Persepolis

In regards to the statement that "Politics and sentiment don't mix":

I don't think Marji believes that the two things are completely immiscible. To her, nostalgia and sentiment were her boat on the sea of politics. She makes light of difficult situations - joking about the veil, and takes joy in moments that less oppressed people [we] might take for granted - flowers falling from her grandmother's bra.

Sentiment seems to sustain her mother and grandmother as well. Her mother joins in demonstrations against the veil because she remembers the freedoms she has lost to the new regime. Her grandmother continues to wear her pearls - alluding to the wealth of a bygone era - throughout the upheaval.

I think that even Marji's father realizes that life is not worth living without some sort of sentiment. And as much as he may yearn for a numbness which will allow him to endure the regime without pain, he knows that humanity is incomplete without sentiment.

It seems to me that Marji's father may have been referring to religious sentiment, in which case his words express an unrealized dream. For if politics and religious sentiment didn't share the same governmental cage, the country would be a different place - the Iran of his youth. A country so influenced by the tenets of religion confines everyone involved - whether or not they share these same ideas.

It seems impossible to completely separate or completely combine the two ideas. We can see from Satrapi's memoirs that a country which seeks to fill the same spot with politics and religion is capable of great evils and instability. Alternatively, the complete separation of religious sentiment and politics seems to threaten 1984-like conditions. Yet even in these conditions, it seems that the rhetoric of the politicians becomes a sort of religion. Humans need something into which they can feed their emotions.

Politics is designed to secure the rights of a citizen, allowing him to express himself and his emotions freely. In the perfect mixture of politics and sentiment, people can pursue their individual interests and rest assured their neighbor's actions do not harm their well-being. This mixture restricts everyone at some point or another but is well-balanced and maintains itself.

-- Please forgive me if this blog didn't flow very well. I should have thought it out before I began to type, but I didn't. As a result, I jumped back and forth as new thoughts sprung out of my mind. I'm sure it verges on nonsensical mumbo-jumbo at times. Sorry.