By Amir Khosrow Sheibany
April 29, 2005
Written for Iranian.com
Draft be written.
Let's ignore for a moment the scandal created by NIAC and their "statistical" survey of Iranian-Americans. As others have already said, time will allows this organizations true colours to show. I would like to present to you VALS.
I lived for two years just off Madison avenue, famous for it's concentration of marketing companies and high-end designer shops in Manhattan. These marketing companies are for ever trying to determine how best to create unique identity for their products, how best to gain brand recognition, and strategies that lead to a competitive advantage.
One of the methodologies they use to define consumer behaviour is to divide the US population based on a system called VALS (devised by the Stanford Research Institute). It breaks down the national market place into segment of the population based on the emotional states that each group believes is most important for it to either experience or avoid.
VALS stands for Values And Lifestyle Survey. I am sharing with you it's findings as I believe, for us Iranian's, it may be interesting and useful in understand each other as well! Especially since the focus of all political identities today is Democracy as "the final solution" to Iran's problems.
Below are the results of VALS for the US population. They have identified 5 differing value systems in this country for the purpose of selling goods and services. It would be interesting to know how these percentages, below, would differ for our compatriots in Iran, for us in the Diaspora, and also whether within the context of our social environment and history, if there would be other groups to consider.
1.) BELONGERS - 38% of US population. Traditional Americans. 65% of Mid-West USA are belongers.
Wants: Family, Religion, Hard work, Patriotic.
Hates: Divorce, Gay Lifestyle.
Example of a marketing strategy for this segment is that of AT&T (the main telephone company in the US). It would show an elderly person on the phone speaking to their grandchildren. Emotional button the commercial is pressing is that of the pains in the separation of family, and how they can give them what they want most, being surrounded by their family.
2.) EMULATORS - 17-35 yrs old age group. Salary between $50k-$80k highest.
Wants: to be successful, to be confident, to be like the achievers group.
Hates: their own lack of self-confidence.
Example of marketing strategy: Fast cars, pretty women surrounding a confident successful person that use their product. Emotional button the commercials press is, get our product and you can get the girl.
3.) ACHIEVERS 18% of US population. on Average $125000+ income.
I joined this income bracket before my 27 birthday :-)
Wants: to feel unique. Afraid of being one of the pack, and motivated to work
hard to avoid this.
Hates: the socially conscious group and considers them lazy bums.
Example of marketing strategy: Exclusive goods, unattainable by the masses due to it's high price tag. Ultimately these status symbol products are no better that competing products but for the manner they are marketed and sold.
4.) SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS 22% of US population. 50% of this group don't work (for money).
Wants: They feel intelligent and are afraid of being manipulated, especially
by the achievers group.
Hates: the Achievers group as the spoilers of the environment/world.
5.) NEED DRIVEN. 0.1% of population. cross between Achiever and Socially Conscious.
This is the Bill Gates groups. Full of national presidents, inventors, kings, a few artists and media moguls, and nowadays mullahs as well. Centi-millionaires and multi-billionaires fall into this group. Though they are insignificantly small as a group, their disposable income and power means it is worth creating a marketing strategy that targets them specifically.
Now I could write a lot more on different strategies used in VALS to sell something to these groups based on their values, what makes them excited and what threatens them. And there are other such surveys of social types and their motivation to consider, for instance one that categorizes the population under 7 headings over ones lifetime: Reformer (enlightened), Explorer (discovery), Succeeder (control), Aspirer (status), Mainstream (security), Struggler (escape), Resigner (survival).
But what really interests me is the differing value systems of Iranian's, inside and outside of the country, and specifically what is this behaviour and public display that they/we have been displaying over the last 25 years. And how will a "Democratic" Iran, amplify and project these values.
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Today in the Diaspora we have defenders of, for instance: the "Republic of Iran" that will be the end all and be all of human progress and a cure of all our ills, "Shahanshahi" as the savior of our national identity / sovereignty and economic prosperity, the 13th Imam (that's worth waiting for!) to implement the "real Islam" which will be "really" democratic, really.. ;-)
Those inside the national concentration camp the mullahs have set up (or should I call it social research lab), have yet to be permitted to speak, but I suspect even they are still acting within our pre-defined culture of fatalism or revolt. Why? Why are we not capable of sticking to a middle ground, and work together, systematically, toward pre-published objectives that can be scrutinized before and after implementation, declared objectives that can be used as a measuring stick of our success or failure.
Reading Western sociology books like Max Webber's helps one understand how the west developed. But after a quarter of a century in involuntary exile how are we Iranian's "evolving". Which cry in Iran will win out: the cry born of fatalism or the one of revolt? Will the young guys with degrees who aren't plugged into any power network and have to drive cabs, wait on tables and are full of resentment win out? Or will we somehow be able to get more than 500 persons to work together systematically. To communicate and collaborate in order to jointly accomplish purposeful work targeted at changing our situation. How can one hope to answer these questions? From what point of view should one look to get an insightful answers to these questions? Or should we just sit around to see if the US government decides to force regime change for us, or not!
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I was asked once what started me in writing the travel articles on Iranian.com. Well answer to that is simple, I didn't want to repeat my recollections from all my trips to each and every relative dispersed around the world, so I put pen to paper. But a more interesting question would be what started me in traveling around the world in the first place?
I have been fortunate to have traveled across the globe and witnessed all the world's significant cultures. Rumi had once cautioned a beard or a mustache is no sign of wisdom -if anything, travel (the nomadic life) will bring wisdom. As one grows older and more chapters in ones life accumulates, experience crowds out raw feeling, but the sheer joy of travel, at least momentarily, has been the pleasurable experience in my life.
With first hand knowledge of the living world around us, comparing all the societies I have seen for myself, I know for sure, as an Iranian, I come from a failed society. Almost anyone with real ambition or talent has left the country or is attempting to leave. But why is it this way? How did the removal of just one ingredient in Iran's rich mosaic, the ShahanShah, lead to such a cataclysm? While Khatami and most other reformist behave like scholars on a long sabbatical, wasting a precious historical moment - paid for by oil - pursuing inquiries that lead nowhere, I've taken it upon myself to see the world (expensed out of my own income, and try and answer some of these questions with the intention to profit from it at a later date.)
The answer lies, to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy's remarks about families, here: "while all successful cultures share similar traits, unsuccessful ones fail in their own highly complex ways." Let me explain this a bit later.
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In an age of mass tourism, adventure becomes increasingly an inner matter, where reading can transport you to places that others only a few feet away will never see. What I have observed is that despite Iranian's differing value systems, which may well fall into the VALS above, our differences, though upsetting and irritating, are not all that significant to our plight, though it becomes relevant if our desired goal is an open pluralistic society.
Some scholars have made a case for how the English revolution of 1640, the French Revolution of 1789, the various revolutions in Central European in 1848, the revolts in Ottoman empire, rebellions in imperial China and the "popular" revolution in Iran of 1979 all emerged from a regimes inability to deal with the problems arising from sustained population growth (and sometimes natural resource depletion). Though the havoc is unanticipated, the streets builds up gradually over the years. Demographic pressures never reveal themselves as such: People don't demonstrate in the streets or attack others because they believe their region is overcrowded. The crush of humanity invites scarcity, whether in food, water, housing, or jobs.
Scarcity fuels discontent, wearing the mask, in most of today's cases, of politicized Islam. Now I know this does not apply to the 1979 events of Iran. It was not so much scarcity but too much ambition, too much goods and services and due to rapidity of growth and the inevitable uneven distribution of wealth that helped undo the Pahlavi state. Along with other reasons of course.
But still traveling the world, and experiencing other nations trials and tribulations, the question still remains. Will there be an Iran to be categorized in the 5 VALS groups, or will the country disintegrate. And if it remains will it remain authoritarian or become a democracy? And if a democracy, will it be a "beggars democracy", were people can talk at will, in groups even, but can never expect to change anything?
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How Travel clarifies some of the questions, and initiates others
The history of the rest of the world suggests a society experiencing chronic internal conflict because of resource scarcities, rapid urbanization, pollution, and other "environmental stresses" will evolve along one of two paths: the state either fragments or it will become more authoritarian, with democracy a superficial side show. Given our national poverty today and a despotic past, Democracy could actually be massively chaotic.
In 1979 Iran became an authentic Islamic government (albeit based on an un-Islamic and anti-Koranic concept of Vali Faghih). Once it became clear that neither Islam nor the Western idea of a Republic had any answers to Iran's problems it quickly and inevitably descended into tyranny. From then on, the state has been slowly dying with neighboring and stronger nations continually drawing power away from a decaying Tehran based bureaucracy. Democracy in such an environment may institutionalized ethnic and regional divisions while political power falls increasingly into the hands of less educated, less sophisticated groups.
Though the focus of every political identity today is "Democracy" as a solution to Iran's problems, it is worth considering for one moment, just one moment, that it won't be the solution everyone is expecting. Understanding ourselves better, and each others value systems might prove more thoughtful and wise than thinking yet another Western political idea will be a panacea of all our ills.
On Rumi's grave it is written: "Come, come whoever you are, whether you be fire worshipers, idolaters, or pagans. Ours is not the dwelling place of despair. All who enter will receive a welcome here." Maybe our own Iranian tradition of tolerance will be more potent solution to the illness in Iran.