The most obvious and compelling reality of the contemporary Middle East, as with most of Asia, is the passing of traditional society and the creation, through development and social change, of an entirely new scheme of life with new norms and patterns of behavior, new forms of organization and new directions of loyalty and interest. As Middle Easterners, Iranians are waging their own battle with the complex forces of change and are shaping a new order in terms of their own values and preferences. The process of modernization is generally granted to be stimulated and emanate from a foreign, not to say Western, source—but is also now claimed to be partially self-generating indigenously--primarily in the form of new industries, new technologies and new systems of organizing knowledge and data and putting them to use for the society at large. In the face of this onslaught of diverse and often unfamiliar forces a wide range of responses and reactions may be noted.