notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

random thoughts

Sunday, June 06, 2004
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Dogs attack to protect you. Critics attack to expose you as a phony. That's why dogs are more popular than critics.
*
If a thousand people agree with you and only one disagrees, that one will make a disproportionately deeper impact; and if he makes sense, the result may be deadly. Which is why tyrants silence, exile, jail or even murder dissidents, and they do so in the name of self-defense. They consider themselves the victims rather than the victimizers.
*
It is the destiny of an Armenian writer to starve, and no one can be as vulnerable to bribe as a starving beggar. That's why we have an overabundance of scribbling brown-nosers and a scarcity of writers willing to criticize benefactors or reject the worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar. The names that come to mind are Raffi, Baronian, Zarian, Massikian - strike Massikian: he was not a beggar but a successful lawyer. But as far as our multimillionaires go, even one critic in every generation is too many; hence their view of all writers as potential ingrates. The irony here is that all writers, including the brown-nosers, are indeed ingrates because they are not treated as the best but as one among equals. The greed of our capitalists is exceeded only by the vanity of our mediocrities.
#
Monday, June 07, 2004
******************************
He who cannot yet think for himself cannot be educated; he can only be brainwashed.
*
At a very early age I was taught to brag about Mt. Ararat and Lakes Van and Sevan. I was even taught to brag about the fact that Armenians had been the first nation to suffer a genocide in the 20th Century. I was also taught to brag about a thousand other things including, and above all, our talent for survival.
*
If our dead could speak, what would they brag about? Our genius for contributing victims to sadistic Mongoloid morons?
*
Only idiots brag about their failures.
*
We are not smart if only because we have been and continue to be at the mercy of idiots - if it's not Ottoman or Soviet idiots, it's our own.
*
To be at the mercy of idiots means being lesser idiots.
*
Just because something is never said it does not mean it is not thought; and just because something is not thought it does not mean it cannot be true.
*
There may be more truth in what is covered up than what it is proclaimed from the rooftops. Contrary to what roosters may believe, it is not their crowing that makes the sun rise.
*
"Armenians are smart!" A statement that consists in 99% wishful thinking and 1% cunning in the marketplace.
#
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
****************************
From Avedik Issahakian's posthumously published notebooks:
*
"Armenia labors under three curses: bad geographic location, bloodthirsty neighbors, and dumb leaders."
*
"Contrary to Soviet propaganda, the Revolution does not change men into angels but into beasts of prey."
*
"We owe to the 20th Century two great discoveries: the disintegration of the atom and the disintegration of the soul. The first discovery was made by Europe, the second by the Russians."
*
"Socialism is the enemy of culture."
(And I cannot help reflecting: If one were to add socialism Russian style, or Sovietism, to Ottomanism, the result would be an idiot who brags about how smart he is.)
*
"Ah! If only life lasted as long as death!"
*
"The eye cannot see that which the mind cannot perceive."
*
"If only men were born and died like the stars: part mortal, part immortal."

#

[arabaliozian]

june 12

Wednesday, June 09, 2004
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Karl Marx: "History has more imagination than the men who make it."
*
The French Revolution promised "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and it delivered the Terror. Ditto with the Russian Revolution. Closer to home: at the turn of the century we demanded our historic lands. History delivered only a fraction of what we wanted, plus a series of massacres, a genocide, dispersion, alienation and assimilation. The plots of history don't always have a happy ending.
*
To ignore the past or the history of an idea or ideology is to indulge in wishful thinking and daydreams, and history or reality has a way of turning daydreams into nightmares.
*
After reading one or two, or at most three books by Armenian historians subsidized by Armenian political parties or satellite cultural institutions, the average Armenian thinks he knows everything there is to know about Armenian history. It goes without saying that this misconception is shared by people of all national groups, including Turks.
#
Thursday, June 10, 2004
*****************************
It is the destiny of all movements (be they political, religious or utopian) to be confiscated by men of greed whose understanding of history or the complexities of reality is limited to the point of blindness.
*
Even idealists and political leaders with a pure heart and noble intentions may end up leading a nation to hell - hence, the old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
*
No matter how expensive the wine, its destiny is to become urine. No matter how noble the ideology, the destiny of its Party line is to become a downward spiral.
No matter how admirable the -ism, its destiny is to degenerate from charlatanism to gangsterism.
#
Friday, June 11, 2004
***************************
If we don't understand ourselves (as Freud, Jung and Adler tell us) whom and what can we possibly understand?
If we don't know why things exist, what can we possibly know? -- except perhaps to question the judgment of those who pretend to know better and who, based on that false assumption, make a mess of things for the rest of us. And then there are those who don't know whether they are coming or going but who insist on dragging us there with them and they invariably find a mob eager to follow them.
*
Just because millions believe in something, it doesn't make it true. Millions believed in the divine rights of kings and many more millions believe in astrology, the papacy…and Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao. The more absurd a belief system, it seems, the more followers it will attract.
*
Mankind may be divided into those who pretend to know and their dupes.
*
When I knew nothing, I was eager to believe; and when I believed, I had no doubts - none whatever!
*
More men are seduced by verbal crapola than by reason and common sense.
*
Man does not live by bread alone, he also needs propaganda.
*
The truth is one, but the lies that are spoken in its name are many.
#
Saturday, June 12, 2004
******************************
America as that "shining city on a hill." A popular metaphor. A dazzling image. It combines myth with wishful thinking. And even more to the point: it ignores or covers up the ruthless and systematic extermination of twenty million natives.
*
About the recent prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq, we are told, it does not show "the real face of America." But what if it bares its soul?
*
Will America ever recognize our genocide? If they do it will not be because they are on the side of the underdog and the victim, or because they believe in justice for all, but because it is in their own interests. Some day even the Turks may recognize it for the same reason. There is no friendship, love, compassion or justice between nations, only common interests.
*
A Turkish diplomat in the White House on the subject of our genocide: "Armenians are our Indians."
*
The victimizer and his victim speak two different and mutually incomprehensible languages even when they speak the same language. Americans and Turks understand each other even when one speaks in Turkish and the other in English.
*
And what about us? Are our hands clean? If we have victimized no one, is it because we are the first nation to accept Christianity? Is it because we are full of love for all our fellow men regardless of race, color, and creed? Or is it because we have been perennial underdogs and victims?
*
We have victimized no one - no one! except our writers, the most defenseless, vulnerable and innocent members of the nation; and we have victimized them because they dared to bare our soul, shatter our myths, and expose our chauvinist charlatans as compulsive liars.
*
I once had the following exchange with one of our partisans:
MYSELF: "Did it ever occur to you to consult the people whether or not they wanted a revolution at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire?"
PARTISAN: "The people? But the people are like sheep. Shepherds know better what's good for them."
Yes, but when the wolves devour the sheep, whom do we blame? The wolves or the shepherds?

[arabaliozian]

june 16

Sunday, June 13, 2004
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A racist divides mankind into two fractions in order to classify himself as superior and to believe that this superiority allows him to behave like swine and get away with it.
*
Nationalism is nothing but a variant of racism. A nationalist too believes the fraction of mankind to which he belongs to be superior, and that this superiority legitimizes criminal conduct. Both racists and nationalists are no better than the scum of the earth who, secretly or unconsciously aware of this fact, create an imaginary world order in order to place themselves at the top of the food chain.
*
Anti-Semitism is popular because it allows even skinheads with single-digit IQs to assert moral and intellectual superiority.
*
That which racists ascribe to their race and nationalists to their nation, tribalists ascribe to their tribe, and aristocrats to their class.
*
The Greeks did not have a word for racist or nationalist. They simply divided mankind into Greeks and barbarians. But they had another word: hubris (pride or arrogance) which was invariably brought low by Nemesis.
In that sense, all men of faith are guilty of hubris too when they assume their faith to be the only true faith.
#
Monday, June 14, 2004
****************************
One reason I am against nationalism is that we were massacred by nationalists in the name of nationalism.
If we are going to adopt an -ism, let it be something better than or different from nationalism.
*
For an Armenian to be a nationalist amounts to a victim of a serial killer being for serial-killerism.
*
To say, my nationalism is good but my enemy's nationalism is bad is to echo the African chieftain's definition of good and evil as quoted by C.G. Jung in his memoirs: "When I steal my enemy's wives, it's good; when he steals mine, it's bad."
*
In the 19th Century nationalists conducted wars of liberation against imperial powers; in the 20th Century against one another. And whenever nationalists run out of foreign enemies, they take it out on their own countrymen. Hence the frequency of civil wars.
*
Like all fanatics, nationalists divide people into those who are with them and those who are against them, and those who are against them tend to outnumber those who are with them.
*
Fanaticism is a minority aberration that sometimes infects the majority, which is what happened during World War I in Turkey and during World War II in Germany, Italy, and Spain.
*
Nationalism is one of the three pillars of fascism - the other two being anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism.
*
To a nationalist, a man with mixed parentage is a man with divided loyalties. It follows, he views a fraction of his own countrymen with suspicion.
*
It is to be noted that some of our most ardent nationalists (from Abovian to Zarian) married odars. Also to be noted: Zarian began his literary career as an impassioned nationalist and ended it by saying: "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another." If you want proof of this assertion, visit an Armenian discussion forum on the internet.
*
The word chauvinism was coined in France after a soldier by the name of Chauvin who is said to have been blindly loyal to Napoleon.
*
Like Napoleon (a Corsican) most political leaders tend to be either foreigners or of mixed parentage. The Mamikonians were of Chinese descent, the Bagratunis claimed to be Jewish, many Greek-Byzantine emperors were Armenian, Hitler was an Austrian, Stalin a Georgian, English and Greek kings were German, the Young Turks were anything but Turkish, and Sultan Abdulhamid II was half-Armenian.
*
The universal brotherhood of all men may be a utopian daydream but the only alternative is hatred, war, massacre and ethnic cleansing - a euphemism for genocide.
#
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
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When a chauvinist says, "My country, right or wrong!" what he really means is: "Myself, right or wrong." But a chauvinist who relies on his own judgment is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master, who may be his worst enemy.
*
During World War II Armenians fought for Hitler as well as Stalin because they were told (led to believe…misled…brainwashed) they were killing and dying to liberate or in defense of the Sacred Homeland.
Did they have a choice?
The Armenians on Hitler's side were volunteers.
The Armenians on Stalin's side believed the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin when he said they were fighting a patriotic war.
Writes Manuel Sarkisyanz in his MODERN HISTORY OF TRANSCAUCASIAN ARMENIA: "The Communist regime needed the Church to endorse its war effort." He goes on: "A number of churches previously closed were now reopened. Some Armenian priests previously deported to Siberia were now returned." And because the Catholicos cooperated by accepting to be an arm of the Soviet propaganda machine, "the Soviet authorities permitted the reopening of the theological seminary in Etchmiadzin." Result? 350,000 Armenian boys died fighting not a patriotic war but a war between two fascist regimes. They trusted their master, but did not know their master's master, who happened to be one of the most ruthless and murderous tyrants in the history of mankind.
#
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
**********************************
General Antranik: "I am not a nationalist. I am on the side of the underdog regardless of nationality." Translated into dollars and cents this simply means that he would have risen to the defense of a Turk against an Armenian if he had perceived the Turk to be an Armenian's victim.
*
We are a Rip Van Winkle nation and our slumber as Ottoman and Soviet subjects lasted over six centuries, and whenever our intellectuals attempted to wake us, they were silenced, buried and forgotten. Which may explain why whenever I quote or paraphrase one of them I get a pro-Ottoman reply or a comment worthy of a commissar. Zarian is right: "An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan," and a yataghan laced with cobra's venom.
*
To say that we need solutions more than criticism is to imply that our intellectuals from the Golden Age (5th century AD) to the present either serenaded the moon or engaged in mental masturbation.
*
By the time a solution is found, the problem may no longer exist. And I suspect by the time our bosses, bishops and benefactors decide to listen to our intellectuals (as opposed to silencing them) it may be too late.
*
A hundred years ago, our partisans demanded freedom from tyranny (a demand that cost us countless innocent victims), and now that they have it, what are they doing with it?
*
Assertions of infallibility have a subtext that says: "Even when wrong, I am right!" But if you speak the truth or make sense - such as: "two plus two make four," or "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" - no one will contradict you and all assertions of infallibility will be redundant. But if you say, "There is only one God and I speak in His name!" millions of Buddhists (who don't believe in God), atheists and agnostics will disagree with you and a thousand assertions of infallibility by ten thousand popes, ayatollahs and rabbis will not influence their thinking. Which may also suggest that assertions of infallibility are meant only for dupes who will believe in anything. And to think that millions of innocent people died because they dared to question the nonsense uttered by self-righteous, holier-than-thou nonentities.

[arabaliozian]

june 19

Thursday, June 17, 2004
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Can an Armenian and a Turk engage in dialogue?
Not if either one or both are brainwashed.
*
Can two Armenians engage in dialogue?
I have to see it to believe it.
*
Dialogue is possible only between two enlightened people. To a brainwashed Armenian, an enlightened Armenian might as well be a Turk. I speak from experience….
*
Once upon a time I too was brainwashed, so much so that I could write a book titled MEMOIRS OF A BRAINWASHED CHAUVINIST. That's when I had a counter-argument for every contradiction. That's when I was as invincible as David Anhaght and David of Sassoun combined - or so I convinced myself to believe in the hope that others would believe it too. And whenever my arguments bordered on the absurd I raised my voice; and when that didn't work I did not hesitate to go down into the gutter - anything to make the opposition give up in disgust and quit the field. I was a motor-mouth running an automatic. I did not think for myself because far better men had done the thinking for me. Every word I spoke was based on hearsay. I had the judgment of a parrot and the objectivity of a ventriloquist's puppet. I recycled propaganda and I didn't know it. I delivered platitudes and convinced no one, not even myself. Because no one believes what a brainwashed person says, not even the brainwashed person himself, but they allow him to speak out of embarrassed sympathy.
*
How many enlightened Armenians do I know? Quite a few, as a matter of fact, but most of them are either marginalized or alienated; and those who work for Armenian organizations speak one way in public and another in private. Speaking with a forked tongue has become second nature with us. So much so that we see nothing morally questionable in it.
*
For me, to argue with a brainwashed chauvinist would be like contradicting views that I held thirty years ago - a painfully embarrassing exercise in one-upmanship…or is it one-uphoodlumship?
#
Friday, June 18, 2004
*****************************
We all swim in a sea of doubts and uncertainties. Not to be aware of this is a dangerous illusion. To cling to false certainties is to confuse a snake with a lifesaver.
*
To say, "I don't give a damn what others may have said," amounts to saying: "What I think represents the alpha and omega of human understanding," and "I prefer my own ignorance to someone else's wisdom," or "I am too infatuated with my own tribal and personal limitations to have any desire to explore in the infinite fields of human knowledge and understanding."
*
For a partisan to say, "I believe what my party leadership tells me and I reject what anyone else may say on the subject" is fascist b.s., ayatollah rubbish, and fuehrer baloney. What really matters is not what your leader tells you but what you think, and what you think begins on the day you decide "not to submit your intelligence to someone who may not have much of it himself" (Santa Teresa of Avila).
*
To read a writer means to open the gates of your perceptions to his ideas. Even when your conscious mind rejects these ideas, your subconscious may embrace them if only because the subconscious is not equipped to reject or censor ideas no matter how unorthodox. What it does instead is store them for future reference.
*
I don't write for readers who agree with me. I write for those who disagree and I am happy to note that they are my most faithful readers.
*
Speaking for myself, I live and work with the hope that tomorrow I will know something I don't know today, and this new knowledge will change the way I think. I also hope when that happens I will have taken a step in the right direction - forward and not backward.
#
Saturday, June 19, 2004
*******************************
The greater the difference between what you know and what you pretend to know, the greater the ignorance.
*
If knowledge is power, it is also a responsibility and a burden, not something to brag about. Only the loud-mouth impostor, whose ignorance exceeds his knowledge, brays like an ass to impress other asses.
*
An educational system that enjoys the support of a political party, religious institution, or power structure, is contaminated with propaganda, hence the dictum: "Learning begins with unlearning."
*
I had two kinds of schoolteachers: honest ones and charlatans, but even the honest engaged in some form of charlatanism. In Brecht's unforgettable phrase: "Grub first, then ethics."
*
When a nation engages in violence, it calls it counter-violence. To this day the Turks see nothing morally questionable in the Genocide because they say their very existence was being threatened by the Great Powers (including the U.S. and Australia), Russia, and from within, Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians.
*
Every nation engages in propaganda; but even the most brutal regime (Hitler's and Stalin's are two recent examples) have had their share of critics and dissidents. It is up to us to decide whether or not we want to be on the side of the executioners or their victims.
*
Every power structure lies, yes; but one cannot help wondering what life would be like in a world where a spade is called a spade, and a lie a lie.
#

[ardenik]

this is some truly great stuff.. very enlightening.
emotions are most often impossible to put into words, but i must say that some of the words which u have posted here represent some very strong emotions i have felt in the past few years. they answer at least partly many personal questions i have asked myself about my armenian identity & its relation to this Great Big Armenian Patriotism Machine which we live in & are surrounded by constantly. i say 'partly' because not only do complete answers to these inquiries probably not exist, but if they did, i guess they would be proper to each individual.

anyways, im just taking up space in this thread which could be filled with the invaluable words of your precious daily entries, so im gonna shut up now!

[arabaliozian]

june 23

Sunday, June 20, 2004
*****************************
History tells us Sultan Abdulhamid II and Hitler were spectacular failures. What if our own leaders were no better than mini-sultans and crypto-fuehrers whose paltry failures harmed no one but their own people?
*
We are told we have been the blameless victims of ruthless and bloodthirsty nations. If so, what have our leaders done to defend us against our enemies? Or, if their defensive measures were ineffective, should we not classify their performance as an unqualified fiasco?
*
What can I say that hasn't been said before by far better men than myself? Is there anything anyone can say or do to convince someone who has been brainwashed to believe he is la crème de la crème that he is in fact no better than la crème de la scum? Can the combined wisdom of a Plato and the Old Testament prophets convince a self-styled Savior of the Nation that he and his kind are in fact its gravediggers?
*
Faulkner may have been right when he said: "Compared with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, we are all failures." And what if Sartre is also right when on the final page of his memoirs stated: "Literature saves no one." Which raises the question: In what way a superior Russian literature could have prevented Stalin? And why is it that the mighty impetus of 19th-century German philosophy could not block the rise of Hitler?
*
Perhaps the only reason I go on writing is that after thirty years and as many books writing has become a habit I cannot kick. Or, paradoxical as this may seem, I am encouraged to persevere by my critics. Surely, if such mighty intellects like them consider me worth reading and criticizing, I must be worth something.
#
Monday, June 21, 2004
***************************
A reader writes: "Your ideas are not nuanced enough." By that I suspect he means, if I were to nuance them the way he thinks I should nuance them, I may have a better chance to agree with one of his own nuanced ideas.
*
I am reminded of an exchange between two Jewish merchants who meet on a road somewhere in Russia at the turn of the last century:
"Where are you going?"
"To Minsk."
"Minsk, you say, so that I will think you are going to Pinsk, but you see, I happen to know you are going to Minsk. Why must you always lie to me?"
*
In the corridors of power an honest man's chances of survival are as slim as those of a sardine in a pool of hungry sharks.
*
Kiss me, I am Armenian.
Be kind to animals.
*
When the going gets tough, an Armenian assimilates. In the eyes of our chauvinists (who are very probably the reason why he opts for assimilation) he is a quitter. In his own eyes, he is a born-again human being.
*
Not all Armenians are liars. But when an Armenian decides to speak the truth, our charlatans will call him a Turkish scumbag.
*
David Shields: "Hunters make better lovers: they go deeper into the bush - they shoot more often - and they eat what they shoot."
#
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
*****************************
Jews are ahead of us. This has been said before, many times, but it bears repeating. Consider the following passage written by a Nobel-Prize winner Jewish writer (I.B. Singer) about his fellow Jews, (in a short story titled "Shadows on the Hudson"): "Why should it matter to me if they massacre types like these or burn them in ovens?…The tragedy is that they destroyed the good ones and left the trash behind." Why is it that Armenian writers are incapable of producing such lines - except perhaps in their posthumously published (if at all) diaries and private correspondence? Even Armenian writers with fat bellies write like hungry orphans forever dependent on the charity of swine, careful to offend no one but Turks.
*
To be narrow-minded means to reduce the universe into a tiny room, to constantly rearrange the few items in it and to confuse this routine operation with thinking. Thinking, real thinking, is an open-ended operation, very much like the universe whose beginning and end are shrouded in mystery.
*
The very same people who silence me, expect me to be their co-conspirator by covering up our violations of fundamental human rights on the grounds that a good Armenian does not expose our dirty linen in public.
#
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
*********************************
They say I repeat myself as if the repetition of the blunders I write about were less important than the repetition of my words.
*
It takes a charlatan to fool a charlatan, because a dupe is also a charlatan who pretends to understand more than he does.
*
The Greeks discovered dialectic or dialogue 2500 years ago. Whenever I am silenced by one of our editors I cannot help reflecting that it may take us more than a generation or two to catch up.
*
What if the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming missile with a nuclear warhead?
*
The ambition to succeed has deformed so many of my contemporaries that it makes more sense to aim at failure.
*
Truth may be beyond our reach but lies are within us; all we have to do
is recognize, name, and reject them.
#

[arabaliozian]

june 25

#
Friday, June 25, 2004
******************************
Almost everything we know is based on hearsay. When we disagree, it is our sources that disagree; and it goes without saying that a chauvinist will invariably select sources that flattery his ego.
*
Intolerance is a reptilian response.
*
Optimism has a shorter life span than pessimism.
*
I am willing to concede that nothing I say about Armenians is original. What I prefer to do is expand, illustrate and provide footnotes to writers that I have myself interviewed or translated. (For more details, see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS.)
*
A good question raises more questions.
*
Saturday, June 26, 2004
******************************
Some egos are so large that they eclipse the universe.
*
We all have our blind spots. The blind spot of a smart-ass is his IQ.
*
"A shadow," Leonardo writes in his NOTEBOOKS, "is not visible to its source of light." Something similar could be said of complexes: namely, that they are not visible to its consciousness. Hence Freud's dictum: "The aim of civilization is to make the unconscious conscious."
*
A good critic exposes contradictions.
A bad critic exposes his own complexes.
*[/B][/I]

[arabaliozian]

june 30

Sunday, June 27, 2004
*****************************
It doesn't take much for an Armenian to transfer his hatred of the Turks onto his fellow Armenians. A misplaced comma will do as readily as a misunderstood semicolon.
*
Some of my readers from the Middle East hate me unto death because I refuse to share their affection for Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and assorted imams, ayatollahs and mullahs.
*
I am personally acquainted with an Armenian who oozes hatred from every pore in his body - he oozes it like an active volcano oozes lava, and he breathes it like a dragon breathes fire - but asserts that Armenians are incapable of hatred - he asserts it and he believes it and, astonishing as this may seem, he is believed by others, perhaps because to the insecure, befuddled, and vulnerable mind, flattery, no matter how absurd, is always welcome, and what could be more flattering than assertions of moral superiority?
*
I know something now that I didn't know before: genocide is a double crime: it also drives the survivors nuts. And to think that it took me several decades to see this obvious fact which must be clearly visible to all outsiders. The implications of this abnormality can be alarming indeed. Because, if we can no longer tell love from hatred and, by extension, Armenianism from Ottomanism, neither can we tell right from wrong. Which may explain why our partisan ideologues preach patriotism (love of country) and practice hatred of fellow countrymen.
*
Now I understand why people who believe in a "compassionate and merciful Allah" murder innocent women and children in the name of the same Allah. Now I also understand why the very same descendants of Armenians who were massacred by Muslim extremists at the turn of the last century are now capable of defending and supporting jihadists and cold-blooded killers of innocent civilians: notwithstanding their assertions of moral and intellectual superiority, they have lost the faculty of telling right from wrong, and truth from lies.
#
Monday, June 28, 2004
****************************
If you write against cannibalism, cannibals will conspire against you because they hate to starve.
*
If I were to hate everyone who hates me, I would be so busy hating that I would have no time for any other activity. And now consider the amount of time and resources we invest on documenting our hatred of Turks.
*
There is a difference between movies and real life: life is slower and takes longer.
*
You cannot reason with an ego.
*
Egos are numberless, reason only one.
*
Reason and hate are mutually exclusive.
*
Reason has 20/20 vision, the ego is blind.
*
The easiest two assumptions an Armenian makes: "I know better," and "I am smarter." One could go as far as saying that all our defeats and tragedies are direct results of these two false assumptions.
*
Consider the two false assumptions made by Dikran the Great when viewing the Roman legion advancing towards him: "If they come as ambassadors, they are too many. If they come as soldiers, they are too few."
*
When it comes to writing fiction, a believable style matters more than believable characters.
*
A believable style makes even unbelievable characters real.
#
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
*****************************
Once in a while one of my gentle readers enjoys reminding me that he feels nothing but raw hatred for me. Why should I be surprised? It has been the destiny of all Armenian writers to be hated by a fraction of their readers. Narekatsi may be an exception perhaps because he dealt only with God and he spent all his life in a monastery. But even Narekatsi has had his share of critics, among them Zohrab, Zarian, and Shahnour. This too should surprise no one. There has not been a single issue on which Armenians have been successful in developing a consensus.
*
Shortly before he died, Mischa Kudian asked the following two rhetorical questions during an interview: "Who is an Armenian? What is an Armenian?" I may now have a tentative answer: A good Armenian is first and foremost a good human being. It follows, an Armenian who behaves like swine in the name of patriotism or Armenianism is a fraud.
*
Director Ettore Scola in his eulogy of actor Nino Manfredi: "He was the quintessential little man born to be victimized but never a victim because of his rich inner life." In other words, a victim consents to be a victim by starving his inner life.
*
Perhaps to be truly creative means not excelling in a particular art form or genre but inventing a new genre.
*
Men of faith are convinced they have a monopoly on truth and their faith or God is the only true one. This mindset promotes and even legitimizes prejudice, arrogance (that masquerades as humility), intolerance of other faiths and heretics, and contempt, not to say hatred, for fellow men (that parades as love of God or truth). All this becomes evident when we study not the faith itself or its scriptures but its history and its relations with other faiths.
*
P.S. on men of faith: Prejudice and intolerance promote ignorance. Which is why we owe the Dark Ages to men of faith. Which is also why some of the most backward and barbaric societies today are deeply religious.
*
Holy scriptures are more like political platforms and propaganda whose aim is to mislead rather than to enlighten; and he who relies too much on quotations from the scriptures to justify himself is a man who either cannot decipher or is unwilling to read his own real feelings and thoughts.
*
Thucydides tells us every historic event has as many meanings as its participants: the defeat of one will be a victory for the other. Something very similar has been said about tragedy and comedy: tragedy when it happens to you, comedy when it happens to someone else.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
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What could be more revealing of doubletalk than a style dripping with venom and promoting love and tolerance?
*
Being human means, if anything, being fallible. Remember all the great scientists and their certainties: how many of these certainties have withstood the test of time?
*
Like most men I too have my limitations, blind spots, prejudices, and false assumptions some of which may well be hidden from my own awareness. Which means that everything I say, think and write has a foundation of uncertainty and a penumbra of doubt, and therefore open to criticism and correction - but not by individuals who parade as role models, paragons of virtue, unerring judges of their fellow men, and more Catholic than the Pope, more Bolshevik than Stalin, and more Magnificent than Suleiman.
*
Anyone who considers himself infallible cannot be right even when right. By that I mean that, an arrogant fool is in no position to dispense wisdom.
*
I do not advocate silence but dialogue. When two uncertainties meet, a near-certainty may emerge. As for certainties: Let's leave them into the hands of skinheads, men of faith, mullahs, imams, and jihadists….
*
To question certainties can be a risky business because it creates a credibility gap between those in power and their victims - the brainwashed masses.
*
Style should be like life - unafraid of repetition, clichés, and vulgarisms. It should surprise and shock but always with a sense of inevitability. Inevitability is very probably a style's greatest asset.
*
Inevitability: Can it be taught? Can it be acquired?
*
Faith justifies nothing.
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[arabaliozian]

july 3

Thursday, July 01, 2004
*******************************
ARMENIANS, PATAGONIANS AND TURKS.
CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA.
VOLTAIRE ON THE WRITING LIFE.
PASCAL ON FLATTERY.
A DEFINITION OF SUCCESS.
INVISIBLE MEN AND THE SCUM OF THE EARTH.
************************************************** ******
"What will odars think of us if they read you?" I am asked once in a while. If you want an answer to that question, begin by asking: "What will I think if I read a Patagonian critic writing about his fellow Patagonians?" I suspect the first thing you will think is: "Who the hell are these Patagonians?" And the second: "Whoever they are, they are not much different from us." Even better, suppose you were to read a Turkish critic writing about his fellow Turks: What will you think? The chances are you will think, not all Turks are dupes willing and eager to recycle chauvinist crapola. Not all Turks read only Turkish newspapers and pundits; and if they read them, they don't always believe what they say. Some Turks, you may further think, believe in democracy and in their fundamental human right of free speech, which is available not only to those who are experts on any given subject and never wrong, but also to those who are ordinary human beings and, as such, fallible. You may also think, not all Turks are dumb enough to go on digging when they find themselves in a hole. Not all Turks believe they are the only good people living in an evil world. Finally you might even think: "At last, a Turk who does not pretend to be better than he is," or, "It is such a relief to meet a Turk who is not afraid to look himself in the mirror and to describe what he sees there, warts and all, rather than what he wishes others to see."
*
To be read even by people who hate you: Can there be better praise?
*
Voltaire once remarked to a friend: "In literature, if you fail, they look down at you with contempt; if you succeed, they hate you." Judging by the amount of hate mail I get, I must be going places.
*
Some of my critics tell me I express all the negative aspects of our identity without ever mentioning the positive ones. If that's what I do, if, that is, by reading me you recognize some of your own failings, then I can truly say mission accomplished. Besides, to stress the positive and to cover up the negative is not the function of a critic but that of a propagandist and a flatterer.
*
Pascal: "To speak beautiful words is to have an ugly character." Or, "Flatterers speak with a forked tongue."
*
Ever since we were massacred by the Turks and no one came to our rescue, it is as if we were invisible to the rest of the world. It is this invisibility that allows our leaders to behave as though they were totally indifferent to world opinion.
*
Some Armenians are infatuated with their status as perennial losers and victims simply because it allows them to assert moral superiority by saying: We have victimized no one, but the whole world has victimized us. We are truly the Chosen sharing the planet with the scum of the earth.
*
But what if we have victimized no one (except one another, of course) because we don't have the tools? What if, to paraphrase Churchill, if we ever acquire the tools, we would not hesitate to finish the job?
#
Friday, July 02, 2004
****************************
PROFILING IN CONTEXT.
AN INVITATION FROM A PARTISAN.
TWO QUESTIONS.
WRITERS AND MADNESS.
DUPES AND THEIR LIES.
*********************************************
Muslims living in the West are angry because they say they are being profiled by government agencies. Now they may be in a better position to understand Armenian anger over what happened to them a hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire. Just because non-representative militant groups of Armenians engaged in isolated acts of terrorism, nearly two million innocent civilians were profiled, deported into the desert, starved, burned alive, raped, and massacred. Now they may even be in a better position to understand the anti-Mulsim bias that animates the West after 9/11, the endless series of terrorist acts in Israel, Iraq, Spain and elsewhere, which are all clear-cut cases of profiling too: but with one important difference: when Muslims profile, they murder; when they are profiled, they are only interrogated.
*
"Instead of criticizing us, you should join us!" I have been told by partisans on more than one occasion. First they silence me, then they want me to be one of them in order that I too may silence anyone who refuses to be their dupe.
*
The question that I ask myself again and again is: What makes an Armenian hate a fellow Armenian as much or even more than he hates Turks? Another question: Why is it that an Armenian writer enjoyed more freedom of expression under the Red Sultan in Istanbul at the turn of the last century than today in the land of the brave and the free and under the watchful eye of our mini-sultans who run cultural foundations and parade as supporters and promoters of Armenian literature? Is it conceivable that we are as guilty of profiling as Muslim terrorists?
*
Writers are sometimes described as mental cases. That's because they bare their souls. Which is not something that is required of garbage collectors, dentists, politicians, or lawyers.
*
He who is never wrong, never learns. Example: our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted flunkeys and dupes.
*
I don't want to change the world or anyone in it. I just want to change myself so that I will no longer care about forked tongues, venomous fangs, and fools pretending to be wise.
*
A dupe is also one who believes in his own lies, and after saying "I hate no one," he uses that line as a license to hate everyone with an easy conscience (assuming of course he has one).
#
Saturday, July 03, 2004
**********************************
WRITERS AND READERS.
THE POVERTY OF FAITH.
SEMANTIC HELLS.
OUR GENOCIDE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
**********************************************
I may improve the quality of my writing but I cannot improve the quality of understanding in my reader. There is only one way to please a Nazi reader and that is by recycling MAIN KAMPF. Something similar could be said of Bolsheviks, mullahs and their dupes, racists and chauvinists. Doubt and anxiety are an integral part of the human condition, and those who think they can dispel both by adopting a religion or a closed system of thought are like alcoholics who permanently damage their physical health for an ephemeral sense of well-being. In their search of heaven the can find only a hell of illusions, prejudices and lies.
*
When the complexities of life are reduced to a problem by means of a verbal formula, it becomes relatively easy to find a verbal solution. Only when the solution fails to do its job do we realize its inadequacies and erroneous assumptions. "At the beginning was the word" only because it was God's word. By contrast, man's word is as imperfect a tool as his understanding.
*
This may explain why what can rightly be called our "genocide industrial complex" (historical studies, memoirs, commentaries, articles, editorials, speeches, sermons, plays, movies, documentaries, art works, monuments, requiems) has so converted no one but members of the congregation.
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[arabaliozian]

july 10

Thursday, July 08, 2004
*****************************
ON GOD AND UNDERSTANDING.
A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-AMERICANISM.
SERIAL KILLERS AND THEIR DEFENDERS.
*********************************************
"They think when I say God, I mean God rather than the idea of God." These words by C.G. Jung remind me of Sartre's "We believe that we believe but we don't believe," and Hegel's famous last words: "No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me." To be on the safe side, we should question everything and after we get an answer, doubt the answer.
*
Anti-Americanism is not a political stance but a psychological complex like inferiority complex, and very much like inferiority complex it may be said to be an expression of inadequacy in relation to a superior political system and culture.
*
The difference between a functional and a dysfunctional system is that the first comes to grips with its problems and the second pretends it has none.
*
"We survived because we were divided," an imbecile once told me, thus implying that our numberless victims were an undeniable proof of our success as a nation.
*
After an imbecile assesses himself as smart he will also assume he is wise even when he behaves like a certified moron with a single-digit IQ.
*
Anti-Americanism is not the same as being critical of America. All Americans have been critical of America at one time or another. Anti-Americanism in its extreme form views America not only as an evil empire but also as the source of all evil in the world. A genuine anti-American will go as far as believing that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a CIA agent.
*
Anti-Americanism has its source in pro-Sovietism, pro-Arabism and anti-Semitism - three politically and morally bankrupt belief systems (except to their crypto-adherents, of course). Anti-Americanism has little or nothing to do with America itself and everything to do with concepts alien to it. It's almost like hating chemistry because you love, sociology, music and poetry.
*
Even a dog's fleas have fleas. That's the only plausible explanation as to why serial killers like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Milosevic, and Bin Laden have their defenders.
#
Friday, July 09, 2004
*****************************************
PASSION AND FANATICISM.
MY SOURCES OF INSPIRATION.
FOOLS ARE INVINCIBLE.
***************************************
"He who loses himself in his passion, loses less than he who loses his passion." When Saint Augustine wrote these words, he knew nothing about suicidal fanatics. Times change, ideas evolve (or devolve) and timeless truths become dangerous lies. The Greeks knew better when they espoused moderation in all things and when Socrates said: "Ignorance is the source of all evil." Next question: What is the value of the passion of a dupe or a fanatic?
*
I use my enemies as sources of inspiration, and they use me as a target for their poison arrows. I immortalize them even as they try to kill me.
*
Andre Labarrere: "I doubt and question everything, but I have faith all the same."
*
The answers exist even if we may never find them in this life. As for finding them in the next one: that's in the lap of the gods (if they exist).
*
In the battle between wisdom and folly, the fools are destined to emerge the victors because they outnumber the wise a thousand to one. As if that weren't enough, whenever a wise man appears (from Socrates and Jesus to Gandhi and Martin Luther King) the fools kill him. But the opposite never happens: the wise have at no time conspired to silence, let alone kill, anyone, least of all a fool.
*
When he turned seventy and there were no banquets to celebrate the momentous occasion, a disappointed and disgusted Armenian writer confided to me: "No one gives a damn!" I was tempted to tell him: You were left alone. You survived to a ripe old age unharmed. What more could you possibly want? Consider yourself the luckiest man on earth. How many of our writers can say as much?
#
Saturday, July 10, 2004
*****************************
BUSH AND HIS CRITICS.
ANTI-AMERICANISM, AMERICAN CRITICS, AND PRAVDA.
MICHAEL MOORE AND HIS CRITICS.
************************************************** ****
You may have noticed by now that anti-Bush partisans share one important feature with Bush: his dogmatism and a stance that says: "You are either with me or against me."
*
To justify their anti-Americanism, foreign observers and pundits tend to rely on American critics, which is also what PRAVDA did during the Soviet era. Its anti-American propaganda section was handled by a single young woman in a tiny office the size of a cubicle. During an interview with 60 MINUTES, she explained that her job consisted in reading the NEW YORK TIMES and some other American publications and selecting all the negative articles, thus giving readers the impression that most Americans were either unemployed, homeless, or members of a criminal gang, the rest being mercilessly overworked and underpaid factory hands, cigar-chomping and blood-sucking capitalists and corrupt politicians.
*
Now, about Michael Moore and his FAHRENHEIT 9/11, let me begin by saying that I share and even admire his left-wing, anti-establishment, and liberal worldview. But may I remind those who take his documentary at face value, that Moore himself has conceded that his facts have been carefully selected and edited. Which means there may well be an equally valid selection of other facts which may contradict his thesis. Even Richard Clark, one of the most severe critics of the Bush Administration, has dismissed some of Moore's central assertions as absurd. Furthermore, the French press, whose hostility towards Bush is no secret, has attacked Moore for his bias that sometimes borders on the absurd.
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