How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

[jgk3]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

My point is when I tell people I'm Armenian... they look at me with a blank face. Everyone knows who the J3ws are. Why is that when we supposedly have around the same population of people? Cher, Kim K., Agassi, etc. are/were westernized and didn't have an ounce of influence of exposing our ethnicity in the media. I watched Agassi in an interview the other day... he's so far gone that he doesn't even know who he is.

Because you learn about xxxs the moment you learn what Christians are. It's really hard to miss.

And our celebrities who are of Armenian descent but don't show it off probably don't want to have an Armenian audience to deal with as they don't feel a connection to them.

[jgk3]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Propping each other up is a great idea indeed. Sure there are barriers but helping each other can turn into a infectious phenomenon with great results for all who participate. Once trust is established between people who really do want to help each other, a great number of other benefits will follow. Trust will lead to cooperation which will lead to success which will lead to more success which will lead to more people wanting to join in and accepting these people kind of brings us back to the topic of this thread. This kind of help me-i help you strategy can be put into place rather easily to adress common everyday issues and it will evolve into business and other types of cooperation. The thing it needs is commitment from its participants and the absence of sabatuers. Anyone can start this chain, it can even start right here if you guys want it to.

Thank you Haykakan, this is exactly what I want to advocate as well. I hope to find some means of getting more involved in commerce with Armenians.

[Eddo211]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Come on guys cheer up. Sure there is some assimilation going on and you are right to be concerned but I think that we Armenians are way too resilient and stubborn to just fade away like that. I mean look at the history and if we were to be assimilated then it would have happened a long time ago, especially when there was forced assimilation. Our history should speak for itself. When I come across an Armenian who appears "assimilated" you can see in their eyes that there is an Armenian inside somewhere that wants to come out when you talk to them about their ethnicity and they do feel this confusing attachment.

However I do tend to agree with you and jgk3. It would be a safer bet to have your attitudes in regards to resistance to this "not so evident assimilation/slow death of a nation" and the acceptance of assimilated Armenians regardless of how much Armenian blood is in them. I mean I am a full blood Armenian who saw the pain/horor of Genocide in the eyes of his grandparents who barely escaped as kids but then, I was totally out of it in my teenage years and early twenties. Maybe because I didn’t go to Armenian school and live in an Armenian community and thought that the Genocide is over and done with, but still.

Sooner or later a person has to face the reality of who he/she really is or there will never be peace in the heart or in the mirror, even when faced with severe rejection from other Armenians. A person has to be strong and beleive in himself.

Another thing I have noticed is that Armenians who do "wakeup" tend to become more radical; too funny.

[Sip]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

If there are tremendous advantages of joining a group, the "conversion" will sort of happen on its own. You might have to do some advertising to get the word out. But when there are no clear-cut "advantages", much like any other group or cult that has existed and will exist, in order to recruit members you have to somehow entice them.

The more common ways are scare tactics, misleading and confusion, brainwashing, and peer pressure.

Since we don't have the massive hoards of people lined up to join this Armenian-nationalistic band wagon, you either have to turn Armenianness into some sort of religion-like thing where not belonging means eternal damnation, or you have to rely on the more subtle brainwashing and pressuring techniques

[Haykakan]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Sip, this is not about recruiting new members, its about giving those interested in their own roots and history the chance to bond with their heritage and rediscover a part of themselves. I hate religion and am not too crazy about nationalism either. JK3 your outlook on the xxxish monopoly on monotheism is wrong as Armanen explained. Monotheism is based on sunworship the judaism is also based on sun worship as in the "one sun". Hrias want you to think that everything is based on them becaus of their self absorbed culture but that is not the case at all. Eddo you dismiss assimilation way too easily. Being resistant is not the same as not assimilating. The genocide was not the first time we armenians were forced to scatter to foreighn lands yet you wont hear anything about those people because THEY ASSIMULATED! The armenian genocide happened just a few minutes ago in historic terms and its effect will linger far into the future, most of the people you know and call armenians today will not leave a trace of anything armenian in a couple generations. The diaspora always dies a slow but predictable death and that is why i emphasise Armenia because it really is the only hope for a future for the Armenian people. Making Hayastan a place we would all want to live in is the strategy we need to take because only that will secure our future as a nation. It is not fair to have your kid grow up in a otar society and expect him/her to marry armenian and carry on his heritage, it is a unrealistic demand that eventually will fail (if not this generation then the next or the one after). If your son or daughter meets the "love of his or her life" (and chances are they wont be armenian if they live in a foreighn country) who are you to tell them no you cant marry him/her. If you live in Hayastan chances are your kid will marry a Armenian and not because you told him/her to but because they are in love. Sure if you rais the child right he/she may want to marry a Armenian anyways but the choices to pic from in the diaspora are pretty slim to non depending on where you live (Not every armenian lives in LA). I mentioned it before and will emphasize it again because it is very important to understand, the longer the diaspora stays a diaspora the less "Armenian" it becomes because Armenia and it evolve separately from one another. If you want to be Armenian then you simply must develop a connection to what is left of your homeland, living in usa,france,lebanan,turckey... guerentees the extinction of anything remotely Armenian, perhaps not in this generation or the next but in historic terms it will be a blink of an eye.

[ArmSurvival]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Come on guys cheer up. Sure there is some assimilation going on and you are right to be concerned but I think that we Armenians are way too resilient and stubborn to just fade away like that.

I once asked my dad to define what an Armenian is in the diaspora, and he gave me a solid answer. He told me that someone becomes a true Armenian when their children are Armenian-speaking adults who are trying to teach Armenian to their offspring. Only then does the original person (the grandparent) become a true Armenian. And I agree with this, because it emphasizes the life-long committment of being an Armenian in cultural terms, as opposed to being an Armenian based on surnames or by association, or for a limited period of time.

The type of Armenians you're describing are not even born and raised in America. Here in Los Angeles, the only reason we still have Armenian-speakers around is because of the huge Lebanese diaspora and the groups of Armenians that left shortly after independence. The 2nd or 3rd generation Armenians who were born and raised here (Russahyes are a good example because they've been here longer than the rest of us) might be community-oriented to an extent, but they are completely out of touch with Armenia and Armenian culture. The new generation along with many of the parents cannot even put 2 sentences together in Armenian without strong feelings of embarassment which you can tell from their dismissive tones and initial avoidance. Many of them are in relationships with odars, or with Armenians like them who can barely speak the language let alone be in touch with the culture and country. I'm not picking on Russahyes btw, there are plenty of Beirutsis, Bolsahyes and Hayastancis who fall into the same category, I'm just trying to explain what Armenians in the diaspora become once you reach the 2nd and 3rd generations. So nobody can tell me with a straight face that this new generation of LA Armenians are going to teach their children how to be Armenian, when their own parents failed teaching them anything about Armenia aside from the genocide.

I have a much clearer glimpse of the severity of assimilation because of my kid nephew. My nephew started attending the same Armenian school I attended, and he is the ONLY one in his class who speaks Armenian voluntarily in his everyday life. Think about that. There are about 20 people in his class, and he is virtually the only one, MAYBE there is one other person, but that only makes 10% of the class at best. Its a total family effort to make a child feel a connection to the language, and my nephew's parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc all speak Armenian to him. The problem is that kids his age don't speak Armenian well (if at all), and I can tell he is speaking English more and more in order to adapt to that. This highlights one of the problems with the Armenian community at large: Many Armenian families who KNOW how to speak Armenian end up speaking English to their kids as a matter of convenience, and it forces Armenian speakers to conform in order to avoid isolation. These people piss me off more than any other, because they have all the tools to continue the Armenian lineage but they choose to piss it away for 'convenience', which is just a nice way of saying that they slapped their genocide-survivor grandparents in the face.

The problems I see with assimilated Armenians can be narrowed down to one root tendency: They treat Armenian culture, whether consciously or subconciously, as a historical relic with no relevance to their lives instead of something that lives and breathes which is in continuous evolution and development. This is why I agree with Haykakan when he says these kids need a real connection to their homeland. We need to ship these kids (at a young age) by the boat-load and put them in Armenia for a couple of months, and continue this on an annual or semi-annual basis until they reach adulthood. This is what rich Armenians in the diaspora need to do, instead of funding cultural centers and churches which are half-empty and will be totally empty in a couple of decades. When you said "you can see in their eyes that there is an Armenian inside", you only told part of the truth. The other part is that your description is only a temporary state, and if someone like that has not awakened by the time they marry and have children, their Armenianness will fade away like dying embers.

[Haykakan]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Sending our kids to Armenia from a young age is indeed a great strategy. Perhaps starting a fund for this purpose could be a worthwhile endeavor. I attended AGBU in the Detroit area and they would send the graduating class to Hayastan every year untill it was my turn to be a senior, that year they discontinued it and needless to say i was pissed. I have a 5 yearold son and he has already been to Hayastan two times. I would send him every year if i could afford it. Such a fund could help a lot of people.

[Eddo211]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

There are a lot of good volunteer organizations for younger Armenians...............not only spend time in Armenia but also to get involved and contribute. If I had a kid I would get him involved in these programs.

Here are a few examples. You can qualify as long as you have little Armenian in you (1/6) I read somewhere a while back.

http://www.armenianvolunteer.org/

http://www.birthrightarmenia.org/index.php?menu=1&al=volunteer_internship

[Haykakan]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

There are a lot of good volunteer organizations for younger Armenians...............not only spend time in Armenia but also to get involved and contribute. If I had a kid I would get him involved in these programs.

Here are a few examples. You can qualify as long as you have little Armenian in you (1/6) I read somewhere a while back.

http://www.armenianvolunteer.org/

http://www.birthrightarmenia.org/ind...eer_internship

These are very different things from what i was talking about. The organizations you speak of are for people 21 and up. I am talking about a organization which helps young childeren establish contact and maintain it with Hayastan. This can be done by helpin financially with travel expences or maybe lodging or both. It is very expencive to fly a family to Hayastan and unless you have relatives there, you will be paying for lodging to. Removing some of these financial obsticals will encourage more families to participate.

[SevSpitak]

Re: How to "convert" dormant Armenians to the Hye Tad?

Fair points.

What is sad is that one the biggest culprit is the Armenian media.

Armenian TV broadcasts are now widely available through satellite and the internet.

Unfortunately vast majority of the time they propagate either foreign films or music despite the fact that these are available through the local outlets.

You also get many of our artist who through their (in most cases ) amateurish impersonations of other cultures poison our youngsters into thinking that there is something superior in those cultures.

If our media was more professional and with a defined mission the (Armenian ) general public both at home and the Diaspora would be better served.

100% agree with you