Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

[hagopn]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

Hakob, you are by far the most optimistic person I have read on this forum-, and you bring up so many topics that are close to my heart. I'm not sure how to respond without changing the topic at hand. You make many points that cover a lot of ground, many topics and categories.

I agree with you that technology, just as any force, can be used to level the field and allow us to take advantage. So far, we haven't done very well in this Internet age. One example is the slow pace with which we have yet to fully adopt a font standard that is completely native to all operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, Unix, Linux, Android/Linus, iOS and so on. Now we are behind every modern culture in voice recognition tech, OCR tech, database tech, so on and so forth. We don't even have a mass implementation of a keyboard standard. Apparently even in Armenia either Russian Standard or English Qwerty standard keyboards are the norm, and Armenian is either customized or a few of the people out there have taken the initiative to create, make their own Armenian standard overlay/cover or stickers onto the existing keyboards. At some point some company in the US was making Armenian standard keyboards, but for some reason, perhaps due to lack of demand, they stopped. Nothing really is being done to bring our language fully to this digital age.

Maybe we can move this to a technology based forum/thread.

[Hakob]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

Hakob things are different in the present day world then they were before. Emigration to distant lands is not a big deal anymore its just a few hours away. Technology has changed the world we live in and i am not as confident about the demographic situation in Armenia as you seem to be. Sure there were and are and will be good Armenian leaders but who will they lead? Another important point which is overlooked in this discussion is the ever growing trend of Narcissism which is spreading like wildfire throughout the civilized world. I fear the combination of technology(making it easier to emigrate) and narcissism (making emigration a more acceptable decision) is a very big threat to our nation. We live in a rapidly changing world and what was applicable for thousands of years may no longer apply or perhaps applies in different ways. I agree that it is no accident that we Armenians have survived for so long but the world is not a constant and just because we survived till now does not mean we will always survive. My point is we need to address the issues as they change around us.

To answer this Hagopn is doing very good job. Id like to add some very minor technical points. Technology has also it's advantages. Mainly, our culture is available around the world to all Armenians. People, who were cut from homeland before, had to assimilate evenually with time because of no exposure to mother culture, now have it all under their fingertips. One can see awakenings around the world in every nation because of this. This will also make our nation more homogenous. When I came to USA, older 4-5th generation Armenians were too far gone to be compared to our main body. Now things are diffrent. There is awakening, sort of.
This also exposes us to other cultural influences, but those are being actively filtered tru still young armenian world media.
Would we discuss such matters a few decades ago? Would we have any venue to reach to each other's thoughts?
To second Hagopn's points, I remember that all of Armenia's cultural life in soviet times was controlled by Moscow, and it was slowly brought close and subject to russian in every sence. In 70's it was outlawed to own or operate any mass media(copiers, recorders etc) to distribute national songs or like.
Now can anybody keep Armenchik under pillows however rabis he is? LOL. I see people who don't know any armenian words (their parents too) and anything about our history blast Armenian music in their cars. dirty rabis Armo or not, main point is it is ours. it is not any other's.
I agree about narcissism's spread, but I see also that the most powerfull american world culture has not chocked national cultures around the world. On the contrary, it has helped them modernize and become more attractive for their members.
I think internet is going to cause empiral media hegemonies to break up into small and uncontrollable pieces.
The only question is population numbers in our homeland.
that is a large and uncertain subject to discuss. I think it is going to level off soon. it would be a very long discussion, but about 15 years ago, I have noticed that our many small villages were not going to survive. Just like in any other country, because of modern agriculture and difficulties of supporting families with such small parcels. But that is a world problem too.
Lets discuss this guys.

[Haykakan]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

I have started just such a thread here http://forum.hyeclub.com/showthread....275-Government but no one else seemed interested in the subject. Perhaps we can converse there.

[hagopn]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

The question is valid, and the short answer is to have a strong enough protection of personal autonomy while still keeping in sight the perils of the world we live in. You will never maintain the loyalty of a "narcissist" through a dictatorship.

You are more than welcome to start the thread. I'll join you.

[Haykakan]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

Unfortunately Hakobn you still elude the main issue at hand. How is Armenia (or anyone else) going to stand up to imperialism wo a centralized government? The fact of the matter is that we do not live in a vaccume and events around us matter. We are all better off with a government then wo one but the nature of the government is really at the heart of the matter. I have a lot more to say on this matter and i am sure you and others do as well so perhaps continuing this conversation in a new thread is in order.

[hagopn]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

Also, In don’t think you understand what I mean by the phrase “increasing frequency, influence, and power of imperialism”.

Empires in fact did not exist when the Armenian ethnos (or, to appease the ultra-left, the "various proto-Armenian ethnoi") was long ago formed, the even the idea of a “permanent and professional army” did not come to be until Akkad the First, who was a Semitic tribesman, which has a lot of significance which is a separate discussion that some good authors have written about. And what was that first ever professional army founded to do? Who financed and taxed for that army? The answer is obvious. The army was founded to conquer and control primarily trade routes. The conquests of the cities of Ebla and Mari, for example, are well recorded. Each municipality or city state they would conquer, they would install one of their trusted nomad chieftains as “king” who would still hold loyalty to the overall nomadic tribes, and so on. Armies, in fact, were thought of to enforce trade monopolies, and that has not changed one centimeter. That is the original idea behind empire, centralized state, professional army, which were new to that world, to the world overall.


China, for example, had an almost comical tradition of warfare before the advent of professional war consultants such as Sun Tzu and so on, and no permanent professional army until late into the "Warring States" era, a time when the "professional warrior/professional general" (essentially still a mercenary, not a state fixture) first became known as a resume item. It was all about pomp, symbolism, honor, and part of the war ethic was that you never commit genocide, never wipe out the competing clan, only subdue them. It almost sounds like a intra-family feud. The same thing is also recorded in pre-Semitic Sumer, Ebla/Syria/Armenia/Asia Minor and so on. No genocide. This indicates the possibility of overall memory of kinship and coexistence, sometimes cordial, sometimes not, but never genocidal.

[hagopn]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

I'm talking about the grass roots campaigners who do work to repeal laws that debilitate local autonomy. Jesse Ventura is a great example. I am not necessarily even evoking the xenophobia driven Tea Partiers (in an immigrant culture that had conquered and displaced the natives, no less) and that imbecile Palin when I talk about the Jeffersonians in the current government. It's funny to see the coopting of the Jeffersonian school by these folk.

"A strong central government only in times of war" were told the Romans, and they had elected Cato the Farmer. Then, the subsequent opportunists discovered that they can maintain their power and dictator status by making war a more permanent fixture in life and focus the entire society around the Army. Sound familiar? In essence, Central Rule will only benefit Big Criminal, because power corrupts, or, the corrupt seeks power and the opportunity to seize it.

That is ALL that will ever happen to states with central authorities that override local autonomy. I would advise that you ignore the Tea Party Red Herring and go to the source.

Also, I recommend you read the sources I gave.

And, yes, I will always agree that Armenians should have been more conscious of the dangers they collectively faced, but the age that we are talking about, these folks had inherited, once again, a culture that afforded them much personal and local freedom. In fact, these people even sometimes preferred a distant (and blind, and weak due to the distance in that era) "emperor" to a local dictator. Certainly we can see the flaws in such a political mindset, but we all secretly want to be our own sovereigns, do we not?

"Narcissism" is too easy to use to lay blame. The only alternative to narcissist is ultimately "good soldier" controlling the "good slave." In centralizd systems, there are really only 3 occupations: "Oligarch/Dictatorship", "Soldier", and "Slave. (Note that there is no such thing as a "single man dictating terms." It's always an oligarchy.)

[Haykakan]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

"But, as imperialism increasing in power, frequency, competence, the more autonomous confederates nations and their states eroded under the pressure, external pressure."
Yup you are making my point for me. I do not agree that a strong central government can only imply conquest. The lesson we should have taken home from our history is that we need to unite but this is not what is happening. Btw if you are referring to the tea party as the Patriots and comparing them to Jefferson you are way off because Sarah Palin aint no Thomas Jefferson and non of those guys know anything about international trade nor economics. That tea party needs to go to school and learn a bunch of stuff before it can claim to run anything let alone a nation. I do agree with some of the ideas these "patriots" have like demolishing the Fed and ending our imperial wars, and freedom to the people but these guys have made fools out of themselves so many times like preaching abstinence while your teenage daughter is having a baby. I do like some of the people there like Jessey Ventura but the vast majority of these "patriots" are ignorent flag waving baboons just like the vast majority of the general population.

[hagopn]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

All ancient, native, cultures, abhorred central rule. Only the artificial states that were constructed through conquest had central rule. The point is that Armenians grew into a nation, versus the Assyrians who conquered their empire and assimilated others through the methods I mention.

Yes, the Armenians did not adjust to the increasingly despotic and imperialist world around them, and, in hindsight, they might seem like imbeciles. But they were hardly that.

What they were, truly, is a people who had a civilized past that did not need central rule to sustain itself. It was self-sustaining without the need for conquest.

The Roman "Pax Romana" was a time for slow death, becauset the entire idea behind the economy of an empire is conquest and looting. When that ended, the empire began to disintegrate on its own ill-begotten weight.

The American model that the "Patriots" are trying to revive, the one that Jefferson was the main proponent for, is that of a CON-Federate model where the local autonomy is greater, which in turn give the individual greater sovereignty and political power.

You at the same time say that "slavery is bad," but yet you are upset because we didn't like central rule, which can only occur at the expense of the enslaved majority. Americans know this now very well.

Now, if you are more specific and say "we should have united under a strong termporary federation," we actually had done that a number of time in our history, quite successfully.

But, as imperialism increasing in power, frequency, competence, the more autonomous confederates nations and their states eroded under the pressure, external pressure.

[Haykakan]

Re: Is Russia an ally or foe, nowadays?

"In the past we Armenians ironically were a culture that abhorred central rule,"
This very trait which you look at in a positive light is the reason why we were not able to resist the imperialists then and now. By speaking to fellow Armenians now i can see that we have not learned from our mistakes. How do you intend to make a good country that can stand up to the giant imperial forces without some form of centralized leadership? Armenians are indeed doing well in this new age of narcissism yet what is left of their nation is crumbling to pieces.