Violent Jokes in Our Iranian Culture

Violent Jokes

A culture of violence creates its own spheres of interpersonal relationships. Culture is all around us and we live with it. We Iranian live with a culture of violence all around us. We just need to notice it and to be aware of how we talk. There are many situations we may not have influence to change, however, we can change our selves. We can change our reality by incorporating a language of peace into it.

We can prevent violence if we do not make peace with it and do not introduce it into our daily life. We can choose to live with the culture of peace and happiness. What do I mean? Our jokes reveal a lot of what I will try to say.

Have you noticed that war, killings, murders, death, hangings, executions, assassinations, and torture have found a way into our daily Iranian lives?

How? I will tell you!

We construct and perpetuate, deplore and defeat vanity, hopelessness, abuse, neglect, rape, and various deviations. We internalize violence and desensitize cruelty. We internalize our really hard once we tell those stories in form of jokes.

How many jokes do we hear about war and the way people are dismembered and disabled?

Instead of rejecting these dark areas impacting our lives, we are incorporating them into our lives. What do I mean?

How many jokes do we tell about the way people are killed by chemicals, gas, weapons of mass destruction, bombs, rockets, missiles and all that?

How many jokes do we share about how people are being punished and tortured in the hell or Jahanam as we say?

How many jokes do we know regarding how men and women would be punished differently due to the adult life they choose to have?

How many jokes do we tell about people who are being given a choice for the way they want to be dead? Those choices are about how less painful death could be.

How many jokes do we make about clothes restrictions for women in our home country and what the responses of those women would be?

How many jokes do we hear about child molestation, addictions, prostitution, theft, and other social issues that no one wants to deal with in our home country?

The lists go on and on...

We compare, contrast, confront, label, stigmatize, and generalize the negativity and violence forced upon us. We do all these acts once we get desensitized by jokes that are incongruent with the way we want our life to be.

There is a certain pattern in all these jokes; they are projecting the inhuman reality that is created by human-caused disasters.

Why is that?

Maybe we try to make light of these horrible experiences that make no sense whatsoever. Maybe we try to bring a tone of resiliency into our daily routines by laughing at the unfathomable life in migration all around us.

Now the question is:

When did killing and torture become this normal in our culture?

When did we lose feelings and emotions about people being punished for any reason?

Why should punishment be the response for everything?

Why are we so discouraged and hopeless?

Why have we let a culture of violence encompass our daily lives?

Why we are perpetuating all the inappropriate behaviors, all the inhuman acts, and all the dehumanizing stories?

What do we think we are passing down to our next generations?

This is worth thinking about it. What would our next generations say about us?

It is worth exploring what kind of idea is behind all the horrible jokes we tell one other?

I assume we can not joke around topics such as happiness, joy, love, partnership, and kindness. But do we have to go this far for having fun?

Some people may say, jokes are supposed to be this way.

For this reason we should ask what way?

Most of the jokes that we tell one another reflect what is going on in our home country and what has been the format of our life so far. Most of these jokes are only sad stories of lives that have been wasted.

Where is our dignity?

I guess we have lost the point of having fun.

Note: this article is modified version of what was written for the writer's own website.

Poran Poregbal

Vancouver, B.C

June 26, 2008

I would like to open up a healthy exploration of our Iranian culture and what is included. In doing so, we need to be able to challenge our beliefs about our own culture. Just by analyzing our own culture, we would be able to help our next generations in adjusting in wherever we live with the respect for our own Iranian culture. However, we need to set up new boundaries and define many concepts from scratch zero. I would like to encourage healthy communication, positive participation, and cooperation in respect to building healthy families within our Iranian community. Mental health issues are my main area of interest where I hope to offer a multicultural sensitive counseling. Poran Poregbal, RSW, MA (pending)

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Jokes and Racism - In Our Iranian Culture

Have you ever noticed that our daily life's activities and hobbies could sound ill-mannered and hurtful to other people? Have you ever meet people who get offended by jokes, even though you have told them without any intent to offend any group?

There is a huge relationship between jokes and latent racism among us; again I am talking about us as a group, as Iranian people. You many now get offended saying why am I in the world calling us racist?

No, I am not doing that.

What I try to say is that in every culture, there are external factors in our lives that are hard to make sense of, why we make jokes of them. There are also internal wishes, dreams, hopes, and desires which can be expressed in our Iranian culture in the content of jokes. It is easy then to say: "I am joking", "I did not mean it".

As a matter of fact, what we say, there is a meaning behind it. We choose words that make sense to us based on what we intend to say. Jokes are not always Jokes. We many times mean what we say, although we may not be brave enough to acknowledge that.

There is a relationship between jokes and racism. I really hope that researchers could use this topic one day as there must be a connection out there.

With racism we talk about ideas which are used as an indication of disliking, judging, belittling, or demonising individuals, groups, nations, and others.

Many times we engage in racial comments based on our biased opinions without meaning to be racist or judgmental towards others.

Just think of what our communication in a regular day looks like: we meet people, talk, eat, walk, and tell jokes.

Jokes belong to our everyday lives; we tell jokes in every context, at work and at home, here and there. We tell jokes at the dinner table, at parties, via the Internet, in our phone conversations, and even during meetings within our communities.

We may ask, "What is wrong with that?"

Some aspects of this joke-telling as a social activity have hurt many people.

Many of our jokes are placing different races, ethnic groups, and families into categories-- where no one wants to be placed. You are questioning this, let's talk more!

Most of our jokes have sexual contents. Now you would say how else would a joke be?

Let us ask: Why are our jokes sexualized and racially motivated?

Why do our jokes lean toward dehumanizing, devaluing, and unfair criticism certain groups and especially women?

What is so "funny" about these jokes anyway? How can we picture our family and friends be the character of those jokes? Those jokes we say usually talks about real people with real ethnical background. We know that for sure.

Our jokes start with someone from an ethnic background who is either dumb, perverted, or an abuser, and he does or says "funny" things in order to make a point. Each one of us knows at least a dozen of jokes, where women are sex objects and men are the active player, the abuser.

How many jokes have we heard where children are being molested by the man from 'some' city and '........'?

How many jokes do we know where women or children are slaves for many things? Sometimes the character does things that sound "funny," yet most of the time, by what we are saying, we victimize someone or some group!

Don't you think these jokes have other, hidden functions and that they project something else into our culture?

How about considering having some dignity and stopping telling these types of jokes!

How about being brave and admit why do we need to tell these jokes?

Some people complain about "white" people being racist; we have to explain how we are NOT racists ourselves!

There are many, many websites created by our "funny" people and they are having "fun" by spreading this germ of racist and sexist jokes.

How about to use our humanistic eyes and value people? We can still make jokes of many things and situations? We have a tendency to be most active Joke makers!

Being funny is different that disrespecting people. Being funny can happen in the realm of respect and dignity.

Racial jokes indeed reflect a dismantled hatred and segregation. These jokes only and only increase the already existing conflicts.

Jokes are our words, words are our thoughts, our thoughts are our beliefs, and our beliefs reflect our inner world. We should be more careful with what we say and how we say it!

Being funny can occur in the realm of admiration and protection of others' rights! We live in a world where we already suffer from the anxiety of the words that are creating harm and hate. We need to redefine our needs for joke telling.

With the current trends as Stand Up-Comedians, we could learn more how to polish our jokes. Using critical eyes into our culture and identity is positive in order to create a dialog. However what we do we call groups for names and we make it believable that this or other group are careless, sexualized, or futile people. We tend to believe that certain accents are funny and we have the right to laugh at those accents. We also tend to use certain accents involved in every joke we say. We hurt people who have those accents. They are not less than us; we are naive to suppose that.

We have heard many complaints from our fellow Iranians talking about the prejudice, isolation, hostility, and racism that are time by time being felt or perceived in these Western countries we reside in. If we criticize others for having judgment about us, why do we continue telling the jokes that are destroying many souls and much trust among our own ethical groups?

Social hostility, social isolation, and prejudice have found a natural way into our language as we use jokes about various ethnic groups.

Social hostility is constructed by those who need to control others. This social hostility creates more fragile beliefs, broken hearts, and exposed individuals.

We need to clean our cultural language if we wish to remain whole.

We need to bring peace into our language, into our communication, into our families, into our communities, and eventually, hopefully into our Iranian way of living.

For decades these jokes have caused social hostility, which destroys respect, trust, kindness, communication, and relationships.

Jokes make us be "Us" and "Them!" We do need to be "Us," in order to survive the destruction of our Iranian culture.

In our fragile world we hide behind facades of status, family type, wealth, and all other masks we like to use.

The sense of isolation for a group creates distance and contrasts with others, by becoming different than the other!

Do not let jokes become those walls.

Think about those individuals who isolate themselves in a group of people by establishing a specific language or behavior to show how they are better than others, nobler than others, and have more "class" than others.

For many individuals using jokes brings this feeling that they come from a different planet. Joke-telling in this way causes social hostility as a natural way for some individuals to elevate themselves.

Sometimes we do aim for being funny by telling those jokes yet we ignore how much impact it has on many souls around us.

Some groups or individuals use jokes as an element of social isolation, as a defence mechanism to mark the differences in social class, religion, race, and nations.

Isolation and conflict go hand in hand with a resolution into "nothing."

We know how many various ethnic groups of us feel socially isolated as our ethnic background has been subject to racist and sexist jokes. We have already a history of many forms of discrimination and segregation. We do not need any more of this.

In using racist jokes we try to find superiority by using a latent antagonism, to set one group against another in order to command and to satisfy our own personal vanity.

Racist and sexist jokes could be "practical" for those of us who try to achieve the goal of becoming superior!

We cannot afford to let hostility become our way. Not again!

Prejudice and hostility are about how we naturally have the tendency to be willing to degrade others in order to elevate ourselves, nations towards nations, groups towards groups and so on.

If we do not like to be treated differently then we need to stop telling these jokes as they cause prejudice and hostility among our nation.

We need to stop this trend! Now or it will be too late!

Poran Poregbal

Vancouver, B.C.

August 28, 2007

I am an activist, writer, Counselor, and advocate for women and men who have been victimized, traumatized, and hurt due to the hardship of migration, dislocation, and separation. I would like to encourage healthy communication, positive participation, and mindful cooperation for building healthy families within our Iranian community. Mental health issues are my main area of interest where I hope to offer a multicultural sensitive counsellings.
Poran Poregbal, RSW, MA (pending)

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.