Love Sells!

by Shahrazad (Iran)

The day’s coming. Streets are filled with people. Red is the typical color of most shops; Color of Love: Aritificial Hearts, Teddy Bears, Rose flowers, Chocolate boxes. Good days for sellers as well, to fill their pockets with price of ‘LoVe’!

As a multi-million dollar industry, It’s getting just an “opportunity” for companies to take more financial benefits. The advertisements capture your mind, forcing you to do what they want you to do With an overwhelming number of cards and presents being sold over the world; To ‘celebrate’ it.

Not too bad to have fun, though. But as for most people usually confuse the “Love” and “Lust” and spend money for a feeling that lasts for a short while, V-Day has become as commercial as the rest of corporate holidays.

Nowadays in the Middle East, if you’ve not heard the name of Valentine’s day or are not interested in celebrating a feast that has no trace in your own culture, you will be looked upon as a backward or not definitely ‘modern’. Doesnt matter if V-day’s driven by ‘Modern’ materialism.

Nowadays, Valentine’s day has lost its real meaning and getting to be an empty cube with no spirit. The day once used to be celebrated in the Rome, later in the France, Germany and UK. Finally in the big enforcer of culture, US of A.

The American culture tried to feed whole the world, is transfered via TV channels and Internet to all other countries. I remember before having an internet connection, i’d not even heard about the Valentine’s day. Now this epidemic in the Middle East is getting an important part of culture for some.

Strange that we didnt know this event before internet! Even before Islamic Revolution in Iran that blindly copying the western culture was very common and encouraged, there was no such an event to be practised widely in the society.
Is that considered as a form of globalisation? Or Just enforcing the materialism of the west into Muslim world? Why we simply don’t try to love a person for a lifetime and show our love to the beloves all the year and not just during a day?

The youth in Muslim countries are going to be blindly taken their culture off their mind. Sometimes they’re much more ignorant about their own culture than culture of western nations.
On the other hand, americans are less aware of other nation’s culture and traditions. Americans barely distinguish diversity of lifestyle and culture around the world. While their governments try to enforce the materialistic culture to other countries.

Just need to turn on TV and see how many satellite channels -even the European ones- are filled with American movies.

There’s a difference between “A good understanding of different cultures” and “obsession with foreign culture”. Culture is the most important factor in a society. It can be cause of both development and failure. It might be motivator or a disaster.

If there’s a way to destroy a nation, that’s changing their valuable parts of religious and cultural identity. It makes them feel a vaccuum inside. Makes them slave of other cultures which like a ready sandwich of thoughts goes into their mind.

Today is different from the past. Nowadays, power of a nation is not based on number of population. The powerful nations are those that introduce their identity in an influential way to the world. In fact, a more powerful nation is the one that has the most cultural influence on the others’.