He was a handsome and considerably strong man. He had many desires; at the same time, he was jealous of his neighbor and was looking for an opportunity to get hold of his wife and property. In those days, managing life was not easy, and the head of the family sometimes had to spend a long time way from his family to find food and other necessities. On a hot summer afternoon, when returning home, his eyes fell on the bodies of his children by the tree, and he saw a man. He started to tremble in anger and grief.
I have not witnessed such a thing happening, nor have I heard it from anyone, but if this happens to a male lion in Africa, in the 21st century, it could have probably occurred to Neanderthals or Homosapiens a few thousand years ago. After several millennia, what has happened that such violence that took place easily and frequently in the past, is an entirely unusual, rare and strange event today? Has the lust of humans for their desire decreased? Is there now less desire in humans to possess world wealth? The answer to these questions is indeed negative, and today’s humans have tendencies that did not even occur to Neanderthals and Homosapiens. Today’s humans are no less greedy than their predecessors, but what prevents such violence from happening (or happens very, very rarely) are things that they have that their predecessors don’t. What makes the people of today not to be violated by their neighbors and not do such acts themselves is the “culture” that rules over the society. It is not because of the fear of punishment that people don’t use violence against each other, but their cultural upbringing prevents them from even having such violent thoughts. What creates security, keeps the environment safe, provides comfort and peace, is not the force of law, or technology, nor wealth, nor nuns and monks. It is culture alone; culture, culture.
Culture is the collective experience of millions of people over the generations; experience of pain, sorrow and joy. Culture is the collective wisdom of society over generations. Cultural upbringing makes us do actions considered good and prevents us from doing activities our culture condemns. A Society does not tolerate uncivilized people and rejects them, or even punishes them, sometimes by exile and prison and sometimes even death. In order that a person is resilient in a society the first step is to be familiarized with that society’s culture. Part of the feeling of alienation that affects immigrants is due to the mismatch of their upbringing with the culture of the people of the destination land. The culture of a society is made up of various components, its material parts that can be observed in an obvious way, such as architecture, urban planning, edibles, etc. And intangible factors such as literature, beliefs, traditions, etc., every bit of it results from the experiences of generations. Culture is the most valuable possession of every society. Therefore something should be done to preserve and protect it; that is why laws are formulated. Since the rules are prepared to preserve the culture and since the culture of different societies is different, the laws of each community are not necessarily compatible with the laws of other societies. When we talk about the occurrence of a crime, such as what was mentioned about our hero Homosapiens at the beginning of the article, this crime should be defined in the law; of course, an act or omission of an act is considered a crime in the law of that society, only when that act has previously been identified in the culture of that society.
In the case of the hero of our story, who was after his neighbor’s wife and property and lived in a society whose culture was not so advanced as to consider this act as reprehensive, this incident was not considered a crime, the same as if the neighbor did anything to take revenge or recover his property, that was allowed, and not considered a crime for him. In order to reach this stage of culture where the acts that are considered wrong are separated from acts that are not considered wrong, people have endured many painful experiences. Culture is a tall palace, each brick of which is a precious experience. Behind every proverb, every tradition, every architectural element, every local food, and every social knowledge, there is a mountain of pain hidden, pains that our ancestors endured with all their strength and all their power and solved them within themselves in order to create a better world for the future generations. If we take a careful look, we will see that in the first stop on the path towards cultural enrichment, with the help of the customs that ruled over the primitive societies, tradition took shape. Traditions not only act as a guidance for the people of a society but also play a deterring role. Traditions work in such a way that they do not allow any deviation from the path and remain unchanged (or with the least changes) throughout history. Because of this inherent characteristic, traditions play an influential role in protecting culture, and again, due to this intrinsic characteristic, traditions are also the Achilles hill of culture. If a culture of a society will insist too much on its traditions it will lose its dynamism and will disappear in the course of history. In a tradition there is no place for asking “why” but “how” is essential; unfortunately. In the era when a tradition took shape it was based upon a reason. But today, no one has the right to ask “why”, instead should implement that tradition in detail.
Of course, cultures are not limited to tradition, so they act dynamically in the context of history. This dynamism is the characteristic that, for example, has made Iranian culture survive despite the ups and downs that this vast culture has faced. Perhaps the “law” station is one of the essential stages that a society has gone through on its way to enrichment. One of the honors of Iran’s culture, as evidenced by the Shahnameh, is the stage of litigation that takes place in the history of Iran, and it shows that here also Iranians have been leaders of the world in this respect. Since the best (perhaps the most accessible) scale for distinguishing what is right and what is not right for the people in the society is culture, therefore, usually the law is compiled and developed in order to take the responsibility of protecting the society’s culture and thus automatically protect its people too.
Contrary to what it seems, the duty of the law is not to define crime, nor is it the duty of the law to prevent crime. Actually, before the law existed the culture of a society (thousands-of-years-old wisdom) has already identified the crimes, and with its inherent power has penetrated each and every member of the society to prevent occurrence of crimes. Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, it is enough that the law protects the society’s culture, which has the most excellent potential to deter reprehensible acts. On the other hand, the law’s blind and rigid protection of culture can lead to a devastating paradox. Let us not forget that culture consists of both dynamic and static parts. The static part is unchangeable, and if the law also protects the dynamic part without any flexibility this part will also become static, and this system will take the culture towards a dead end, in time.
To avoid such a deadlock, it is critical that the law strongly supports questioners and allows any system to be criticized with the whip of “why”. The law should not only give freedom to think and speech, but also encourage them to criticize structures. Traditions and other components of culture are either good and their efficiency is proven, in which case they become stronger when responding to criticism, or they need to be modified and this need will not be felt unless there is criticism, or maybe they are not good, or maybe they were good in the past, but have become unpractical in the present world, therefore need to be fundamentally changed. For this reason, the law should allow thought and speech to object and protest to traditions and culture and even the law itself. But, the law’s deterrent power is evident when it stands against any action that is in conflict with tradition, culture and law. The law should not only allow critics to express their protest but should in fact create a platform where critics feel free to express their opinions, even if a person or persons want to oppose critics in a field other than speech (under the guise of defending culture, etc.)
Here, justice should defend the critics against those who object to criticism. In other words, criticism should only be answered with criticism. In support of the critics, Zoroaster advises his followers to listen to the best sayings with the ears of intelligence and look with a clear mind, and then every man and woman choose their path from among them. Zarathushtra has not allowed critics to be punished or held back. Instead, he asks his followers to listen to criticism, and in this way a broader perspective is created for his followers. This broader perspective leads to expanding and enriching the society’s culture. In ancient civilizations, even before the industrial revolution era, traditions still ruled society even though the period of law had begun. Later on, for many reasons, traditions were put aside and the period of the rule of law started: the same laws that mainly rose from the culture of societies and were formulated to continue to protect traditions of societies. But, with the great advances in technology, human societies found the need for laws that did not have any meaning in human society’s upto then, like traffic rules, which could not be supported by the several-thousand-years of experience of several thousand years, and its merits and demerits were not defined in the culture of the societies. The countries were divided into two groups to solve their traffic problems. The first group created the culture that is necessary for abiding by traffic rules, so that the members of those societies, in order to protect this culture, observe traffic laws by observing the regulations, and consider it as part of their cultural ethics.
And, therefore, they consider deviance from these regulations as unethical. Stories are told of a particular prime minister who gave the order to go through illegal entry to reach an important meeting and the conscientious policeman who stopped him, which is more like a story. This never happens when something is culturally objectionable, as the Prime Minister couldn’t go to the restroom instead of going to the bathroom due to time constraints. It is impossible that he gave the order to pass through the forbidden place.
But, in the countries of the second group, instead of creating “traffic” culture, focus was put on income generation. Instead of children learning about traffic rules in the schools, the traffic police issued tickets on intersections. And the people went on breaking the laws until the law itself lost its awe next to them. When the crack formed in the wall called “law”, nothing could prevent its downward trend. Those who crossed the red light, found it easy to cross many other red lines. So it happened that in these countries, not only the traffic culture did not add to the cultural richness of the society, but also a large part of the society’s culture was taken away. What worries the author is the ever-increasing acceleration of things that did not exist until now, and from now on, they will pop out like mushrooms. If more than a hundred years have passed since the wheels of the first cars rolled on the street and some countries still haven’t found the opportunity to create a culture for it, how do they want the culture of using smartphones and virtual space and… a thousand strange issues (which do not fit in the imagination and They will soon conquer the world) to create in the society.
