reflections

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 8, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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A Muslim scholar in Canada has written a book critical of Islam and now lives in fear of assassination.
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It is only natural for those who are part of the problem to pretend not to see the solution.
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Before you attain greatness you must achieve honesty, and of the two, achieving honesty may well be the more demanding enterprise.
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Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves.
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More often than not, it is in our efforts to appear smart that we expose ourselves as fools.
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It makes little sense to support one side against another when both belong to the dustbin of history.
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In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans; the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans.
#
Friday, January 9, 2009
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OBSERVATIONS
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To know nothing is better than to know only one side of the story.
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Writing history should be more akin to examining our conscience as opposed to emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative.
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It is not enough for an Armenian to win an argument, he must also annihilate his adversary.
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After three decades of hard work I am now in a position to state with some degree of certainty and pride that I have made more enemies than friends.
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Like most men, computers must be programmed in order to think.
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It makes little sense keeping up with the Joneses if the Joneses are busy keeping up with the Smiths.
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When top dogs don't trust one another, underdogs quarrel among themselves.
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You work hard all your life, you make a fortune, you share your fortune with ingrates who insult you: who says benefactors are better off than scribblers?
#
Saturday, January 10, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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The most visible feature of a nation is not its Golden Age or its celebrities, but its degree of solidarity. No one takes seriously a nation that has been manipulated by the divide-and-rule tactics of other nations for most of its existence.
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To alienate a fraction of the people is to amputate the nation.
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When I said the greatest insult to a writer is to ignore him, they stopped insulting me. If only I could solve all my problems with the same ease.
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“The buck stops here”: the four most un-Armenian words in the English language.
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Do I write because I like to annoy the hell out of dupes, bigots and charlatans?
Why not? Isn’t that as good a reason as any?
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It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian culture and to practice Ottoman barbarism.
#

[hipeter924]

Re: reflections

I think a lot of that is to do with how Islam is. Christianity has consistently changed and adapted over centuries adding new denominations, whereas Islam has tried to keep to a traditional view. I think what we are starting to see these days is Muslims starting to question parts of their faith, because there is a clear distinction in Islam between extremist Muslims and conservative Muslims.

[arabaliozian]

Re: reflections

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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BEING ARMENIAN
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“What's wrong with assimilation?” an assimilated Armenian once asked me, and I could not give him an answer.
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In everything I say I speak not as an Armenian but as a human being who has done his utmost to go beyond political, racial, national, or tribal labels.
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“You repeat yourself,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji who publishes a weekly anti-Turkish tirade once informed me. And when I said, “How many different ways are there of saying Turks are guilty of genocide?” he insulted me.
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An Armenian who gets involved in Armenian affairs acquires two sets of unsettled scores: (one) against Turks, (two) against fellow Armenians who disagree with him.
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Armenians use insults like voodoo pins – for long-distance murder.
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A friend (may he rest in peace) once delivered the following dictum: “The only way to survive in this world is by adopting a form of insanity.” And I can't help thinking that the words of a dead man have a finality that the living cannot match.
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The fate of the book hangs on the first paragraph, the same way that “the fate of the house depends on the wedding night” (Balzac).
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Q: “Should I write every day or only when I am inspired?”
A: “If you have something to say, every day; otherwise, once or twice a year should be sufficient.”
#
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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GETTING AT THE SOURCE
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The closer you get at the truth, the more enemies you make.
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It is in disagreement that an Armenian exposes his true nature.
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An intellectual's first enemies are not politicians but pseudo-intellectuals who rise not in defense of god and country but grub and ego. Their role model is neither Abovian nor Zarian but Talaat and Stalin. Their unstated aim is the extermination of the intellectual class. Verbal abuse comes more easily to them then a simple assertion of disagreement.
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Sooner or later we must all come to terms with the fact that we belong to a nation that has been victimized not only by foreign but also by domestic enemies, and of the two, the domestic have been more dedicated and persistent.
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The hardest thing for an Armenian to admit is that the enemy may not always be the other but himself. Only when we are willing to admit this, may we begin to understand the source of our tribalism and divisiveness.
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To those who think I have no right to speak for them, only for myself, allow me to reiterate that I have at no time denied the fact that my analysis of the Armenian psyche is rooted in self-analysis. It is this realization that has saved me from applying for membership in one of our mafias. I have at no time felt the need to join a criminal organization to be a perpetrator.
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The miracle is not that we have survived, but that there are still more or less smart and decent human beings willing to identity themselves as Armenian even when they are half-Greek, half-Russian, or half-xxxish.
#
Friday, January 16, 2009
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WHAT IS LITERATURE?
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In his WRITING IN THE DARK: ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS (New York, 2008), David Grossman says, what made him decide to be a writer was the urge to invent stories. I thought of Scheherazade who invented stories in order to postpone her death. One could say that we too, like Scheherazade, write to postpone the death of the nation. But unlike Scheherazade, we don't write to entertain our masters but to expose the lies of their propaganda. This may explain why Scheherazade succeeded in realizing her goal and we have failed.
Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in the USSR lied to the people too and they were exposed not by writers (who tried very hard but failed) but by the reality principle. Italy and Germany lost a war and the USSR went bankrupt.
How to explain the fact that our lies have had a much longer lifespan?
We were a nation1500 years ago and we like to believe we still are. But are we? In the 20th century alone we experienced three genocides, one “red” (in the Ottoman Empire) and two “white” (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland).
We have become a beggar among nations and at the mercy of – in the words of Avedik Issahakian (not exactly a critic or dissident) -- “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders.” You may now guess which of these three “curses” (Issahakian's word) have been emphasized by our “brainless leaders” and their propagandists.
For every writer that mentions “brainless leaders,” we have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of academics, historians, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers who do their utmost to cover up the corruption, incompetence, and divisiveness of our leaders and to emphasize our “bloodthirsty neighbors and earthquakes.” And here is where intellectuals come in – to uncover that which is hidden from us.
I repeat myself?
And what do you think our propagandists do?
Another question: Has anyone ever complained that our propagandists, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers repeat themselves? And what about our panchoonies? How many different ways are there of saying, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.”
To those who say, notwithstanding our prophets of doom and gloom, we have endured and we shall continue to endure, I ask: What if most of us, especially the best and the brightest, did not endure and will not endure?
#
Saturday, January 17, 2009
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DIARY
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A Palestinian mother in Gaza: “My children can no longer play in the street.”
A suggestion: Why don't they take their damn war somewhere like Sahara or the Gobi desert?
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Memo to myself: “Depressing thoughts are carcinogenic agents. You think too much about Armenians.”
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My dissenting views are so extreme, it seems, that even our dissenters disagree with me.
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If our past were a poem, it would be a lamentation to some, and a triumphal march to others.
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When a reader insults me, I think, at least he has read and reflected on what I have written, and that's good enough for me. Beggars can't be choosers.
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It is widely known among citizens of a democracy that politics is the second oldest profession and that in many ways it resembles the first. Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to them.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: reflections

Sunday, February 1, 2009
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IT TAKES ALL KINDS
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My friends may forget me, but my enemies never will. That is why I never lose an opportunity of making one. Most of my enemies however are not enemies because I offended them in any way, but because I failed to flatter their colossal egos, which, in their eyes, might as well be a crime against humanity comparable to a massacre of civilians.
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Ignorance is not a crime, neither is credulity. But some of the worst crimes against humanity were committed by fools and dupes – and, of course, leaders who knew how to organize and use them.
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A dupe may also be a man of cunning who is infatuated with his own brain power, judgment, and perception of reality.
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Even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, there were many Armenian-American academics, poets, writers, and merchants who were pro-Soviet (I called them chic Bolsheviks). I know this because I would receive angry letters and telephone calls whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime.
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Even dupes with a negative IQ are smart enough to believe only in things that are clearly to their advantage. The reason there were so many chic Bolsheviks in America is that the regime treated them as celebrities whenever they visited the Homeland. I will never forget the archbishop who once said to me: “If you ever decide to establish yourself in the Homeland, they will take good care of you.”
Moral: Be aware of charlatans offering unsolicited advice that may sound flattering to your vanity.
#
Monday, February 2, 2009
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THE ABYSS
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If I write about our dark side it's because no one else does. If our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their role models, our nationalist historians, are to be believed, Turks are our only dark side. But when writers like Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zohrab wrote, they stressed our failings, not those of other nations. And then there is Naregatsi, a saint: our greatest and least read writer whose sole subject was the abyss within. Next time you feel like bragging about your Armenian identity, read Naregatsi. Whenever I run into an Armenian who brags about our celebrities, multi-millionaires, our Mikoyans and Mamoulians, our Arlens and Saroyans, and above all about our survival as a nation, I begin to see more merit in a dignified death. To those who brag about Armenia being the first nation to convert to Christianity, may I ask how successful have they been in loving not only their enemies but also their fellow Armenians?
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I had the following exchange with one of our editors last week:
“We need poetry and fiction,” said he.
“What about essays?” I asked.
“You can do your preaching elsewhere,” was his reply.
My guess is this editor would have rejected Naregatsi on the grounds that his writings did not qualify as vodanavors and massals.
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Speaking of massals and grandmother stories: Once when I asked another one of our editors why he published so many grandmother stories, he explained: “Because grandmothers have played an important role in our lives.”
Have they? That was news to me. Has any one of our nationalist historians included a chapter on grandmothers in his texts?
Speaking of my own grandmothers: I never knew one of them because she died long before I was born. The other one lived in another town and I saw her once or twice a year. She never told me a single story.
#
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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POLITICIANS AND WRITERS
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The difference between politicians and writers is that politicians understand people and writers want to be understood. Politicians understand people in the sense that they know all about their need for flattery and big lies, such as “chosen people,” “superior race,” “first nation this/first nation that.” One could even say that politicians are in the business of inventing and exploiting big lies, and writers in exposing them. This may explain why to this day Hitler, an unspeakably mediocre intellect, has his admirers, and Thomas Mann, a writer of genius, his detractors.
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The chosen people: If one is to adopt history, facts, and reality as an index, it would be more accurate to speak of the unchosen people.
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To speak of superiority even as one behaves as the most depraved of criminals: what could be more asinine, perverse and inferior?
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Perhaps one reason big lies are popular is that they combat repellent truth that are even bigger.
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What could be more absurd than dupes at the mercy of control freaks speaking of freedom?
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It is not safe being a law-abiding citizen among criminals, or to speak one's mind among the mindless.
#
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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WITH OLD AGE
COMES OBJECTIVITY
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With old age comes objectivity, which means the more aware I become of our failings, beginning with my own, the more clearly I see the strategies we employ to cover them up.
We survived because we were divided.
It is all the fault of the bloodthirsty barbarians that surround us.
There is nothing wrong with us.
It's all the fault of the rotten world in which we are condemned to live.
Had we lived in a civilized world, we would have been a role model to all nations.
As for our critics, beginning with Naregatsi: all they do is project their rotten problems on the rest of us because misery like company.
Hence our fondness for massals and vodanavors like “Yes im anoush Hayastani” and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.
Between “once there was and was not” we have a marked preference for “was not,” at the end of which three golden apples will fall and we will live happily ever after.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: reflections

Thursday, February 12, 2009
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HORROR SH0W
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In his impressions of Siberia, an American traveler writes that whenever he wanted to say “good” in Russian, he would say, “horror show” (=horosho). Reminds me of Rosalind Russell in A MAJORITY OF ONE saying “You're welcome” in Japanese sounds like “Don't touch my mustache” (=Do-itashimasta”).
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From a televised interview with deputy prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a puppet of Putin:
“What do you like doing best?”
“Fighting. I'm a soldier.”
“And when there's no one left to fight?”
“I have bees, bulls, fighting dogs.”
“What else to you like?”
“Partying. I love women.”
“And your wife doesn't mind?”
“I do it secretly.”
From THE ANGEL OF GROZNY by Asne Seierstad (New York, 2008, page 100).
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A moderate pacifist doesn't have a chance against a warlike fanatic.
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When an Armenian realizes he cannot settle his score with Turks, he moves on to an easier target – his fellow Armenians, and the more defenseless the better.
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We learn from failure. Success has the opposite effect.
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It is good to be smart but not to appear to be smart – especially if one is an idiot.
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As a child I was brought up to believe all Turks go to hell. As an adult I know that not all Armenians go to heaven.
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Friday, February 13, 2009
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THE POWER AND THE GLORY
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Because they can't promise peace and prosperity, nationalists promise power and glory, and what mortal can resist two divine attributes? (“For thine is the power and the glory.”)
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There are many schools of criticism, the most common are envy-driven and revenge-driven.
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I have yet to meet an anti-Semite who wasn't a bully.
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Churchill on de Gaulle: “What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised when bathing?”
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Under the Soviets we experienced despotism, intolerance, censorship, corruption, abuses of power, and purges (a euphemism for the systematic slaughter of the best and the brightest). And yet, there are those who assert the Soviets ushered in a renaissance of arts and culture. Who says Armenians are smart? Only Armenian idiots who think they are thinking even as they recycle enemy propaganda.
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Nabokov's aristocratic contempt for lower-class writers like Dostoevsky, Mann, and Sartre reminds me of the king who, after the premiere of DON GIOVANNI, said to Mozart: “Too many notes.”
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Once, when I was the regular book-reviewer of several Armenian-American weeklies, I received a book of memoirs by a rug merchant with a note that said, the longer the review, the bigger the check in the mail.
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The universal and irresistible temptation to appear smarter or better than we are.
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Saturday, February 14, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Our faith in Athena, goddess of wisdom, has collapsed, but the Parthenon stands. We are made of stardust, and it is the dust that will survive.
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We are careful to admit only the failings we think we have overcome.
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Our Turcocentric ghazetajis think humor is pro-Ottoman.
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In his WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Saint-Exupery tells us to be aware of misguided pity. There are beggars, he explains, who love to cling to their stench and to expose their sores.
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A self-appointed commissar of culture may qualify as a potential murderer but not as a critic.
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"For a smart man, you can be very naïve!" a trial lawyer, who is also a good friend, tells me. I don’t know about smart but I am worse than naïve when I get emotionally involved. Emotion reduces a complex reality into a one-dimensional extension of ourselves. Emotion, writes Sartre somewhere, attempts to change the world by means of magic. What could be more primitive?
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Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”
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Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”
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Writers like Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian, among many others, prove that criticism and patriotism are not incompatible concepts; blind patriotism by contrast is almost always symptomatic of fascism.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: reflections

Sunday, February 15, 2009
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THE GREEKS AND US
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Whenever I am told to be more positive, I think of Homer who begins his story with a rape and ends with the destruction of Troy. And what do we learn from the ODYSSEY? Only this: even when one is engaged in as innocent an undertaking as going home, one will have to deal with obstructionists.
If you dismiss Homer's testimony as suspect on the grounds that he was an unbeliever, let's consider the Bible: Why did the Good Lord introduce a serpent in the Garden?
There are those who maintain it was not the Lord who did that but the CIA. But I for one don't believe everything I am told, and that's where my troubles begin. When I am told, for example, that we are better or smarter than the Greeks because we no longer believe in many gods some of whom fornicated with mortals, all I can say is that, that's true, we have made some progress in that department. We believe in only one God who is divided into three, and only one of the three, the Holy Ghost, engaged in the business of impregnating a mortal.
The Greeks condemned Socrates to death because he said “Of the gods we know nothing.” Christians, by contrast, persecuted and killed only those who did not share their dogmas, lies, and propaganda.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.”
#
Monday, February 16, 2009
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THE ANGEL OF GROZNY
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We are smart, no doubt about that. We are as smart as any nation you care to mention. We may even be smarter than some. But we have been systematically moronized by our leadership. We have been as systematically moronized as any nation under a corrupt and incompetent leadership that has collaborated with some of the most brutal, ruthless, and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of mankind -- and it has collaborated to the point of betraying and murdering its greatest intellects.
If you want to know more on the subject of systematic moronization, I urge you to read Asne Seierstad's THE ANGEL OF GROZNY (New York, 2008), a masterpiece of contemporary journalism that deals with recent developments in Chechnya and the evils of Russian and Chechen nationalism.
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The very same readers who tell me not to open old wounds, never give up blabbering endlessly about older wounds.
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I have never heard a loud-mouth charlatan or fanatic to admit error, which may suggest, the louder they are, the more infallible they consider themselves to be.
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Some of our most ardent nationalists live in self-imposed exile, and when war breaks out in the Homeland, they selflessly allow others to do their killing and dying for them.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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STANDARDS
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To agree in the name of an ideology or belief system is to conspire against the majority of mankind.
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Speech and honesty can be a lethal combination.
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The danger is not in worshiping false gods but in worshiping the devil in the name of god.
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When a loser's dreams come true, they turn into nightmares.
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The more successful you are in fooling men, the less successful you will be in fooling reality.
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Armenian etiquette: If you are wrong you will be corrected. If you are right you will be insulted.
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And now, from the general to the specific:
How to explain the decline of our cultural standards when compared with those of the turn-of-the-century Ottoman Empire and pre-Stalin Soviet Union? The answer must be: the philistinism of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors combined with the opportunism of our academics.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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All ideologies begin as belief systems and end as bureaucracies; and all bureaucracies might as well be interchangeable. What failed in the United States and the Soviet Union is neither capitalism nor communism but “the invisible hand” of faceless bureaucrats.
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If so far we have failed to learn from history it's because history and propaganda are mutually exclusive concepts, and our propaganda tells us we know all there is to know and there is nothing wrong with us – it's all the fault of the rotten world in which we live.
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It's unbelievable the number of things people will avoid saying in order to achieve popularity. I could never acquire that particular talent – or is it tactic?
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Smart Armenians are a dime a dozen. Honest Armenians – that's different.
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In our environment, the higher they rise, the more crooked they get.
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A fellow Armenian (a white-haired elderly no-nonsense type) knocks on my door, introduces himself, barges in, and demands to know if I am really an atheist. I tell him I don’t believe in the god of our priests. He is too puzzled by my answer to pursue the matter. What I fail to add is that, the true atheist is he who uses someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living.
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[Tigranakert]

Re: reflections

Can I ask you, why do you write this kind of stuff?