49
Masa
da. For years, they held out against the Roman legions. Then,
when the Jews could resist the attackers no longer, the entire band
committed suicide.140 These fighters preferred death to a fate as
featherless chickens on the bottom of the Imperial pecking order.
No wonder the emotion that follows a disastrous hierarchical
downfall is called "mortification." The root of "mortification" is the
Latin mortis--death. The reason: disgrace is, to many humans, as dire a
fate as physical extinction.
Humiliation and the insidious force of the giveaway can trigger
superorganismic cataclysm. Take the example of Iran.
From the late nineteenth century until World War II, the Iranians
felt the disgrace of living in the shadow of the superpowers. Iran was
addicted to superpower help, ashamed of its dependency, and
resentful of the resulting influence the major nations achieved over its
affairs. In 1879, for example, the Shah asked the Russians to raise and
train a police force in the north. The resulting "Cossack Brigade" had
Russian officers and Iranian NCOs141. In 1907, the Shah grew
impatient with the newly-convened parliament--the Majlis. His
solution? To call in the Russian-led police brigades, bombard the
parliamentary building, and reestablish autocratic rule.
Supporters of a constitutional democracy turned for help to
Britain. Ten thousand of them took refuge on the grounds of the
English embassy. That same year, the British and the Russians put
their heads together and carved Iran into three spheres of influence--a
Russian sector in the north, a smaller British zone in the south, and a
neutral territory in the middle.
The policy of playing games with the great powers made the
Iranians feel like a small dog running between the legs of giants, a dog
in danger of being trampled. One Iranian-born writer said bluntly that
Britain and Russia were quarreling over Iran's dead body.142 Then,
during World War II, a new white knight arrived to save the Iranians
from the dishonor of superpower domination.143 This was America.
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