Soul Boom - How Spirituality Can Save Us from Global Chaos (w/ Payam Akhavan)

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

World peace isn’t just possible—it’s inevitable. But will we get there through collective vision or after unimaginable catastrophes? Renowned human rights lawyer and former UN prosecutor Payam Akhavan joins us on Soul Boom to discuss the forces pulling the world apart, and those bringing us together. They dive deep into the existential crises of our time: climate change, rising nationalism, economic inequality, and the urgent need for a global spiritual awakening. MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboom.com/store God-Shaped Hole Mug: https://bit.ly/GodShapedHoleMug Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. World peace is not only possible, but it's inevitable. Yeah. The problem is that we're holding onto divisive, myopic, materialistic ideologies that are inconsistent with the reality of the oneness of humankind. The question is whether we will achieve it through a common vision or only after unimaginable catastrophes leave us with no other. choice. Climate change is the game changer. And those leaders that today are saying that this is

a hopes, they will be answerable to history. We will transform our patterns of thought and behavior because we have no choice. That is what our collective survival requires. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hi, I'm welcome to Soul Boom. Thank you, Ryan. It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you here. I say that about every guest. I know. I'm so excited. This guest needs no introduction. This guest needs a lot of introduction because no one's heard of him. Unless you go to Massey College, University of Toronto,

and work in human rights law, no one knows who the hell you are. Why are you even here? How dare you? Listen, here's the deal. Sorry, Ray. Our podcast is Soul Boom. It's based on ideas in the book. We talk a lot about mental health. We talk about spiritual paths. We talk about personal transformation. but a big part of the Soul Boom book is making a societal transformation. I have a chapter where I talk about world peace and how there was this infamous photograph that no one knows who took it, but it's the blue marble photograph taken from one of the Apollo missions.

Out the window, one of the astronauts grabbed a camera and went, and it was the first picture of planet. Earth taken from outer space. And the picture went haywire. The picture went all over the planet. It was hung in classrooms and in churches. And people were like, it was on the cover of like Time magazine. It's like, now world peace is possible.

This is like, I think early 70s, one of the last missions. Now that we see this beautiful blue marble and we see that there's no borders on this planet that we're all one species living on this one planet. Now, oh, now we're going to have world peace. Because how could anyone have a war once they see this incredibly beautiful photograph? And I also talk about how when I was a kid in the 70s, and even in the 80s somewhat, even Ronald Reagan, believe it or not,

people would talk about world peace and like it was possible. And it felt like, oh, we can get there. I think we can get there. And beauty contestants would talk about world peace and even Henry Kissinger would talk about world peace and scientists and Carl Sagan would talk about world peace. And of course, you know, the two world wars

were much closer in the rearview mirror back then. You know, we're talking about 1910s and then 1930s and 40s. So the devastation wrought by war, the anvil of the Cold War hanging over people's heads at the same time, but we kind of grew up. I grew up in an America where it was like, hey, world peace might be possible. There were a couple of cynics. Now there's more than a couple of cynics.

Now 80% of people, 90% of people probably, I don't have any polling data to support me on this, believe that world peace is a ludicrous idea by naive hippies. Humans have always been at war. They're always going to be a war. There's always going to be conflict. There's going to be struggle. And humans are not necessarily going to use kind of the highest, most relevant tools of diplomacy to try and untangle these conflicts.

This is a very long-winded introduction. Karthik, you better keep this in the cut. Okay, don't cut this out. Because it's important to set a context here that from a soul boom perspective, how do you take spiritual ideas and put them into practice to transform this world from one of hatred, distrust, ethnic cleansings, tribal warfares, stockpiling arms, authoritarian regimes, how do we move past this into a very necessary stage in human development? And this is part of the soul boom trajectory. So who better than human rights lawyer and a former UN prosecutor. You've worked on the cutting edge of some of the biggest conflicts in human history

over the last three to four decades. Paya Makavan is here. And when I throw that out, what comes to your mind? Well, I'll begin by suggesting that world peace is not only possible, but it is inevitable. It is the next stage in our collective evolution on this planet. But you're saying it might be inevitable if we all blow each other up and then there's like 47 people left on the planet and they'll have to find world peace.

Let me continue. And the question is whether we will achieve it through a common vision and collective will or only after unimaginable catastrophes leave us with no other choice. So I think there is a distinction between what we call reality and our perception of reality. The reality is that we live in an inextricably interdependent world today, more so than ever in history. Technology, economics, migration, and now the looming climate catastrophe, all of these forces have pushed us irreversibly towards

what the Catholic theologian Deschardang called the planetization of humankind. The problem is that we're still holding onto divisive, myopic, materialistic ideologies that are inconsistent with the reality of the oneness of humankind. And in fact, we see in recent times a regression, a kind of infantile regression, against this reality of interdependence to nativist essentialist illusions and identities to try and stop the clock. So I think it's blindingly obvious

that today we live in a world community where the welfare of the part is inextricably tied to the welfare of the whole. Now, we can achieve this transformation that has already been underway for quite some. time, if we have a world-embracing vision based on the reality, not the distant ideal, based on this reality that I've described, or we can, through hateful populism, resurgent

nationalism, very materialistic conceptions of progress which are sinking us into ever greater despair and extremes of wealth and poverty and destruction. of the environment. One way or the other, it is inevitable, I believe, that we will have to transform our patterns of thought and behavior because we have no choice, because that is what our collective survival requires. And I would just end by saying that we live in an age of great confusion because we see both the best and the worst potentialities inherent in human beings. we see on the one hand a stubborn clinging to outdated ways of thinking and behavior. But at the same time in the midst of crumbling disintegration of that old world that we're so familiar with,

we also see the rising of a new global consciousness rooted in belief in human dignity. And we simply have to understand how these two forces are operating in parallel. and make sure that we are on the right side of history. And it's very easy to become cynical at this point in time. In general, I tell my students at university, it's very easy to be idealistic in the classroom through ideological posturing and virtue signaling. It's another thing to go out there in the real world

and to see the suffering, to see the injustice, and refuse to give up, refuse to surrender, to dig in and to fight for justice and human better. So this is not a time for the week. This is a time for people who have a deep moral and spiritual vision of the future of humankind. But I would say that history is on the side of those people who embrace the oneness of humankind. I've been in the United Nations. I've been in more than one international conference where people in the name of political realism speak about this kind of vision as a nine. naive idealism, I actually think that we need to change the idea we have about political realism because the reality is that of interdependence. The reality is that we need a planet based on international law, respect for human dignity, respect for the environment.

And I think that that is exactly where the world is going to head sooner or later. Damn, you're good. You should do this professionally. Very well said. The first thing, because when you start having a podcast, then you start picturing the comments. And I picture a lot of comments right now at this point in our conversation like globalist, like this word globalist and the political right in the United States is kind of a dirty word. And it's viewed as like we're going to put global ideals over our national ideals.

We're going to have to sacrifice, you know, what America means, what America stands for, and America's needs for, you know, international coalitions. And that this has become an increasingly kind of toxic perspective. How would you answer that? Well, I can understand why globalization has a bad name in the eyes of many, in particular because globalization is seen as a project. among elites, unprecedented concentrations of wealth. You think about Davos and you think about billionaires and heads of state kind of making all the decisions and leaving the common people out

and people profiting from it. Exactly, exactly. We need a democratic globalization and we need to understand that the local and the global are part of the same transaction. And in fact, I think that when we want change in the world, revolutionary change, The most profound changes are seismic shifts in our consciousness,

which begins at the level of the family, the neighborhood, the community, the place of work. And it's those ideas that we have about the world, about justice, about leadership, about the definition of progress and the pursuit of happiness, that ultimately manifest themselves at the national and global level. So I think that the current global system is lamenting. defective and it has served the interests of global elites, allowed them to amass vast fortunes to the detriment of the majority. So that is exactly why we need an effective system of global governance to ensure that this process of globalization, the technological revolutions, which have brought unprecedented opportunities for human. betterment are in fact used for human betterment rather than creating an oligarchy of tech

billionaires who actually foment nationalist hysteria in order to allow themselves to continue to profit exactly to profit and exploit people I think what you're saying is right on the money and I would say to those who kind of like goddamn globalists what about America you know, that kind of viewpoint is like, actually it's going to be better for America for us to have peace on the world stage and interdependence that's actually going to profit most of the people and the working class people of the United States. Maybe there's some trade agreements or, you know, military agreements that on at first blush on a short term make it seem. like the global stage is being prioritized over America's priorities, but ultimately it's going to be better for America. Would you agree? Well, let's go back to the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. The United Nations was established together with all of its agencies under American leadership.

It was the United States at the end of the most catastrophic war in human history that came to the conclusion that multilateralism, some form of global governance is in the interests of the United States. That, of course, was a very different time. And since 1945, the pace of global interdependence has accelerated exponentially. So that reality is even stronger today than it was in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, where our idea of world peace was largely the absence of war. It wasn't so much respect for human rights, social economic developments, global justice, and a whole host of other things.

But I think that the retrenchment in the United States today is against globalization is bound to fail. It's simply on the wrong side of history. But I do understand. It's on the wrong side of the blue marble photograph as well. It's on the wrong side of the blue marble photograph, but we also have to understand the alienation and despair that many people feel that populist leaders have exploited to take people into a dark abyss rather than actually increasing mistrust. Exactly.

Sowing hatred and division and digging down on this very materialistic, divisive ideologies, which is where the problem begins with at first. So I think that we need to think about, first of all, why is it that in the United States, the largest economy in the world, the most powerful country in the world, there are these extremes of wealth and poverty, three, four tech billionaires who have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. You don't have to be a Nobel Prize winning economist to realize that's not going to end well. That's a dystopian future where a few individuals who are not answerable to anyone have unprecedented concentrations of wealth. That's just like it's like the Gilded Age. It's like the 1890s. It's like Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller and that handful of, you know, tycoons that controlled all the industry and wealth.

Much worse. Much worse. Andrew Carnegie did not have social media algorithms that could invade your mind. So this is no longer just a question of concentrations of economic power. It is literally mind control. And it is a way of a programming society through endless distractions, mindless entertainment, in order to allow. And divisive news streams that just foment kind of the wrong kind of outrage debates nonstop. Exactly.

looking for solutions. Exactly, exactly. And it's in a sense the consequence of a materialistic civilization, a consumerist culture that is appealing to the basest side of human nature, narcissism and greed and hatred, as opposed to ennobling us and allowing us to achieve a greater sense of empathy and compassion. So we really need to understand that the most profound revolution comes from the grassroots. It comes through seismic shifts in our consciousness. And we have had for well over a century now a conception of progress and the pursuit of happiness,

which is based on consumerism. that the more we feed the ego, the more we indulge in narcissism and greed, the more we reduce politics to a spectacle of a reality TV show, the more we're going to achieve progress. So that's a non-starter. That's absurd. It's very blindingly obvious that that is not going to end well. So we need to also consider getting back to America in the world.

that for the first time in human history, we are capable of our own self-destruction through anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which is another point which the populists are saying is a hoax. And if you look at our evolution on this planet, you realize that about four billion years ago, the first human life forms emerged from the oceans. It took hundreds of millions of years for plankton's

to breathe enough, oxygen in the air, so that we could, through this miraculous balance, see the rise of human civilization. We don't realize how incredibly vulnerable we are in the universe. And for the first time, at the same time as we have achieved unprecedented technological progress, we are at the brink of self-destruction through anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, through global warming. This is not an ideological debate. It's a scientific truth. It's an inescapable reality. And the climate system doesn't care about our ideological divisions, doesn't care about the political boundaries we've carved up in our imagination. And the earth will go on with or without us. So in addition to all

the other problems of mass migration, organized crime, trade, and a whole host of other things, climate change is the game changer and those leaders that today are saying that this is a hopes and are trying to sweep it under the carpet they will be answerable to history because the earth will go on and exact its punishment for our violation of its laws. I've been working with a lot of indigenous people

in small islands in the South Pacific and it's wonderful how sitting there in a small atoll in the middle of the vast ocean, they simply look at you and they say, you know, if you respect nature, nature will respect you. We have become so toxic and arrogant in our materialistic civilization

that we have forgotten that we are just an insignificant speck in an infinite universe, that the earth will go on with or without us. But there's also something incredibly liberating in understanding that we are not at the center of the universe. Our ego doesn't govern everything in the universe and in a sense learning to live in harmony with nature, learning to live in harmony

with our fellow human beings, learning to awaken the immense spiritual potential that we have is the challenge of our time. Our survival depends on awakening our spiritual potential. I have a 96-year-old father. He was born in Iran in 1928, where in life, expectancy was 27 years of age. There was a 50% infant mortality rate. My father lost half of his brothers and sisters before the age of four. And it was normal for a mother to bury half of her children. Wow. And today, my father speaks with his grandchildren on Zoom. And we take that completely for granted. It was unimaginable in his age that there would be something like Zoom, instant communication, internet, the world that we have today is a world of unimaginable possibilities.

But in order to ensure that it doesn't end up in a dystopian future of tech billionaires with massive disenfranchisement of people, we need to inject our societies with a strong dose of moral and spiritual consciousness. And that's why I'm saying we are at a historical juncture. One road leads to this dystopian future. And another one leads to not just world peace, understood as the absence of war, but a world of unimaginable possibilities where we can edify humankind. We can ensure that everyone has education, everyone has health care, that we spend our resources.

on creating noble human beings. And we need in order to achieve that to redefine what we mean by progress and the pursuit of happiness. I spend a big part of my career in refugee camps, in poor countries, and I deal with survivors of genocide, deeply traumatized people.

When I come to North America and I see the prevalence of anxiety, depression and despair, massive problems with addiction, it really makes me wonder, is this progress, is this the pursuit of happiness that we've created this consumerist materialistic culture where everyone is drowning in misery? So this is really a revolutionary moment, not just in terms of tinkering with the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, but to really reimagine society, reimagined what is the purpose of all the systems that we've created if it is not going to bring out this spiritual higher reality

that is what makes us human beings. You read a lot of these kind of progressive techno writers that are talking about, you know, you talked about the birth rates, you know, of your 96-year-old grandfather. Father, father. Oh, I'm sorry. 96-year-old father, he got started late with you, didn't he then? I'm doing the math.

He was in his 40s when he, yeah, did it. Something like that, yeah. But we talk about the birth rates at the time of the birth of your father, being 50%. And there has been so much progress made because of technology and medicine and nutrition and communications and transportation. But still all over the world, whether it's Gaza, whether it's South Sudan, whether it's Eastern Congo, Yemen, the Rohingya and Myanmar, the suffering is astonishing and overwhelming. And we spend our times, you know, I got my update on my screen time the other day, five hours a day I was spending on my phone. Now, that's also like podcasts and Google Maps and stuff like that.

but it's so easy to spend hours of your day flipping on a screen, you know, or one-click buying things on Amazon or watching cute little otters surfing down a creek, you know, on TikTok, and to lose touch with the reality of where humanity is at this juncture. So activating this primal human muscle of, empathy of compassion for the suffering of others is central to the teachings of the Buddha of Christ and certainly, you know, modeled by the life of Christ, by Muhammad, by Baha'u'llah in the Baha'i faith. And world peace will not be achievable until we harness this power of compassion and are willing

to make some kind of small sacrifice in our lives to, allay the suffering of others. So there is a kind of a spiritual beating heart at the center of a movement toward world peace. This is not simply about legislation and leaders and laws and world courts. All of those things are important, but they have to be a manifestation of this impulse to say, hey, looking at this blue marble, we need to care for each other. I'm as I was listening to you I was thinking about a beautiful Baha'i prayer on the tombstone of my beloved grandmother who was truly an angel it's a prayer by Abdul Baha the son of prophet founder of the Baha faith and it translates into behold the candle how it gives forth its light it weeps its life away in order to give forth its light

then I think that we have to understand that we are that candle. Our purpose is to give forth our light in the darkness, but we cannot do that except through burning, except through weeping our life. And the weeping our life away is about the disappearance of the ego so that the soul can break out of the prison of self and passion and narcissism and greed. And this brings me back to a,

what I said earlier, that we have lived for the past half a century or so in a period of unprecedented prosperity in terms of levels of education, life expectancy, and one can go on and on compared to the world of my 96-year-old father who lost half his siblings in infancy to dysentery and cholera. We live in a world of immense unprecedented prosperity. But at the same time, we have unprecedented anxiety, depression, despair, what I call the psychic pandemic, substance abuse and all sorts of addictive behavior because we have lost touch with our own self. And we have replaced the hyper-connected world of whatever cyberspace metaverse with basic authentic human bonds, which

is what we need to nurture our inner self. So in a sense, we need to go back to the future. We need to rediscover the basic bonds of community, living in harmony with nature, understanding our spiritual self, which is the true source of our happiness and empowerment. And also to realize that struggling for justice, having empathy for others, paying a price for your beliefs, not virtue signaling and paying

lip service to liberal platitudes, but really paying a price, suffering and struggling and sacrificing is being that candle. You are fulfilling your purpose as a human being by struggling. So we shouldn't be surprised that a culture, which is all about the extreme indulgence of the ego breeds the despair that we see. And that's the irony of my going to refugee camps and seeing all the misery, but somehow people have a better sense of their self than we do in our bubble of prosperity.

And I think that that world is coming to an end as the excesses of this materialistic civilization becomes ever more visible, whether it's in, physical terms, like the catastrophic effects of climate change that we are seeing more and more vividly, or whether it has to do with our inner universe where we need to reconnect with each other at a very deep level. And I remember the great book of Eric Frum called The Art of Loving, which he wrote in the 19, you know, in the context of 1950s and 60s, the post-war boom, the

the rise of the consumer society, where he said that modern humans are comfortable, well-fed, well-clad, sexually satisfied, they have access to endless entertainment and what have you, but they experience only the most superficial connections with their fellow human beings. This is what Eric from the great philosopher wrote in the 50s and 60s.

Imagine what he would have said about the age of social media. And we are still in the midst of the internet cyberspace revolution. The industrial revolution occurred in Europe over almost two centuries. We were catapulted from feudalism, which was the only way of life that we knew into the industrial revolution, mass migration to urban centers, the progress of the progress of, of modern science and technology and what have you. So it took two centuries to radically and irreversibly alter the course of human history.

The technological revolution that we're in the midst of now is barely 30 years old. So we don't really understand its consequences. One thing we know is that among children, there's an unprecedented rate of self-harm and alienation exactly because we mistake the cyber space for the kind of authentic connections that we need to nourish ourselves. When you have a friend on Instagram and they've liked a couple of your photos, that doesn't mean you're ever looking them eyeball to eyeball or sharing your vulnerabilities

or asking for help or any of the things that constitute true friendship. But I think we will rebound and we are rebounding. So there I'm not sin. I love to hear it when you're hopeful. I love the hopefulness. And maybe how can we end on a message of hope that you feel like we're going to turn the corner in terms of this kind of cyber revolution and deepen our interpersonal connections? It reminds me of that hippie bumper sticker from the 70s when I was growing up, which was like, let there be peace in the world and let it begin with me. And you kind of are like, but it's true, the hippies were kind of right and so many things.

World peace can start with peace at home and then peace at your church or on your cul-de-sac or at your school and peace at your workplace, bringing people together, breaking bread together, walking in nature together. It sounds like these little simple activities, but they go a long way because those ripples can spread. In these difficult times more than ever, we need to come together in community and we need to rediscover our immense power. And as I said, it's very easy to give up. And it's very easy to pay lip service to this and that progressive platitude and then to say, oh my God, life is so difficult, I'm going to get up. The point is that I believe deeply in the power of human.

dignity and resilience. And ironically, I believe in it because I've worked with genocide survivors throughout my career. And I've seen people who have lost everything and how their light goes on shining. And this is something which we have forgotten in our bubble of materialism and complacency. So I think that sometimes we need to maybe go to a place of. darkness in order to have our epiphany, our moment of awakening, not just as individuals, but collectively as well. And I see in the new generation a very different consciousness, whether it's questions of gender equality, environmental consciousness, a global mindedness, but most importantly in understanding that life isn't about material possessions,

It's not about being a narcissistic, really ugly person who has a lot of power but actually no power at all. So I think we need to understand instead of the love of power, the power of love. And it's cliche as it sounds. I'm speaking as someone who has seen war, genocide, all sorts of horrors. but we need to rediscover the immense power that we have as human beings. We need to understand that the dinner time conversations we have around the family dinner table, the relations we have at our place of work, the relations we have with our next door neighbor,

these are all revolutionary acts. And the profound change that we want in the world is not going to happen overnight, but it is already well in process. And as I said earlier, world peace is not only possible, but it's inevitable. Yeah. Because we have no choice but to one way or the other be forced into a planetary civilization where we recognize that there is one earth, there is one humankind, and that there are spiritual and natural laws in the universe that not even the most powerful people can.

disregard. So let us move forward. Sober with eyes wide open about the challenges, but also understand that history is on the side of those that want to have that better world with greater human dignity, that world which is governed by justice rather than tyranny and despair. I know that a lot of your perspective comes from being a Baha'i. I think I was counting in my head you're the fourth Baha'i we've had on the Soul Boom podcast. You're the second one named Payam, which is crazy. I want to have the record for the most pyeams on a podcast. But I'd love to hear a little bit more personally about your story and specifically being part of this greatly persecuted minority of the members of the Baha'i faith in Iran and how that galvanized you toward world peace and

international relations and to become a human rights lawyer and how that how that activated you. The Baha'i faith began in the 19th century in Iran and its central teaching is the oneness of humankind, the harmony of science and religion, the equality of men and women in 19th century Iran. And what is perhaps most important, the independent investigation of truth, that one does not need a clerical class that monopolizes and dictates the truth, that everyone has their own spiritual journey. But what is important is that the Baha'i vision of history is that we are now going through this transition from a turbulent adolescence to the long-await coming of age of humankind, which is manifested through the creation of a world civilization

based on the spiritual identity of human beings. So this is what I was brought up with. When I went to Sunday school back in Iran, one of the central teachings of Bahá'u'llah, the Prophet Father of the Baha'i faith, was, the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. So that's the big blue marble photograph. Exactly. There we go.

So this is how we were brought up. And we would also hear in our Sunday class about the violent persecutions in the 19th century by fanatical mobs who were incited by... And was this in Iran or Canada? In Iran, in Iran. Okay. That you were learning this. Yes, yes, exactly. I was born in Tehran.

Okay. And I spent my childhood there. And during the 19th century, you know, many of our ancestors, including mine, were victims. of pogroms, massacres, incited by fanatical religious leaders who denounced the Baha'is as a kind of infidels and wayward sects and incited violence against them. So there was always a sense of vulnerability. The Baha'is were the scapegoat in Iran.

Whenever something went wrong politically, they would be demonized and there would be episodes of violence against them. So when I was nine years old, my parents migrated to Canada. As a nine-year-old, it was very difficult for me to see why we left our beautiful life that we had in Iran to go there. And of course, my parents knew that if there was any political turmoil in Iran, the Baha'is would be the first victims. This was in the 70s? Exactly. And when in 1978, 79, the revolution happened.

Ayatollah Khomeini came to Tehran. The Islamic Republic was established. And everyone thought that this was the beginning of sort of utopian and democratic states. But instead, we had mass executions and repression of women and religious minorities and what have you. The dream and fantasy very quickly turned into a nightmare. So we were in Canada at the time watching our beautiful, innocent world unraveled and turned into this nightmare. So we had many friends, family who were arrested, who were imprisoned. Many were executed simply because of their religious beliefs.

This reminds me of what Jean-Paul Sartre said about anti-sev. He says the Jew exists in the mind of the anti-Semite. If he did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him. So anti-Baha'i hatred had nothing to do with what the Baha'is had done, but it was a kind of ideological need for a totalitarian regime to consolidate its grip on power. So you demonize a minority, you accuse them of every conceivable evil, you massacre them, and you in that way create, you know, revolutionary fervor. When I was 16 years old, I think I had a life-changing experience. When I heard that a 16-year-old contemporary from Iran by the name of Mona Mahmoud Najad in the city of Shiraz

had been arrested in high school for writing an essay in which she demanded her human rights. In the summer of 1983, Mona, together with nine other. Baha'i women were taken to a field in the city of Shiraz and executed by hanging. And when that news came to me, I remember the first thing I thought was why her and not me. Because the only difference between us is that my family immigrated to Canada and her stayed behind in Iran. And as a teenager, you think about your future, all your dreams, all your aspirations, and you realize that her life has been extinguished. And you ask yourself, well, what is the meaning of my life?

And I realize that sometimes a meaningful death is better than a meaningless life. Wow, that's an intense thing to say. You know, you're talking about martyrdom in a way? Well, maybe not the way we understand it, you know, in terms of, you know, suicide bombing or whatever, but maybe what it means to be a living martyr, what it means to sacrifice yourself for something that you believe in. Your life stands for something. Exactly. That's the point. In your life or in your death or both.

Yes. You know, Mona had no choice. She gave her life for what she believed in because she lived in a country where people were executed simply because of their beliefs. but I lived in a free country. So I asked myself, what is my freedom worth if it's wasted on selfish mediocrity? Right. In this, as I said, consumers' culture, which celebrates superficial distractions and hedonism and what have you. So that was a turning point for me, where I decided that I'm going to dedicate my life to fighting for justice.

Because Mona's last wish was for the youth to arise in service to humankind. So I took that very seriously. And I'm really glad, Rain, that I did, because it changed entirely the course of my life. It took me to places I never imagined to war zones around the world in search of peace, in search of justice. And I don't want to romanticize it. I've seen a lot of really horrible things in Yugoslavia and Rwanda with ISIS and northern Iraq. And I could go on and on to talk about the genocide world tour, which is.

really a catastrophic to see our capacity for cruelty and evil. But I've also seen the astonishing resilience of the human spirit. I've also seen the most extraordinary people who rise up in the darkest moments and shine their light in demanding justice and fighting for human dignity. So I think one of the big mistakes that we make in our superficial materialistic ideas of, you know, what happiness is all about is to think that we can achieve progress without struggle, without sacrifice, without suffering. This, in fact, I think is why we have so much misery in our world of plenty, in our world of exceptional prosperity. we are experiencing anxiety and depression and despair because we have a culture which feeds the ego, not the soul.

So your program, Soul Boom, I think really hits the nail right on the head. Ego bone was taken. Okay, there we go. Well, I think soul boom is great because one of the greatest things you can do for your own self is to live a life of service for humankind. you're not helping anyone except yourself. And in a sense, by giving of yourself to others,

you are experiencing and unfolding your human potential. So still after all these years, Mona's sacrifice still resonates with me and touches me very deeply. and it makes me realize that all journeys begin by being touched by something very deep. And understanding justice begins with experiencing injustice and understanding that we cannot remain indifferent to what is happening in the world, that we are responsible because all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. That is why we have the terrible things that we see in the world, because most people don't care. They don't know.

They don't care. But when people awaken, when people mobilize, when people act in solidarity with each other, their potential is immense. Just as very small elites throughout history have committed acts of great and radical evil, we, too, people of goodwill can achieve acts of great nobility. in progress if we understand our immense potential. I specifically want to get to some really heartbreaking stories about some of the women that are currently imprisoned and the persecution of so many amazing Baha'i women artists and lawyers and just housewives and mothers behind bars and prison for no other reason than their Baha'is.

there have been a series of revolutionary uprisings, the most recent and most notable of which was perhaps the first feminist revolution in history, the woman life liberty movement of 2022, which was called the Mahasin Amini revolution after the young woman Mahasin Amini, who was basically beaten to death for failing to cover her hair. properly. So today in Iran there is unprecedented sympathy for the Baha'is as people have awakened to the fact that the more that the regime tries to demonize the minority, the more that people believe there must be something really good about them. So that's why they're being demonized. So now there

is unprecedented sympathy for the Baha'is. And especially in the women's movement, we go back to not just the execution of Mona and the nine other women in Shiraz in the summer of 1983, but even if you go further back in the 19th century, there is a famous heroic figure by the name of Tahre, who was a poetist, legendary poetist, who was celebrated by Iranian feminists, Baha'i and non-Bahai alike, who because she unveiled herself and spoke about the equality of men and women was put to death. And just before she was executed, she famously said, you can kill me, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women. Currently, the persecution seems to be aimed a lot at Baha'i women, of all stripes.

I think two-thirds of Baha'is that are currently behind bars, simply for being Baha'is. again, this is not like for doing anything or just practicing their faith are women. And these women have been stripped of any kind of due process. Can you talk about this very specific right now 2025 situation with the imprisoned women and the effects that might be having on their family and the lack of due process that these women have been given? Emancipated women are a fundamental threat to this backward misogynist theocracy. On January 22nd, around the city of Esfahan in Iran, at 6 a.m. in the morning, the equivalent of SWAT teams raided the homes of some 10 young women as if they were incredibly dangerous criminals.

so there were violent raids on their home and without any arrest warrant without any basis these women were arrested brought back into prison having already been subject to arrests and prosecutions before and this is happening

at a time when the country is sinking into ever greater poverty. People are suffering from inflation, they have difficulty putting food on the table. So one sees that just as the fortunes and needs of ordinary people are deteriorating, there is this acceleration of demonization and persecution against the Baha'is. And one sees really the absurdity of trying to blame a peaceful community that simply wants to serve its society, to try and deflect attention away from, you know, the real woes and

injustices. But I don't think the Iranian people are buying it anymore. And unfortunately, people have awakened to the fact that the Baha'is are not the source of all evil that they were made out to be that, in fact, they're victims of a gross injustice. And it should be said that one of the teachings of the Baha'i faith is that Baha'is are supposed to remain loyal to their government. Even if they're part of like a really unjust government, Baha'is are working for something larger, like the spiritual transformation of humanity. So not breaking any laws and being essentially good citizens, which Baha'is have been of Iran since the get-go is part of the Baha'i DNA. Well, exactly.

The Baha'is certainly don't believe in sedition or violence. The Baha'is do believe in social transformation, but they believe that the way to achieve it is, through spiritual empowerment, education, service to one's society. But once again, if you have built an ideology based on obsessive hatred and violence, something as simple as a community that believes in spiritual enlighten

and service to society and equality of men and women becomes a threat, becomes a threat. So it's a remarkable sort of David and Goliath contest. But what is also inspiring is that some 50 years after the revolution, with all the billions of dollars of resources at the disposal of the Iranian government, whether through the intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guards, they have not succeeded in silencing the behind community.

But to the contrary, the only thing they've succeeded in doing is, winning the sympathy of millions of Iranians towards the Bahá'i community as the truth becomes clear of their innocence. So there is also something inspiring there about the power of truth, the power of steadfastness in one's belief in the face of injustice, and not compromising your beliefs, even if the other side is being unjust towards you. You must still maintain your moral integrity. That's so well said and just taking it back to both the book Soul Boom and to our beloved Baha'i faith. There's this idea that's woven into concepts of spiritual transformation of humanity that there are two forces at work in the world. There's forces of disintegration and

forces of integration. You have been working for integration, fighting for world peace in the world courts and at your university and in the refugee camps, I think it's hard for young people to rectify these two opposing forces. There's so much chaos and destruction and authoritarianism and forces that are ripping people apart, fomenting hatred and distrust and outrage. And yet at the same time, there is a seems to me a movement towards peace and towards enlightenment and towards seeing the possibility of humans coming together in peace and love and harmony. And I think for a lot of young people, like of my son's generation, it's really hard to rectify both of these forces. But that image really helps me.

Like, oh, this is a force of disintegration and this is a force of integration. My job is to hitch my wagon to the forces of integration. And that can be in a really small level. Like you said, it can be at the dinner table. It can be at your church. It can be in your cul-de-sac. It can be with your family and friends, your church community. In that, there is hope in finding fellow like-minded people searching for integration.

There are remarkable number of people of goodwill, as I've seen. And very often, they're not the ones that are the most visible. They're not the ones with the most power. Because very often those who really in the depth of their heart want to do good don't seek fame and recognition. So to me, I've met the most powerful people in the world, the most prominent people in the world, but the ones who have touched me the deepest are the unsung heroes, those who want to do good in the silence of their own conscience. And those are the souls that shine light in the darkness. So instead of... The candles.

Exactly. instead of dwelling on the darkness and being so upset by it, let us dwell on the light and be detached from all the illusions that diminish our power and resilience. And like candles shedding light and giving of ourselves. Absolutely. In service and connection. Paya Makavan, this has been just chef's kiss.

What a beautiful conversation. I'm so glad we got to touch on the. topic of world peace like I started to say in Soul Boom, we've talked about a lot about, you know, mental health and struggles and addiction and building community on a small level. Sometimes it's really important to just have a global conversation and reflect on that. Thank you for your tremendous work and thanks for being a part of the now part of the Soul Boom family. Thank you very much, Rain. Very good to see you. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on U.S.

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