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Quote by Soroosh Shahrivar

“Amir then showed off his moonwalk prowess as he started to walk backward toward Tara again. Tara closed her eyes and laughed. She took a sip from her glass and said, “Divaneh!” “I am crazy. Crazy for you!” Amir said with eyebrows raised and still dancing in his spot. Tara sat on the edge of the bed, glass in hand and with the other smoothed a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Did you know that Persian demons did everything backward?” she said. “Did they now?” Amir replied still dancing. “They did. The word for demons, div, comes from the Avesta language meaning ‘a spirit or deity personifying evil.’ They were creatures that wreaked havoc.” “Really?” “Yes, really,” Tara replied with a smile. “And we’ve got Ferdowsi and the old Persian language to thank for the word divaneh too.” “So are you telling me that I’m a demon?” Amir didn’t get where Tara was going as he walked back toward the dressing table.”

Quote by Soroosh Shahrivar

Book:Tajrish
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Tajrish

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Soroosh Shahrivar

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Book:And Then
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“But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ideals? Perhaps—but this was still not quite it. Eventually, I began to wonder whether it was not the same unbearable loneliness that I now felt that had brought K to his decision.”

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BusinessJapanBusinessmanSocial LifeIntroversionSocializingMeijiExtroversionSubmersion
Book:And Then
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Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“And yet, as you all know, joining humanity is never a simple matter. By beginning to live the same temporality as Westerners, the Japanese now had to live two temporalities simultaneously. On the one hand, there was Time with a capital "T," which flows in the West. On the other hand, there was time with a small "t," which flows in Japan. Moreover, from that point on, the latter could exist only in relation to the former. It could no longer exist independently, yet it could not be the same as the other, either. If I, as a Japanese, find this new historical situation a bit tragic, it's not because Japanese people now had a live in two temporalities. It's rather because as a result of having to do so, they had no choice but to enter the asymmetrical relationship that had marked and continues to mark the modern world—the asymmetrical relationship between the West and the non-West, which is tantamount, however abstractly, to the asymmetrical relationship between what is universal and all the rest that is merely particular.”

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“No importa tanto la diferenciación entre el progreso representado por el ahorro de energía (que simplifica la vida cotidiana) o por la expansión de energía (que potencia nuestras aspiraciones o "aficiones" naturales), sino el acento puesto en la excesiva velocidad con que estas transformaciones han afectado al Japón, como consecuencia de la procedencia externa de los estímulos que, al no ser fruto de una secuencia generado intrínsecamente, ha obligado a una apresurada (y por ello superficial) asimilación de los cambios (muchos en muy poco tiempo), lo cual ha llegado a provocar una auténtica "angustia existencial.”

EnergyJapanIndividualismModernityIdentity CrisisExistential CrisisExistential AngstMeiji
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ExistentialismJapanIndividualismRomanticismCollectivismPsycheMeijiWesternization
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