If the leader was not a martyr, Cyrus and Pasargad would have paid the price for their unwilling alliance with Pour Pahlavi/ There is opium in the history papers, but there is no cure.

Why does the past seem more beautiful than today in our eyes when life becomes difficult? Why do some historical figures come out of books and become perfect heroes or hateful figures? And why does Iran's history sometimes become a field of political and social disputes instead of being a platform for understanding the past?

Dr. Ehsan Iqbal Saeed; The author, a researcher of cultural and historical issues, talks about the psychological roots of glorifying the past to political conflicts over the history of Iran, Iranian identity, the confrontation between ancient Iran and Iran after Islam, the role of social networks in the narrative of history and the distance between the young generation and the past in an interview with the cultural reporter Ambassador Arjan. He believes that in many cases, the past is reconstructed not as it was, but according to the needs and dissatisfactions of today.

glorifying the past of Iranians; Why does yesterday always seem better than today?

Why does the tendency to praise the past increase in difficult economic and social periods? Is this phenomenon just nostalgia or could it be a sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo?

Man is always looking for a salve due to suffering and running and not reaching. Human sufferings are of two types; An eternal and eternal one that is born with a person and there is no planning involved, and only postponement can relieve a person a little. Death is the leader of the above tribe and man is the only being who understands and suffers his own death and even more painfully, the death of those he loves. Old age, loss of sight, sickness, great wars, pestilence and diseases worse than flood, all these are eternal sufferings.

After that, there are temporary sufferings, which include that desired resources are scarce and demanding. To satisfy the four thirsts of wealth, lust, power, and envy, humans run, steal, and fight; Some stay and do not arrive. For a person who is beyond instinct and a thinker, who wants proof and doesn't want to accept the law of the jungle, survival and "altulzd al-qawi", this failure is a relief.

Relief is only sometimes a destructive drug, and it can be bang, flower, weed, and wind; Sometimes it is a verse of Khayyam's poetry and sometimes it is reading the difficulty and dark days of others, so that we can take a breath and say God

The past, regardless of its real quality, is of the kind of anesthesia and relief that it does not claim, and you can take refuge from the suffering of today in yesterday.

Thank goodness we didn't become like so-and-so. The past, regardless of its real quality, is of the kind of anesthesia and relief that it does not claim, and you can take refuge from today's suffering in yesterday; Yesterday, when everyone was blessed and there was brotherhood and red flowers in everyone's hands.

Of course, we cannot ignore the fact that in the past, we were probably younger, more in love, and living with our parents, in a sweet and dreamy season, and many photos still did not need to be retouched, and there were not so many "may God bless him"s; This is also part of the charm of the past.

In my opinion, from today's inevitable suffering, decline, a life that does not recognize its human dignity, and the lack of hope for the near future, which the situation and the passage of time change, a person takes refuge in the past, and in his imagination, in a faraway land, he creates a place like paradise where there is no death, nothingness, absence, separation, poverty, and injustice.

Remember that a large part of belief, perception and, of course, the glasses on the human eye to judge and understand phenomena, is rooted in religious and ritual belief. Religions come from the ancient world; The stories, narratives, trabes, footsteps, suffering, King Sulaiman and also Jerusalem and Sulaiman's sonnets all come from ancient times, and the search for happiness and everything in the past is a tree of light within man.

Pay attention to a part of Shamlu's poem: "One day we will find our pigeons again... and kindness will take the hand of beauty". Waiting to build that paradise in imagination is equal to the principle of the same paradise left in the past.

Why do some people remember the past, but forget the difficulties, limitations and contradictions of the same period? Is it possible for the society to remember the past not as it was, but as it wishes?

This is one of the plagues of the human mind. Pay attention to the bereavement and death of loved ones. At first, one is impatient, beats one's head and chest and thinks the world has ended, but slowly relief comes. Life wins. Of course, the characteristic of the passage of time is that the bad deeds of the deceased are completely forgotten, and it is not as if until the end of his life, like others, he ran after power, lust, wealth and of course to get rid of jealousy and was one like others.

It is so sanctified and sits in the position of innocence and oppressed that sometimes even the people around believe it. It is the property of the passage of time that people only remember color photos and nothing else; Not the muddy path of the photo booth that got all his clothes muddy and not the sufferings and heat.

Lily and her lover will pass away, and her skirt will be washed away from committing and depravity: "If you don't sit on the sight of a madman / you will not see anything other than the goodness of Lily". Yes, for the unpleasant and sometimes created image of today in various fields, sometimes a bandage, alternative and salve is made from yesterday; Not as it was, but as it contrasts with today.

When a historical period or a political figure becomes an idealized image in the public memory, how can one distinguish between the historical reality and the image that society has made of it?

History is always alive for us. In France, history is only an academic subject and, of course, a postcard business to sell nostalgia and attract tourists! No one misses the era of the Bourbons or the church of Notre-Dame and the table of Simon de Bois and Sartre; It is only read and of course it is used in the form of drama raw material for movies and novels.

An example is Woody Allen's movie "Midnight in Paris" in which Ms. Carla Bruni (Nicola Sarkozy's wife) also played, and it happens to be about this nostalgia; A writer who finds the possibility of traveling to different eras of Paris and from today's fear and lack of idealism calls it nowhere and tries Hemingway's table and... and finally looks at the camera with a protective hand saying: "We have tried our luck in this city...".

But the history in our country is a living phenomenon and a hot furnace that is supposed to be presented as a golden time from the heart of nostalgia, so as to spoil the here and now and of course become a source of repression and mental reproach.

In the following and in a real conflict with modernity, it is said: Well! So if today's sad answer is the glorious past, we have someone in our hands who has the lineage and seed of the founders of that image and nostalgia; So let's say hello to the past together and put bread in the oven.

This is how history is a living being and it has so many effects in our day and the possibility of a purely academic, tourist-friendly narrative or any other arrangement is not possible; History is not history here.

History of Iran; Field of knowledge of the past or political disputes?

Why does Iran's history sometimes become a field of political and social differences, instead of becoming a platform for common understanding of the past?

Because the fight is over today and the distribution of power revenues, and of course, settling current affairs with the help of infrastructure from the past. Let me explain further; Sometimes, some people want to start another narrative against the religious belief and the Shia reception, so they go to Mossadegh and every day on the cover of the publications and conversations that he only needs a microphone and mobile phone these days, they make Mossadegh a nationalist according to today's demand. I remember a time when some famous economists, in order to understand the logic of abandoning the market, went to the history of Islam and said that when asked by the Companions to control prices during war, the Prophet said: "Prices are in the hands of God."

"I wish they would stop struggling with history; There is opium in these papers and there is no cure!"

Look at these days, when Muhammad Ali Foroughi (the same Zaka-al-Mulk) has emerged from the heart of history and is the adornment of circles and controversies; that he was a supporter of Iran and what he did during the war and preserved Iran. All this is to say that what we do and don't have the courage to express is rooted in the past. Of course, a part of politicians also love to compare themselves with some lasting figures in history due to lack of self-confidence and rising in the stupid bureaucracy. For example, Amir Kabir of Zaman or Foroughi of Iran. It is said that Seyyed Ziauddin Tabatabai, under the influence of Benito Mussolini, asked to write "Dictator of Iran" in all his announcements, so that he would not be without a hat like Mussolini's prefix.

Naturally, this exploitation of the three-corner store in Tarikh also prompts the political opponents to fight, and sometimes the work goes too far. Pahlavi II's appeal to Cyrus and Persepolis made the opponents and revolutionaries see the problem of injustice, aristocracy, SAVAK, etc. from Cyrus' eyes, and if it were not for Hamit, the martyred leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei and martyr Beheshti, Cyrus and Pasargad would have paid the price for this unwanted alliance with Pour Pahlavi. I wish they would stop worrying about history; There is opium in these papers and there is no healing!

In today's Iran, do people's position about historical figures reflect their own political and social position rather than the result of studying their life and performance?

This is how it is. They use history to sell favors and to justify their positions and actions today, and they do not show mercy to the memory of a nation. The past and those who have passed through the corridors of death and oblivion and become statues, memories and sculptures, no matter what they were, in the path of memory and regret and of course legends that are the result of human desire to create a complete, supportive, heroic and unblemished existence, now on the real earth they play an important role in maintaining the identity of today's people living in the sphere of the state and the nation.

In its national form, they become poets and politicians who make the "Iranian self" against Iranians and "the other"; I am proud of Ferdowsi's words and Saadi's wisdom, I shed tears on Bayhaqi's account of Hasnak's execution, as well as traveling and visiting Fin Kashan to find the vein of zeal and resourcefulness of a man that opened in Kashan. Of course, in the form of religion and belief, history and its images bring compassion and the zeal that is necessary to stay and live in the wild world today and every day; And also relief and salve for a person who is suffering, he rests his head on the shrine and thinks about the suffering of Zainab Kabri.

Politicians provide the possibility of destruction and, of course, de-sanctification by using the nation's pocket and spending at random, and this is very dangerous for the path of a nation in a turbulent world. I completely agree with the main premise of your question.

Iranian identity; The link between ancient Iran, Islamic culture and the modern world

To what extent has Iranian identity today been influenced by ancient history, Islamic culture and civilization, and the experience of encountering the modern world?

I think our identity is pieces of all these; It is sitting in our lives without knowing it. Identity is not a painting or a decision, but a long-lasting mentality that comes with us and of course goes to the grave. You won't find any Iranian who doesn't get impatient when he hears the shrill voice of Rabbi Shajarian, sees the statue of Mubarak Mullah, opens Hafez, and of course doesn't boast about the ancient glory. You shouldn't pay much attention to noises; It is in the moments of life of an Iranian person and of course the country that one sees how all these things are mixed.

The new world, of course, by opening the secret of science and doubting all previously certain things, challenged almost all the mental foundations of man, and sometimes its destruction was accompanied by the construction of a new building.

He didn't exist and made a madman, without showing Lily in the vegetable garden. The new world has led the calm, fate-oriented and fate-oriented man to irreplaceable questions, and our history is full of these questionings.

Of course, don't forget that the new world, due to the solid connection of secularized Europeanized Christianity with the heritage of intellectual and knowledge-oriented Judaism, by mastering the science of history and the art of archeology, was able to become a spectacle for the eyes and build a mentality; That is, we saw and observed ourselves through their eyes, and this is an important point. The new world came to us with the above glasses for doubting and of course relativizing things such as land, nation, religion, family and creating hesitant, illegible, unstable and insufficient alternatives in the new wild world and by distorting the owners of the pen and power, they placed these non-existent propositions with books, newspapers, speeches and repetition from justified larynxes; While he himself did not believe in these propositions. Look at the birth of modernity, Israel; It is a complete violation of the previous statements and it is in the sentence "Cain's preachers show off in the altar and pulpit..."

Why are Iran before Islam and Iran after Islam sometimes compared to each other in public debates? Is this dual compatible with the complexity of Iran's history and culture?

This is crafting and gaming! It does not belong to now and is used periodically every few years to spread division and hatred. First, the Westernized and Western intellectuals in connection with some Persian circles of India who were clear allies of the British colonial government, relying on Hebrew archeology and historiography, injected such propositions in order to call Islam and its history the culprit of politeness, dedication to colonialism and the ruination of Iran, and from that path, to place the dictatorship of Menor Pahlavi.