RECONSTRUCTING IRANIAN SOCIETY

In view of Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, which has destroyed nearly the entire core structure and command and control capabilities of this regime, the collapse of the Islamic Republic as Iran’s form of government is imminent. According to the regime’s own leaked internal assessment, only 14% of Iranians continue to support the Islamic Republic.

Moreover, it is not just a downfall of the theocratic regime that is on the horizon but a major sociological shift away from Islam and toward Iranian nationalism with an emphasis on Pre-Islamic Persian culture. This shift has already largely taken place and the demographic ground has been taken out from under the regime, with only 40% of Iranians now identifying as Muslims and only 5% of Iranians attending mosques.

Contemporary Iran, which is nominally and officially the most theocratic Muslim country other than Taliban Afghanistan, is demographically speaking the least Muslim country in the Islamic World and quite possibly the least religious country on Earth – even less religious than Scandinavian nations. In what follows, we will look at various aspects and elements of an Iranian cultural revolution that is fast approaching on the horizon, as well as various challenges that this cultural revolution will face and proposals for how to navigate them on the way to building a Futurist Iran.

Decoupling the Legacy of Cyrus from the UN Human Rights Regime

Cyrus the Great is renowned for his association with the earliest formulation of human rights, particularly through the Cyrus Cylinder, which is often cited as the first declaration of human rights in history. This legacy has been appropriated by various international bodies, including the United Nations, to promote their human rights agenda. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights draws inspiration from historical figures like Cyrus, framing modern human rights within a long-standing humanitarian tradition.

However, this association can be manipulatively used to bring Iran in line with the UN agenda. By invoking the legacy of Cyrus the Great, international bodies can exert moral and political pressure on Iran, urging it to conform to the UN's standards and policies, which may sometimes be inconsistent, hypocritical, or driven by geopolitical interests rather than genuine humanitarian concerns. To maintain the humanitarian legacy of Cyrus the Great while avoiding the manipulative use of this legacy by the UN, Iran can adopt the following strategies.

The next regime of Iran should emphasize its commitment to national sovereignty and the right to self-determination. This involves clearly articulating that while it respects and upholds human rights, it will not be subject to external pressures that compromise its national interests and cultural integrity.

Iran can develop its own human rights framework, rooted in its historical and cultural context. This framework should draw inspiration from the principles exemplified by Cyrus the Great, such as justice, tolerance, and respect for diversity, but tailored to contemporary Iranian society. By creating an indigenous human rights framework, Iran can demonstrate its commitment to human rights while distancing itself from the often politicized and duplicitous UN regime.

Iran can take the lead in establishing regional human rights initiatives that align more closely with its values and interests. By collaborating with neighboring countries and regional organizations, Iran can foster a human rights discourse that is more relevant and effective for the region, thereby reducing reliance on the UN framework.

Iran should engage in proactive public diplomacy to highlight its own achievements and commitments in the field of human rights. By effectively communicating its human rights initiatives and successes, Iran can counteract negative narratives and reduce the influence of external actors using Cyrus the Great's legacy manipulatively.

Iran can implement educational and cultural programs that celebrate the true humanitarian legacy of Cyrus the Great, emphasizing the historical context and principles that guided his reign. These programs should aim to foster a deeper understanding of Iran's rich cultural heritage and its contributions to the concept of human rights, independent of external influences.

Undertaking legal and institutional reforms that strengthen human rights protections within Iran is another measure that can be taken. By demonstrating a genuine commitment to improving human rights through internal mechanisms, Iran can assert its autonomy and integrity in this domain, reducing the leverage of international bodies that might otherwise use human rights as a tool for political pressure.

While the legacy of Cyrus the Great as a champion of human rights is a source of national pride, it is essential for Iran to manage this legacy strategically to avoid manipulation by international bodies such as the UN. By reaffirming national sovereignty, developing an indigenous human rights framework, promoting regional initiatives, engaging in public diplomacy, and implementing legal reforms, Iran can maintain its humanitarian heritage while resisting external pressures that seek to align it with a potentially corrupt and duplicitous UN Human Rights regime.

Against Neo-Sassanid National Socialism

This question of human rights brings us to the broader and deeper question of the other features that the social structure of the new Iran would need to have to accomplish this and related goals. Certainly, it could not be a democratic system. Democracy would have to be rejected together with Socialism, and we would instead have to develop an Iranian form of Libertarian Futurism. This is the furthest thing from the quasi-Traditionalist National Socialism currently being proposed by certain individuals and groups within the Iranian opposition who are also opposed to Liberal Democracy or Social Democracy as Iran’s future form of socio-political system. Their model is based on the Sassanian state as it was established by Ardeshir Babakan in 224. Ardeshir engaged in the greatest centralization of power in the history of Iran. He established a unified Iranian military to replace the central government’s reliance on the knights of the Parthian feudal houses. He enlisted the priests of the fire temples loyal to him, such as Tansar and Kartir, to shut down all other temples where the worship of Mithra and other eclectic and syncretic forms of religiosity were predominant, and to establish in their place something akin to an Orthodox Church of Zoroastrianism.

Ardeshir used this institution to place a divine seal of approval on his widespread persecution of people with ways of thinking and living that he considered a threat to his exercise of autocratic sovereignty. His own son and immediate successor, Shapur I (reigned 240–270), departed drastically from this policy by backing the prophet Mani’s creation of a new syncretic world religion, by adopting and institutionalizing Platonic philosophy and Aristotelian science in Iran, and fostering a cosmopolitan atmosphere that sought to incorporate many Romans and Indians into his greatly expanded Sassanian Empire. However, following his reign many subsequent Sassanid monarchs went back to Ardeshir’s model and the persecution of anyone who deviated from the Orthodoxy was so widespread and indiscriminate that it even included the brutal suppression of Buddhists. For those who may be unfamiliar with the subject, although it goes beyond the scope of the current discussion to elaborate, it is worthy of note that Buddhism is an Eastern Iranian religion that only subsequently spread to India and Eastern Asia. Gautama Sakamuni was himself a Scythian and until the Islamic Conquest of Iran the greatest Buddhist temples in the world were in Eastern Iran. Both Bodhidharma and Padmasambhava were also Iranians. The worst of the persecutions were, however, reserved for a group of Zoroastrian “heretics” or Mithraic “deviationists” known as the Mazdakites who, during the reign of Kavad I (473–531), carried out a counter-cultural experiment in communal living outside of the extant structures of patriarchy and the increasingly caste-like hierarchy of Sassanian society. Khosrow Anushirvan, who succeeded Kavad in 531 and was enthroned by the Orthodoxy, had Mazdak and somewhere around 100,000 of his movement’s leaders executed (scaling that up to the background of today’s population translates into the mass execution of millions of Mazdakite Iranians).

Despite its basis in a mystical form of Persian Gnosticism, Mazdakism has often been framed as the first largescale and sophisticated Communist movement in world history. But the ideological content of the movement is not the point. A strong case can be made that the revolt of the Mazdakites and the massacre of them by the Sassanid state shattered the Iranian social order in a way that prepared the ground for the Islamic Conquest of Iran about a century later. There is some evidence that the Parthian houses, such as the Karens, the Surens, and the Mehrans, were behind Kavad and his brief support for the Mazdakites, and that when Kavad was deposed in favor of Khosrow and the Mazdakites were massacred and their ideas were brutally suppressed, the Parthians eventually decided to betray the Sassanians by having the knights of their houses stand down during the Arab-Muslim invasion of Iran. There might even have been more direct intervention with the aim of dethroning the Sassanids at Ctesiphon and reestablishing the more decentralized system that they had managed in Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. If this were the case, then the use of the Arabs, recently unified by Islam, wound up getting way out of hand as the desert marauders went much further than deposing the Sassanids by invading and occupying all of Iran.

Even still, the fact that the Iranian Renaissance of 900–1100, in literature, the arts, science and technology, was spearheaded by the descendants of Parthian houses with Mithraic proclivities in the Greater Hyrcania and Khorasan regions, attests to the unprecedented and to this day unmatched endurance and vitality of these latter-day Scythian (Sakâ) noblemen. They ruled Iran for almost 500 years before the Sassanids, their houses remained a vital base of support for the Sassanids, and then after the fall of the Sassanids the Parthians reemerged for another several centuries before finally being defeated by the Asiatic Turks and Mongols who savagely raped and butchered Iran in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries.

Fundamental Principles of Iranian Statecraft

When the Parthians took back Iran from the Seleucid Greeks in the mid-third century BC, they claimed to be reestablishing the system of government first set in place by the Achaemenids. This system, which from the time of classical Greek writers such as Herodotus and Xenophon, has come to be known as the Satrapy structure, and which influenced Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers of America in framing the federal structure of the United States, remains little understood. In his book The Scythian Empire, Christopher Beckwith has argued that the system implemented by Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes was actually Scythian in origin and that their Iranian cousins, the Achaemenid Persians, only adapted it somewhat to incorporate the Elamites, Babylonians, and other non-Aryans with established legal systems. This makes more sense out of the Parthian claim, beginning with Mithridates I, to have been restoring the system of Cyrus and Darius, since the Parthians (also known as the Parni or Arsacids) were a branch of Scythians from Hyrcania.

In essence this system could be described as a meritocratically structured (Shâyeste Sâlâri) and relatively decentralized confederation capable of accommodating ethno-pluralism within the bounds of an ethos principally defined by chivalric (Javânmardi, Pahlavâni) free-spiritedness (Âzâdegi), industriousness (Âbâdsâzi), and charitable beneficence (Daheshmandi). Each element of this system needs to be carefully defined and understood anew in a way that allows us to adapt it to the contemporary situation of Iran. In this regard the work of Dr. Aryaparth (Shervin) Bavand, a mid-twentieth century Iranian intellectual and scholar, can be of some assistance.

Firstly, as Bavand pointed out in a meticulous study of both Achaemenid and Parthian “kingship,” the meritocratic character of the ancient Iranian Satrapy system has been fundamentally misunderstood. “Satrapy” is a Western transliteration of the Old Persian and Scythian term Chatrâpây, with the root chatrâ meaning “tent” or “umbrella” and pây meaning “based.” The Scythians were a semi-nomadic people who lived in tents of various sizes, but the term also signifies an umbrella in the abstract sense of an over-arching structure that encompasses or draws together other smaller structures or groupings within itself, and thereby also shades, shelters, or protects them by affording them a secure dwelling place – as in a tent.

Originally, each satrap would be governed by a pâdeshâh. This term has been misunderstood to signify a “king.” Rather, as even still in contemporary Persian, the word shâh means “the greatest” or “the best” as in shâh-rud or “great river” and shâh-râh or “best/largest road” (a highway) and shâh-beyt or “the best verse” in a poem. Meanwhile, pâdeh means “guardian” or “protector” as in the Persian word for a military or defensive base, namely pâdegân. One can see its Sanskrit cognate in the title of the Buddha’s famous text Dhârmâ-pâdeh (Protector of the Dharma). In other words, a pâdeh-shâh is the “best guardian.” When representatives of the Magi attended Plato’s funeral they claimed, in eulogies, that he was a member of their order. Whether or not this was in fact the case, it is not a reach to consider how Plato’s conception of the meritocratic rule of guardians or “philosopher kings” in his Republic was probably based on the real-world example of Achaemenid statecraft. Considering the influence of the Magi, or their association with Plato, it was likely also based on Zarathustra’s incipient political philosophy in the Gathas. Zarathustra clearly calls for the Lord and Leader (Ratu) of a community to be chosen meritocratically and for him – or her – to be an Ashavân or a person aligned with cosmic order.

The pâdeshâh was chosen as the worthiest from amongst the best or most accomplished people in a particular satrap, and this selection was made by the meritorious leaders of various cities and villages (dudmâns), which in turn were led by someone chosen from out of the leading households (khândâns) in each of these towns. The pâdeshâhs of Iran would then be something akin to a knightly round table ruled by whomever, at any particular time, was deemed by most of them to be the best of them. This person would be the shâhanshâh or “the best among the best,” mistranslated as “King of Kings.” It is noteworthy in this regard that the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table was brought to Europe, together with Chivalry and Grail mysticism, by the Scythian and Sarmatian tribes of the northern Iranian world, who came to be known in Europe as the Saxons and the Alans.

The most defining principle in the ethos of these chivalric Iranians was the virtue of Âzâdegi. It was already the most central and revolutionary principle of the Gathas of Zarathustra, the axis around which the rest of Zarathustra’s teaching revolves. In his Gathas, Zarathustra repeatedly and emphatically affirms that human individuals have free will and the power to choose between better and worse thoughts, words, and deeds by consulting their personal conscience and exercising an inborn power of discernment, one which can be cultivated through introspective contemplation and mindfulness. The other unique aspects of Zarathustra’s message, such as the finite power of Ahura Mazda, who solicits and needs the help of humans who are willing to align themselves with Spentâ Mainyu or “the Progressive Mentality,” as well as the choice of a community’s leader based on merit, are all oriented around this principle of Âzâdegi. So is the total absence of litigious and moralizing religious or ritualistic prescriptions in the Gathas, of the kind that one finds in all of the other foundational religious scriptures of the world.

Zarathustra’s message is for free men and women, and he makes a point of equally including and addressing women (an unprecedented and unparalleled move in his time). This principle of Âzâdegi or a free-spirited attitude of “live and let live” was also behind the policies of Cyrus the Great, the first political leader in recorded history to afford the citizens of his empire so much religious freedom and personal liberty that he was seen by non-Iranians more as a liberator than as a conqueror. His Achaemenid successors, such as Darius the Great, explicitly outlawed slavery and demanded that every worker – including women – be properly compensated for their labor. They even mandated that employers must provide female laborers with paid maternity leave. The Scythians and the Parthians were still more âzâdeh, to the extent that they were extremely weary of autocracy, liked to roam freely, with some degree of semi-autonomy, and were even known to favor open marriages that allowed their headstrong women to take lovers of their choice whenever they pleased.

Âzâdegi should, however, be a “freedom for” as much as a “freedom from.” This is where it dovetails with the virtue of Âbâdsâzi or industriousness. This is another virtue that is rooted in the teachings of Zarathustra. In the Gathas, Zarathustra calls on his followers to improve the Earth itself and the conditions for human life as co-creators together with Ahura Mazda in the furtherance of the life force over the power of death. One can see this reflected in the vast kanât or qanat system constructed beginning around the time of Zarathustra and extending throughout all of ancient Iranian history. These underground aqueduct channels were cut through rock and earth for hundreds of miles, bringing the water from mountain snow melts and springs to deserts and other arid regions to the extent that gardens could be planted in these places, and they could be turned into arable land for largescale human settlement. Much of the Iranian plateau was rendered habitable in this way by the Aryans who migrated from more verdant lands, such as present-day Ukraine, to Aryana (Iran) and named it after themselves. In so doing, these early Iranians were acting on a spiritual mandate and an apocalyptic prophecy. The spiritual mandate was for the transformation of certain places on Earth into a Paridâezâ or “paradise” (a word borrowed from Persian into English and other languages). The apocalyptic prophecy was that, eventually, the whole Earth would be subjected to a “refreshening” or renewal called the Frashgard.

Under the reign of Darius the Great, there were a number of titanic building projects that exemplify Âbâdsâzi. One was the development of an intercontinental highway system of broad paved roads. It was used by the horseback riders of the world’s first pony-express postal system, the motto of which, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night, stays our couriers from their appointed rounds,” was preserved by Herodotus and eventually adopted by the US Postal System. Then there was the geoengineering of the Suez Canal, a gargantuan earth-moving project, and the construction of the first bridge across the Bosporus, connecting Europe and Asia. Darius the Great also invented the first system of standardized coinage, the first international banking system, and the cheque as an instrument of finance. The origins of Capitalism actually reach back to the economic system of Achaemenid Iran, where for the first time private businesses took out bank loans made based on the speculative growth of their enterprises and people purchased things by writing cheques that could be reliably cashed at banks.

This brings us to the last, but not least, of the aforementioned Iranian virtues, namely Daheshmandi. The Gathas of Zarathustra begin with a call for some relief to come to people who have been downtrodden and brutally oppressed by the feudal lords (kâvis) and the sacrificial priesthood (karpâns) aligned with them and justifying their ravenous plunder of settled agrarian populations. In the Bisotoon Inscription, Darius the Great makes the point that he is a just ruler who will not allow the rich to crush and exploit the poor – all the while assuring the wealthy that their personal property will be protected. It was a departure from this kind of benificent governance during the late Sassanian period that led to the Mazdakite communist revolt and a shattering of the Iranian state and society, which paved the way for the Arab Muslim invasion. Daheshmandi is not charity, like the Muslim zakat. It is benificent or benevolent philanthropy. In Pre-Islamic Iran, both the Order of the Magi and the noble Parthian houses would take the responsibility of philanthropic aid to the poor, especially if they were hardworking. Certain Sassanid monarchs, such as Shapur I, also established public hospitals and universities open to common people of little means. In the Shâhnâmeh, philanthropic beneficence was one of the chief traits or defining qualities of a Pahlavân or chivalric champion. The zurkhânehs or “houses of strength” where Pahlavâns are trained have also, from Parthian times to the present, served to promote Daheshmandi in society.

Libertarian Futurism as Iran’s Next Socio-Political System

The concepts of Shâyeste Sâlâri or Shâhanshâhi in its true sense, when taken together with Âzâdegi, Âbâdsâzi, and Daheshmandi need to be reinterpreted in a contemporary context in such a way as to serve as the basis for the future development of Iran. Shâhanshâhi must be understood as a vision for meritocratic management or governance based on competence. The only contemporary model for this is corporate. With a view to the overarching aims of this vision for the future socio-political economy of Greater Iran, this certainly does not mean management by oligarchs or even by valueless technocrats. On the contrary, the sense in which the Shâhanshâh in a contemporary interpretation is “the best among the best” in terms of what he can contribute to Greater Iran and to human progress in general, can only be fully understood with a view to the other aforementioned concepts.

For example, in our world today, where the conflict between democracy and liberty has become all too apparent both in the West and in the Middle East, Âzâdegi can be understood as a kind of free-spiritedness that reaffirms the liberty of the individual against what the founders of the United States already foresaw as “the tyranny of the majority” that democracy inevitably tends towards. In other words, it is a libertarian conception of liberty. No one should understand the conflict between liberty and democracy better than the Iranian people, considering the fact that in 1979 a democratic election brought the Islamic Republic to power and this regime went on, by popular mandate, to rob individuals in Iran of their liberty. The same dynamic later manifested in the democratic revolts of the “Arab Spring” in the Middle East. Currently, in the Western world leftists are using mobocracy in order to democratically erode civil liberties such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press by passing hate speech laws and institutionalizing censorship of ideas and views that diverge from a particular ideology. The Shâhanshâh is the âzâdeyé Âzâdegân or the freest of free-spirits, a chivalric defender of constitutionally-enshrined personal liberty.

Furthermore, this freedom is as much a freedom-for construction as it is a freedom-from constraints. In a contemporary context, Âbâdsâzi must be understood as construction in the sense of industriousness and creative innovation. It is building and growth in alignment with Spentâ Mainyu. The Shâhanshâh is thus also the leading industrialist, innovator, and developer in Greater Iran, not at all in the sense of being a quasi-feudal monopolistic overlord, but the opposite, the single person who has a proven track record of promoting, protecting, and facilitating the most broad-based industrious innovation and economic growth. Herein lies the basis for, not just a political, but also an economic libertarianism that is integral to any Futurist Iran of tomorrow.

Finally, Daheshmandi has to be understood anew in a way that excavates its original ancient Iranian meaning, from the time of Cyrus and Darius the Great, as a kind of aristocratic beneficence that is not “charity.” As per the Bisotoon inscription, Darius exercised this virtue in a way that he neither wronged the wealthy nor the poor. In other words, Daheshmandi is not at all consonant with Islamic conceptions of charity, such as zakat or modern Socialist or Communist redistribution of wealth, which all involve robbing from industrious and enterprising individuals, or looting their wealth, in order to parasitically support the poor and to impoverish society in general by disincentivizing industry and innovation. Rather, Daheshmandi is philanthropic beneficence and there can be no philanthropy without capital and liberty. The Shâhanshâh is thus also the ultimate benefactor of Iranian society.

Paridaezas and the Techno-Scientific Frashgard

These libertarian concepts reappropriated from out of Iran’s own cultural heritage should serve a futurist agenda that is equally Iranian in origin and character. Here the aforementioned ideas of the Paridâezâ and of a future Frashgard are fundamentally determinative and demand elaboration in the context of what technologists refer to as the Singularity. The term Singularity, or Technological Singularity, in this context refers to a convergent advancement of certain technologies at an exponential rate toward a singular moment wherein their mutually reinforcing developmental trajectories culminate in a post-human condition.

For all of human history thus far, technological development has advanced at a rate that, in modern times, allowed sociologists, futurologists, and science fiction authors to extrapolate future developments from past advances, in the manner in which an exponentially rising curve on a graph can serve as the basis for a probabilistic projection of the curve forward on the axis of elapsed time. In these terms, the Singularity can be envisioned as that moment when the upward curve becomes a spike on the graph, which spike is also a wall beyond which merely human minds can no longer extrapolate or form future projections at all. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics, cybernetics, Artificial Intelligence, and augmented or virtual reality are all increasingly convergent (i.e., mutually reinforcing) and exponentially advancing technologies that – if left to themselves – will likely culminate in the Singularity within the next thirty years, if not sooner.

The term Singularity in Technological Singularity is, of course, a metaphor drawn from a black hole or dark star. Beyond the event horizon, it is believed that linear information processing and retrieval breaks down, and anything entering the event horizon begins to undergo a significant warping of space-time. Likewise, as we enter the event horizon of the Singularity about 20 years from now – again, if and only if there is no interference – the magnitude of technological development and attendant transformation of the basic parameters of human existence and the structure of society which takes place each year will keep changing by orders of magnitude. We can easily see how there was more technological development in the three centuries between the Renaissance and the 18^th century than in all of the millennia of recorded human history since ancient Egypt and Sumer. Then, in the 19^th century, there was more technological development, at a faster rate, than in the preceding several centuries. In the 20^th century, technology advanced more rapidly in each quarter (25 years) than in the entire 19^th century.

While significant social transformations have been brought about by these increasingly rapid technological developments, certain boundary conditions of human existence have thus far remained stable and have acted to reinforce the inertia of certain social structures. As we enter the era of gene editing and AI, as well as cybernetic engineering involving nano-scale robotics, that will no longer be the case. The rise of Artificial General Intelligence and its cybernetic fusion with a gene-edited ‘humanity’ is the key evolutionary mutation in this catastrophic process. This superhuman lifeform will easily master Zero Point Energy (ZPE) propulsion and deploy self-replicating robotic manufacturing probes or Von Neumann devices to rapidly colonize and develop other star systems. The visions of Star Trek and Star Wars are quaintly antiquarian as compared to the realities of a world on the other side of the now imminent Technological Singularity.

While the specific contours of such a world are literally unimaginable, Zarathustra was the first person in recorded history to conceive of the essence of such a coming event. He called it Frashokereti which, in Middle Persian, became Frashgard. In ancient Iranian texts this event is described with the metaphor of molten metal covering the entire Earth such that those aligned with Spentâ Mainyu through their Daena (their inner knowing, discernment, or conscience) finally undergo a transformation wherein they embody their Farvahar or most-perfected form, which has all the while been guiding them and waiting for them as a kind of guardian angel. The same molten conflagration, symbolizing the Earth becoming an alchemical furnace, will burn – or literally “holocaust” (consume by flames) – everyone who has not aligned him or herself with Spentâ Mainyu but has instead chosen to submit to, facilitate, or ingratiate Angra Mainyu, the Constricted or Constrained Mentality (i.e., Ahriman in Middle Persian). It is not hard to see how this is a prophetic presaging of the Technological Singularity, with Spentâ Mainyu being Zarathustra’s conception of the force of Progress acting on a cosmic evolutionary scale.

What is also implicit in this is that the Frashgard comes about as part of a process, which brings us back to the idea of a Paridâezâ. As noted earlier, a Paridâezâ originally meant a walled garden containing many types of curated plants and animals that were not necessarily native to the place where the garden is planted. Moreover, such gardens could be planted in the middle of deserts using kanât or qanat engineering as a method of long-distance irrigation. This Old Persian word is the source of the English and Latinate words for “Paradise,” but the roots of the word are actually Pari meaning “fairy” and dâezhâ (Middle Persian dezh) meaning “fortress” or fortified enclosure. It is a fairy garden that is also a fairy fortress.

The philosophy behind such a structure implies careful selection for positive diversity capable of co-existence. In other words, an architectural engineering that is also social engineering. The basic idea, especially when considering the qanat as an irrigation source, comes from Zarathustra’s injunction to improve the Earth itself, as a co-creator together with Ahura Mazda, and for the sake of making human existence fairy-like or fit for superhuman versions of ourselves – the Farvahar versions of us to come after the Frashgard. This idea is clearly the precursor for science fictional visions of domed garden-like cities or enclosed biospheres that could be constructed even in the deserts of Mars, let alone in more arid regions of Iran.

The future socio-political and economic system of Iran should incorporate as one of its central features the construction of new cities built with a view to the Paridâezâ ideal. These cities would be Technology Acceleration Zones (apropos Effective Accelerationism or e/acc) where the Frashgard is actively being prepared for the whole planet through the convergent advancement of technologies toward the Singularity almost entirely unobstructed, with the most minimal regulatory obstacles possible. In conceiving of these cities, we should be reminded of Walt Disney’s original conception for EPCOT or the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, but also Dryden Brown’s founding concept for Praxis cities, as well as the Network State proposal of Balaji Srinivasan (who is also involved with Praxis) and seasteads of the kind that Dario Mutabdzija proposed to build.

In his original unexecuted plan for EPCOT, Disney proposed that only productive people who had something to contribute to the community ought to be allowed to live there, including artists and writers, and they should be willing to incorporate constantly updated avant-garde technology into their daily lives. Disney expected that EPCOT would constantly be about 20 years ahead of the rest of the world, with many of the people who live there contributing to developing the cutting-edge technologies deployed and tested in the futuristic “city of tomorrow.”

Dryden Brown and other founding members of Praxis have revived certain elements of Disney’s vision, insofar as they propose that Praxis cities be constituted and inhabited only by one or another community with members that share a common worldview and aspirational vision. Interestingly, Praxis also overlaps with the very first draft of Disney’s plan insofar as Disney had originally wanted the site in Florida to include both a “city of tomorrow” and also a “city of yesterday” that would be modeled on a bygone era, probably the American West. This, of course, brings to mind the Westworld sci-fi series based on the 1973 Westworld film by Michael Crichton about a theme-park manned by lifelike android robots. Except that the various Praxis cities have been envisioned to be modeled on many different past eras, from Gothic Europe to the ancient Middle East, but with the latest technology being incorporated into these archeo-futuristic communities.

Balaji Srinivasan, who is a member and benefactor of Praxis, has proposed the idea of using blockchain technology to create what he called a Network State that is not necessarily geographically contiguous. Using apps that provide privacy in communications and untraceable crypto exchanges on the substratum of the internet, beneath and beyond the World Wide Web, citizens of a Network State can develop a parallel economy that eventually outperforms that of the territory or territories of the countries its users extend across.

In line with the vision of Dario Mutabdzija, who proposed to do this off the coast of Silicon Valley with his Blueseed project, this Network State could even extend off-shore onto seasteads. These are moored structures in international waters, at least 12 nautical miles off the coast of any country, putting them outside of the regulatory and legal framework of any nation state. Combining seasteads with blockchain to extend EPCOT-like Praxis-style cities enhance their status as Technology Acceleration Zones or cradles for the Technological Singularity.

All of these methods should be synthesized in building the Libertarian Futurist Iran of Tomorrow. Instead of forcing the current denizens of Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Kerman, and Kashan to suddenly adapt to drastic changes in their way of life, new cities incorporating the aforementioned features should be built all across Iran and into the international waters of the forever Persian Gulf. These entirely privately owned and built cities – akin to vast gated communities – will only be for those in Iran who really want to live in them, and who can prove that they would be productive members of these communities. Youthful, visionary, and industrious tech innovators, artists, scientists, industrialists, and writers would be welcomed.

The new Paridâezâ cities would be built in a style that combines either Achaemenid, Parthian, or Sassanid architecture – or some combination thereof – with futuristic elements. They should also be constructed nearby ancient Iranian archeological sites, in order to make the new cities more attractive to tourists – albeit tourists who will have to buy tickets and be vetted to visit these cities for days or weeks, all the while respecting the way of life of their pioneering and free-spirited inhabitants. For example, one should be near Bisotoon (Behistun), one near Taq-e-Bostan, one near Firooz Abad, and of course one between Persepolis and Pasargadae. These land-based new cities should be interconnected by a network of subterranean Maglev trains set inside of vacuum tunnels. The seastead or city-stead ones should be off the coasts of Abadan, Bushehr, Kharg Island, Abu Musa, and the Tunb Islands.

The legal and economic system of Iran should be structured in such a way as to allow for the construction of these neo-Paridâezâ cities and seasteads and facilitate their flourishing. Eventually, the Iranian Network State that they bring into being will encompass and absorb the rest of Iran. If construction efforts, under a Libertarian Futurist constitutional framework, were to begin by 2030, this would certainly take place by the advent of the Technological Singularity, circa 2050. At that point, this new Iran would be in a position to lead the world into the Frashgard. That is the rightful destiny of the children of Zarathustra. It is high time to reclaim that destiny.