to be happy and we have to work on creating fun moments for all of us.

Hope can do it all?!

November 22, 2007

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This presentation was done for Rooyesh Cultural Group, a community group of our Iranian residents on North shore (B.C.).  The presentation was done on November 16,2007, and our topic was how to purify, clean, and reform our language with some emphasize on jokes.

Some of the participants perceived this information as being against jokes, while this was not the point. Some others criticized the idea of being “perfectionist.” The message that was trying to be conveyed was how we can choose a respectful, peaceful, and assertive language in our Iranian culture.  Another message was how to prevail the proper communication to our families, communities, and those around us.

In brief we discussed:

How to Reform our Language?

What is the Meaning Behind our Communication, Power of Language, Awareness around Inappropriate Jokes.

Sigmund Freud on Jokes:

Freud in “Jokes and their Relations to the Unconscious” (1963),
“A jokes is a judgment which produces a comic contrast”, “Relation to the object of the joke is the concealed ugliness of the world of thoughts.”

Purpose of the Jokes are always:

· Tendentious: (amdi, gerayesh dar)

· Non-tendentious: (baraye khandeh)

· Jokes as a social process

· Jokes as a neurotic illness

· The relation of jokes to dream and to the unconscious

· Social context

Jokes according to Freud are: A contrast of ideas, Sense of nonsense, Meaninglessness of the words, Look at the differences rather than similarities, Playing with ideas, Insulting and wounding purposes

Hidden Meanings:

· Need for Awareness around the Power of Language, Inappropriate Jokes, and our Way of Communicating; Away from bias, disrespect, and bullying

· Words to be explored: Power, Language, Joke, Communication, Bias, Disrespect, Bullying

Language to unite us:  We have a choice of using the language respectful , We should reform the language to include everyone, Loss of Power, What kind of power do we have when joking about serious things

· Power comes from: Status, social class, gender, religion, language use, way of conveying message to others …

· What do we say in that situation?

Language is about: Communication, Showing emotions, Describing incidents ,Telling things, Facts- behaviors-thoughts, should be Ideological and political meaning, Connecting people, has Physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional discourses

What do we talk about?

· Ethical issues in language use: Offensive, defensive, submissive, demanding, threatening, & responsive

· Use of empathy, use of taaroof, use of labels, use of names……

· Greetings, how are you doing?

Joke: Should be fun, yet respectful, Should bring laughter, not pain, Should create connection not disconnection, Should be general, not specific, No specific ethnicity as are jokes start with someone from ……

Communication Styles:

Assertive: I messages…..,self-confident, clear message, eye contact, good tone, respectful, fluent talk, firm gestures

Passive Style: Non-assertive, Denying or giving away our own rights, Avoiding conflicts by accommodating others, Being submissive or timid, Down cast eyes, Soft voice, Hesitation in words, Helpless gestures

Bias; Taasoob: My point of view only, I know the truth, My group of people are better, Rich people can decide, Only our home country, My language only, One political party, No one else but me and my ideology

Disrespect: Not respecting: not accepting

· What is respect then? Accepting others, Trusting others, Valuing others, Doing things collaboratively, Asking opinion

Bullying= Tamaskor, azyat kardan

· The act of harming others by making fun of them, assaulting them, or harassing others

· Harassment can be verbal, physical, and emotional

· Abuser who posses more physical or social power dominance the victim

· Dehumanizing and belittling others: In schools, workplaces, between nations, around the word issue

What can we do? Raise awareness, Talk to your communities,  Think of your own way of communication, What do we really want to say with jokes?,  We can have fun with proper use of language.

Poran Poregbal

November 16, 2007

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A concealed phenomenon as Loss of Identity

In a gang related shooting on November 6, 2007, a young 25 year Old Iranian man was killed. Indeed, he and his 31 year old companion were shot, while they were driving in a luxury vehicle. Now you might question, what is astonishing with this news?
This young Iranian man was according to the Vancouver Police known as a “Persian gang” member and associated with other gang related activities in Vancouver B.C. for a couple of years.

Vancouver Sun November 7, 2007, A2, describes this man as:
“Heavily tattooed with Persian Script, was known to frequent downtown nightspots and was an associate of a number of Persian Gangsters targeted in shootings across the Lower Mainland over the last year.”
This is one of a number of incidents in the past couple of years where a few of our young Iranian men have been gunned down, killed, shot, or named in relation to gang and drugs.
As a community, we have to ask why? What is going on with our young men? I mean, those young male (or female) that indeed associate with “gangs.”
What can we do to prevent more harm? How can we help our younger generation to adjust to the two cultures they live in a healthy way? How can we help our children to stay away from dangerous life styles and harmful activities that some gangs are involved in? Although the number of these young men is not many, however it is worth to look into some aspects of the issue.
Feeling the pain and suffering that this young man’s family might go through, it is important to visit some aspects of this “Persian Gang” as an unknown phenomenon to our Iranian community. What is this concept about anyways?
I am sure this man’s family migrated to Canada and British Columbia, just like the rest of us; to live a life away from the injustice and unfathomable situation in our home country Iran. We can be sure that this family is an average family like many of us who did not want anything else than providing a good opportunity for their children here away from all the issues back home. We should remind ourselves of the family values that many of us respect, love for our families, love for our children, and a dream of a productive life.
Now the question is what happened? What happens to these young men who get involved in this shallow, yet media glamorized life of being a gang member? What went wrong for this young man, something that we may never know or not comprehend?!
Without judging this family or even this young man, it would be interesting to open up a discussion about this situation. How can other families learn a lesson? Did this man have any mental health issue such as depression or was he suffering from any sort of trauma? What can be done for other young men who might go through similar situations? What are the signs that we as parents may need to look into or look for. Although this young man was an adult man, we know as Iranian that our children are always our children!
What is it about being Persian that makes some young people slide into a world away from their families and communities?
What is the origin and reason for the existence of such groups as “The Persian gang”? What is it that these people are missing in their existence that they need to show it this badly?
What is a “gang” anyways? If you search the INTERNET, you find the definition of a group of individuals who share identity and those who oppose to the mainstream norms.
What does it mean now? If we agree that the idea of identity is a big issue for our younger generation and for each one of us, then we could see that this young man and those like him do not think they have something in common with the mainstream society, meaning the rest of society.
Why this should be happening? Have they been excluded from the mainstream society in first place? How can we include these people?
Have we now comparable phenomena of everything to other cultures that we just miss the “Persian” kind of it?
This is now more than what we can be silent about. How are our young boys doing here in the life of migration? What is it that they try to defend, reject, resist, and oppose by building their own gangs and cults?
What do we as parents, need to know to be able to prevent our young children from falling out of this circle of living an average life?
There is a rule that when we lack something we do more of something else. When we lack identity, we look for it badly. When we have lost sense of self, we try to define our “self” with excessive shopping, large spending, bragging, and many other ways of showing how fascinating we are.
The notion of migration and mental health issues are not explored among us Iranian and not even noticed easily.
What do we know about suffering from trauma, depression, and stress? Are we able to appreciate the fact that migration, settlement, adjustment, and finding a new home is stressful?
Being stressed out and depressed about what some of us miss in our lives, is a normal reaction to a very unmoral situation we have in our home country and here. We are impacted by the forced migration, loss of community, loss of identity, and loss of the sense of belonging.
Migration has impacted every single of us. We change and we have changed as a nation, as groups, as individuals when we moved out of our home country, when we try to make home elsewhere. By making this statement I do NOT suggest that migration make our boys gangsters, no, yet, our children need to identify themselves with a healthy sense of being.
How many of us do not notice how our younger generation tries to define themselves? They are caught in between two or more worlds, with SOMETIMES no sense of belonging to any of them.
The issue of identity and loss of self is important to recognize and learn about.

November 7, 2007
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For detail of the news see Vancouver sun, November 7, 2007, A2.
This article was published in Goonagoon, on November 23rd, 2007.
see: http://goonagoon.ca/ArchiveViewer.html