The Purpose of Mythology and Literature in Cultural Decision-Making

Iranians long to stay true to their culture and history. Many Iranians also claim that we are the fountainhead of all culture and civilization. I'm not kidding, check out this "False Pride" article from Eyeranian.com which was written in response to this "Persia Uber Alles" article from Iranian.com.

Now, if we truly are the fountainhead, then any foreign cultural options that exist out there are, technically, the mutuations, the offspring, the very children, of Iranian culture. Therefore, if and when we adopt the norms and gizmos of another culture, we are not throwing our own culture aside! No! We are simply getting back our initial cultural investment with interest. Any cultural practice that might be considered alien is just a return on investment.

Now I'm not advising that we indiscriminately consume all external cultural norms. Clearly, as adoring parents, we can be discerning. We can tell which of our little mutant children grew up to do well, and which we need to throw back into the ocean to mutate a little bit more. Yes, as a consumer of culture (and wouldn't Darius and Cyrus be proud?) You can take these external mutations and innovations, or leave them, of course. Ekhtiar Dareed (You have the choice, you've got the power). Either way, it's not a betrayal of your culture, because you are the fountainhead.

All you have to do is somehow mark it, label it, put a final "homecoming" twist on it to re-align it with your norms. Make it your own. There are a lot of examples of this in Indian literature and film.

But now this line of reasoning brings us to some mythical turbulence. If we're going with the metaphor that foreign cultural influences are the unrecognized offspring of some traditional Iranian culture, what happens when we look into mythology for a precedent for how to deal with the encounter between the traditional parent and the unrecognized offspring? Well, we run into the story of Rustam and Sohrab, the biggest story of them all. Of course, there exists the famous myth in Persian literature, the story of Rustam and Sohrab. This story has similarities to the Oedipus story of Greek mythology. In both stories, a father and a son are separated at the birth of the son...to be continued.