*Parviz Karami

One of the best human features is contentment. All grandees over the history have talked saturatedly about contentment and invited their followers to be contented. Contentment like honesty and rectitude and kindness is among the values that all people with different inclinations agrees upon it and there is nobody who escapes it. There is no academy- divine or human-based – that vilifies the honesty and rectitude or opposes contentment. Contentment is a part of rational axiom and no healthy mind would negate it. Contentment is related to the thinking’s geography and each tribe and clan propagates and advertises their own special contentment. Iranian have a geography in which they can’t survive without contentment. The thing that has maintained this land so far is contentment. Our desert dweller fathers got access to the technology of constructing qanat and the qanat innovation. Among sunset and dust, they managed the scarce water of the desert in such a way that even one drop wasn’t wasted. We have reached qanat by contentment. We can seek this contentment in culture and art and literature and science of this geography as well. Our ascendants did the same thing with food stuff. There was nothing worse and more evil than this that the food stuff get wasted and disposed in Iranian culture. We had to secure the water drops as well as preserving the food morsels from being rotten and wasted. We can observe the qanat and contentment formula in Iranian-Islamic architecture and our unique life style. Unfortunately in the new era we were careless and lagged behind the life pattern of this geography a lot. Saadi has invited us to contentment in details in his teachings. He has composed exquisitely “When you don’t have income pay less/ because seamen sing a song/ If it doesn’t rain in the mountain/the Tigris will dry in a year”. Our parents bore this Saadi’s advice in their minds and paid attention to their income and expenditure in such a way that nothing got wasted and destroyed. This advice’s audiences are not the people.  The governors should be also careful that the country’s expenditure doesn’t pass its income and the economic balance doesn’t upset. If it is awkward and abominable for a grocer or a teacher or a craftsman that their expenditure be more than their income and inevitably beg the strangers and ask for loan, it is awkward for the government the same, actually it is more awkward and abominable. The issue of economic bargains and business dealings are one thing, the issue of dependency and being debtful are another. Since the governments are representative of their nation, their debtfulness means a nation’s debtfulness. Therefore, the governments should take care of their assets and be contented, too. Contentment doesn’t mean difficulties and hardship and austerity. It doesn’t mean not using the world’s blessings, too. According to the history’s testimony, our nation is actually a nation that doesn’t forbid the joy and candor and experiencing the world’s blessings for themselves and doesn’t neglect the universe….this contentment is defined as “resistance” in today’s political literature and the resistive economy is nothing but reinforcing the contentment’s staminas. Resistive should be defined in the contentment’s context and interpret it as preserving and securing all of our sentimental and physical assets. Unfortunately we have receded from our traditional patterns and couldn’t managed to learn new patterns. In this interstitial situation, the most important happening that occurs is this that the country’s assets are wasted. Human capitals, mineral capitals, progress and development opportunities and many other capitals of the country will be destroyed in this distance from the contentment/resistive culture. Contentment is not exclusive for the family but its origin is the family. People learn contentment in the family and understand that they should appreciate what they have. If they don’t learn in the family, they won’t be contented in general. So, the most important attempt in resistive economy is that to amend the Iranian Islamic patterns of the family and teach our children to look after our assets. The school and university students should learn that the most important valuable jewel of this geography is contentment to which the both mind and religion direct.

It is not occasionless if I remind that two principles of the five principles of resistive economy that are 1.endogenity 2. Extroversion 3. Knowledge-based 4. Courtesy 5. Justice-based have direct relation with contentment.

*President of the knowledge-based science, technology and economy culture development headquarter