I was born in Tehran, Iran in the early 70s. The first child of a mixed-race couple, I was raised in the traditions of the Eastern World, the Orient. It’s an attribute I’m proud of (for some reason) because I hold that my vantage enables me to encompass varying worldviews more seamlessly. My formative years took place in pre-revolution Iran during the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi. In that period, Iran offered families like ours a life not unlike that in Europe or America.
My point is that the images of Iran most of us Westerners have aren’t representative of the world I grew up in. Pre-revolution Iran, though still predominantly Islamic thanks to the mid-7th century Arab conquest of Persia, was more egalitarian, more rational in thought, and socially occidental than it is today (2021).
My parents are an interfaith couple. My father’s family is of the Baháʼí Faith and my mother’s family is of the Christian Faith which caused the (then) newly-weds some consternation for they had to determine how I would be raised—a Christian or a Baháʼí. They chose to let me make up my mind about the cosmos on my own. In fact, that’s how I came to be named Emil.
On education
It was a real Romeo-and-Juliet type of a romance. They both worked in accounting and business administration. The guys at the office bet my dad that he couldn’t get the pretty Armenian lady in that office over there to go out with him because she refused everyone else. He did.
I was to be named Arthur, after one of my father’s close friends. But my parents were struggling with what faith to raise me in. My maternal grandmother then recommended they read a book by a French philosopher. She thought there was an elegant solution to my folk’s conundrum.
The book was Emile: On Education by Jean Jacques Rousseau. It’s an 18th century treatise that was banned in France and burned the same year it was published for a heretical proposition claimed in the fourth book; in that context, “book” is what we today refer to as chapters.
Looking back, not only did it shape my understanding of the cosmos, but it shaped my career path and passions throughout my life. Hopefully, this’ll make sense by the end…
The text is about the nature of learning and how it relates to the nature of humans. Quite an erudite and curious topic, no? Would you believe then, that it was publicly banned and burned the very year it was published? Why (you ask)? Because of the content of that section in the fourth chapter of five total titled Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.
Emile is a romance-driven tale that weaves the alternative philosophies of 18th Century France into the story of three characters—Emile, Sophy, and Jean Jacques (the author himself, a character in his story). The thrust of the story is the tutelage of Emile through his childhood and into his adolescent and adult life. Here’s a flash summary of the basics:
Social institutions (education, religion, politics, etc.), by their very nature, de-nature and corrupt people by ripping away their individuality (the loss of the noble savage) in exchange for a “relative existence”—the common; membership. So, to raise a citizen, not just a man, children should be kept from learning said social institutions until they are ready (adolescence).
Learning from resources should not be the drive of the education of a young child. It should be driven by the child’s interactions with her/his environments to heigthen and optimize one’s senses and draw conclusions from them.
True to the needs of those times, before socialization, the burgeoning adolescent must learn and know a craft or a trade.
Only when the child is a teenager, should he/she begin socializing. It is only then that Jean Jacques (the tutor character) introduces the child to religion. Emile learns the basics of the Christianity. But, by way of a priest character (the vicar), Rousseau asserts, in convoluted language, that Emile, instead of devoting himself to such faiths, should pursue natural religion—the position that nature is all.
Finally, Rousseau discusses Emile’s companion, Sophy (Sophie), and her education. Trust me—it does NOT read well through today’s American sociologic lens (and probably not well among the enlightened French of 1750s either). I’d say that the text would be shunned TODAY, but not for the reason it was in the mid-18th Century. No; instead, it would be looked down on for the views Rousseau promotes on Sophy’s education which casts women as objects of pity.
‘Educate women like men,' says Rousseau [in Emile], 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. —Mary Wollstonecraft, 1988
Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.
The perspective of Rousseau’s work that enflamed the aristocracy and Christian churches so and caused my grandmother to recommend the text to her young daughter during the 1970s was the one that astonished France and western Europe. Again, it was most clearly identified in the fourth book of Emile, the chapter that has been published as a stand-alone text many times since the passing of Rousseau—the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar”.
I’ll leave you to determine what Rousseau was ACTUALLY trying to convey. I’ve linked the text above. But for the most part, the sentiment of the exchanges between the vicar and Emile amount to being mindful of the Christian faith but recognizing that it’s just a story—an allegory, not history. Now you must recall that the notion of religion, faith, god, etc. wasn’t just a social institution for the peoples of Europe at the time. Sure, the educated (and caffeinated) had begun their interest in democratian atomism but for the masses—the church was where everything SPRUNG from: like what many of us today consider Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Quantum Mechanics, etc. to be—fundamental to existence. So to say something to the effect of “Pay attention and pursue a materialst, natural worldview instead of a corrupted confidence game named Christianity”. I read an interesting quote in The Story of Civilization (Durant, 1967) that Voltaire’s criticism of Emile was written at the time as…
Emile is a hodgepodge of a silly wet nurse in four volumes, with forty pages against Christianity, among the boldest ever known. He says as many hurtful things against the philosophers as against Jesus Christ, but the philosophers will be more indulgent than the priests. However [the text includes] fifty good pages... it is regrettable that they should have been written by... such a knave"
So that’s how I came up. My parents agreed to not introduce either of their faiths to me until I, naturally began to explore the matter of life and death and everything in between. In fact, I recall the specific moment it happened. It was the fall of 1979. We had just emigrated to the USA to seek political asylum and were living in the back house of my uncle in Hollywood. A really cool and smilin’ fellah came up to the front door and, as I answered the knock, he offered me a book—for free!!
Yeeeeees, THAT My Book of Bible Stories. Many years later, I realized that the book was basically propaganda for the Jehovah’s Witness belief system of what has come to be known as Christianity: you know, the one’s that reject blood transfusions even in life-threatening medical situations.
BUT…
It’s a really good book, y’all. It’s basically a 4th to 5th grade level English telling of the Pentateuch and the gospels of what’s come to be known as the New Testament Bible with HIGH END ILLUSTRATIONS. You can check it out here…
That book was my introduction to the concepts of god, duality, righteousness, and history (Oh yeah, it even cites “facts” like from Adam’s creation until the Great Flood, there were 1,656 years). But it was my first grasp of the notion of religion and a signal to my parents that the change was about to come. I was all of eight. But because I had developed my OWN curiosity about the matter, I was all in. Think of how you must’ve felt when you first saw a Star Trek episode or watched Raiders of the Lost Ark…THAT’S what this book was like for me.
PLUS, I had JUST learned to develop fluency in English, so I was SOOOOO down to show off my skills to my little brother and mom.
My father tells me it took all of two hours before I asked him if the stories were real. He says he didn’t want to answer me so he asked me what I meant by “real”.
Yeah. That’s what he asked me (did I mention I was eight?).
That oughta tell you aaaaaaaaaaall you need to know about me.