Amid the cesspool of Gunnar Birgisson’s scandals in Kopavogur, the IceSave debacle, the increasing squeeze on homeowners, this is my Sunday sermon for now. This ramble should be read out loud with a young, poor and angry voice.

A long time ago I had a girlfriend who was born in Teheran
but she moved to Sweden when she was eight years old.

We were together for almost two years during which I learned how to write my name in Persian,
tasted some brilliant cooking
and learned a lot about someone from a different culture
and not least myself.

Her middle name is Neda,
which was also the name of the girl who was shot in the Teheran protests today.
The footage of Neda dying in her father’s arms was on the internet today.

It is heartbreaking.

When I was younger I strived to be culturally tolerant.
I was so at unease with the homogeneous community that I grew up in
that I took every chance of travelling,
going to school abroad
and made a point of getting to know people from all over the world.

I succeeded in making friends from diverse places
but as I’ve grown older I have realised that most of us are not divided in core values.

But since graduation I have found myself to grow less tolerant.

With age, and I am only 33, I am less tolerant of narrow-mindedness, self-servedness and ignorance.
Only last night at my sister’s graduation party I found myself telling a couple of relatives off
because of their stance on abortion.
People wanting to control the lives of others
because of no other reason than their own self-interest
are less and less likely to find a tolerant ear on me.

Without stepping forward and claiming to understand the situation fully,
I get the sense that the Persian people are protesting
against a society that has been designed for a ruling elite.

Without resorting to generalization, most of the Persians I have met in my time have been anything but
the close-minded, elitist, xenophobic, homophobic filth that is running their country.

I might be wrong
but I get the feeling that the world is at a critical point
where globalization and the nation states are having an uneasy time co-existing.

The inter-connectedness and free flow of speech, ideas, products and people

that form the core values of so many of us no matter where we are from,
don’t sit well with ruling elites who have had it their way by promoting ignorance and seperatism.

Persia and Iceland have both endured ruling elites for the past decades,
albeit in Iceland you have been less likely of getting shot.
The consequence can be heard in Independence Party supporters
who defend their loyalty to the elitist rulers that have ruined their society
by only pointing out the faults in the opposition.

The prison walls within the mind are so re-inforced that they would rather choose “their own” rotten leadership over someone elses,
but cannot free themselves to think of alternatives.

The elderly woman who taught a class on religion at the catholic university I attended told us we should not tolerate other religions

(but embrace them)

She was right if she’d replaced the word religions with people.

It has become fashionable in some circles in Iceland to say things
like “my home is a recession-free zone, we cannot talk about it within its walls”,
and “I’ve stopped reading and listening to the news, it is so depressing”.

Are those people faking themselves happy?
Can they not see that no matter where they live on the globe
the whole world is changing around them?
The walls of their belief systems, whether religious, economic or political are crumbling.
And therefore isn’t their whole life a fake?

The point of my ramble is it being a declaration.
I know I have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the last few months
and in some cases years.

I will probably have a hard time finding a job in Iceland from now on.
In some cases I might have lost friends.

It is fine by me.

I hereby make a statement that I will speak up against elitist interests
and ignorance at my peril.

Marina Hyde called for Britain to gather the force of its anger against the system last week in the Guardian.
What are you waiting for?

Neda and others in Persia have lost their lives,
Bjorn and others in Iceland have lost their homes,
Stephen and others in the UK have lost their livelyhood
and many around the world have never had the chance of begetting anything other than their own life to loose
because seperatist, xenophobic, ignorant voices are not met with full force.

I am going to meet them.

And I urge you to clear your head and do the same.

Related posts:

1. Sunday chatter
2. Saturday morning ramble
3. Sunday Times Book Review: Meltdown Iceland: How the Global Financial Crisis Bankrupted an Entire Country
4. An Economic Horror Story: The Frightened Generation Of Iceland
5. Situation in Iceland – The Fourfold Dilemma