THE TRADITIONAL “ABOUT THE AUTHOR” WOULD SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
HAMID RAFIZADEH has conducted forty years of intense research into understanding the interplay of human life, the earth, and the cosmic neighborhood. Hamid received his PhD from MIT, going on to earn a master of humanities degree and an MBA. He has worked in a wide array of fields—from engineer, to corporate executive, to university professor—and he is also the author of The Choice Maker, The Sucker Punch of Sharing, The First Rung, The Unexpected Unseen, and Here Comes the Watchman.​
To see the way of my social conditioning, the way of becoming an adult, you need to see my parents. They are the ones that determined much of what I am. To understand my parents you have to see them first. Seeing is such a deep way of knowing. In their hands every day of my life was about being nice to others, paying attention to taking care of the needs of others. The most difficult, from the perspective of a child, was their unceasing insistence on being dedicated to knowledge seeking. They made me who I am.
That is nice. But it does not say much about me. Here is how I would like you to see me. Everyone gets born into the world in a pure, divinely-constructed way and then gets socially conditioned to speak a specific language and behave in certain specified ways. The picture that I have from my first days is simple—my first view of how I looked entering the world. In one word, I was born “happy.”
From as young as a few years old I had my life focus on humankind and its well-being. Why would a few-year-old kid think in that way? I have no idea. But that has been the way of my life and you’ll detect it immediately in anything I write. Everything I write is about the foundations on which the well-being and survival of humanity rests.
They did everything within the context of a simple life. Growing up I had a simple way of life. Look at one of my pictures as a child. I am in a village standing on rocks as if they are the world, in a small stream as if it is the universe, wearing the shorts made by my Mom, doubling as swimwear. And I am having fun and showing it off with my posture. How much simpler can simplicity get? But in all this the demands of my parents for specific behaviors never changed.
I consider myself lucky. Having parents that condition the child well is a matter of luck. Being able to have a glimpse of the foundations of human life is even luckier.
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So much about me. Now, in my books, start reading about you.
