notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 24, 2010
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MORAL OF THE STORY
*********************************************
To be brainwashed means to be blind to reality.
I speak from experience.
*
If God is love,
why is it that there is so little of it in the jungles
(both natural and man-made or asphalt)
or anywhere else for that matter?
Are we to assume gardens are planted by God
and jungles by the Devil?
Who in his right mind
would introduce an evil serpent in a beautiful garden
knowing full well what will happen next?
If we are dealing with symbols
whose intent is to understand and explain reality,
then I suggest the explanation is not a very convicning one.
Which is why it is rejected by the majority of mankind.
God's ways are not our ways?
If so, let us agree once and for all
that He is incomprehensible and unknowable
and theologians who try to explain His actions
are no better than charlatans and blasphemers.
*
Moral of the story:
Don't be a dupe!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 25, 2010
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REFLECTIONS
ON OUR PRESENT SITUATION
*********************************************
Nothing can be more misleading than to think the men at the top know better.
*
History is made not by people who know better but by charlatans who have mastered the skill of organizing dupes.
*
When a member of the Party writes, it is not his brain that speaks but his loyalty. No one can be as brainless as a partisan.
*
The moment you surrender your freedom of thought to a closed system, you cease to think for yourself.
*
History is the propaganda of the victor, we are told. What we are not told is that losers too have their propaganda line whose intent is to make them look blameless and morally superior.
*
To think of oneself as morally superior is the surest symptom of moral bankruptcy.
*
If there are those who prefer the victor's propaganda to the loser's boast, it may be because they think winners may know something losers don't.
*
The only endeavor in which our Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded so far is grooming another generation of haters and braggarts.
*
Where the profit motive is supreme, there will be first-class merchants and an abundance of dead poets.
*
We have been brainwashed to believe politics is a filthy business, except of course our politics.
*
We don't choose our belief system, it is thrust on us.
*
It is a well-know fact that you can teach children to believe anything.
*
Prejudices are as carefully taught as the multiplication table.
*
That which is good for the few is bound to be bad for the many.
*
Anyone whose powers and privileges depend on the support of the people, will never say anything remotely critical against a system that allows the brainwashing of children.
*
At the root of all crimes against humanity, there will be a generation of brainwashed children.
*
As long as we think criticism and dissent are un-Armenian, we will never acquire the status of human beings – or “mart bidi ch'ellank.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 26, 2010
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PARALLELS
*********************************************
The Palestinians have been so consistently wrong in overestimating their military might and in believing they can defeat the Israelis that nothing they say can be trusted. I am not talking about right and wrong here, or about principles and moral values. I am dealing with facts. Morally superior losers are a dime a dozen. Neither am I talking about the Palestinian people in general, most of whom are no doubt very much like most other people, including ourselves, dupes of their incompetent and megalomaniacal leadership, and as such guilty only of poor judgment.
*
When the popes sanctioned the persecution and torture of heretics, what were they defending? God or their own power?
When heretics were willing to die for what they believed in, what were they defending -- beside their freedom of thought?
*
To say that those in power are more interested in the truth than philosophers is to ignore such facts as countless wars and massacres.
*
A charlatan is one who not only claims to have the final answers but also to know better than you what you should think, feel, and believe.
*
Minor errors of judgment are covered up and ignored; but catastrophic blunders are explained, justified, and believed. I suggest truth is not what deceivers and their dupes conspire to believe in.
*
When it comes to reading, we tend to reject ideas, feelings, and values that do not spring from our own experience. It is almost as if the purpose of reading were to reinforce and legitimize our limitations, prejudices, and fallacies. Knowing this, propagandists and charlatans (but I repeat myself) are more than willing to adjust their message to the lies that are most in demand.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 27, 2010
************************************************** *
SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO
*********************************************
When men in a position of power and responsibility
promise one thing and deliver the opposite,
I call that much worse than incompetence,
I call it criminal conduct.
When our revolutionaries promised
freedom, independence and our historic lands
and they delivered
massacres, starvation, pestilence, and dispersion,
and having done so they now say
none of it was their fault
and they are believed by dupes,
I call that much worse than
b.s., lies, and charlatanism;
I call it evil.
*
I love books that expose b.s.
One such book that I enjoyed recently is
Laura Penny's
YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US:
THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLxxxx.
In this morning's paper
I read that Laura Penny has published another book titled
MORE MONEY THAN BRAINS:
WHY SCHOOL SUCKS,
COLLEGE IS CRAP
AND IDIOTS THINK THEY'RE RIGHT.
I have something to look forward to.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 28, 2010
************************************************** *
THE KING IS DEAD,
LONG LIVE THE KING!
*********************************************
Prophets and reformers may change the world
but they cannot change human nature.
What have the major religions really changed?
The 20th century has seen more revolutions, wars, and massacres
than at any other time in history.
That's because human nature tends to adapt,
that is to say, to lower
the noblest ideas and ideals
to its own level, namely the gutter.
*
I suspect the honesty and integrity of men
who subscribe to a belief system
simply because as children
they were educated (that is, brainwashed)
to trust and respect their elders
I am not saying
all Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Marxists are dupes.
I am saying most of them are.
Exceptions exist.
But I don't speak of exceptions.
I speak of rules.
*
Reformers may change the power structure
but not human nature.
And changing the power structure means
replacing one set of rascals with another.
You gain nothing by replacing one sultan
with many mini-sultans,
or one czar with many commissars,
and many commissars and with many more
crypto- or neo-commissars.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 29, 2010
************************************************** *
SELF-ANALYSIS
*********************************************
Confucius: “If you see a good man, emulate him.
If you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
*
If you want to know what's wrong with us,
Naregatsi tells us, examine your conscience.
Exposing and naming your own sins
is more important than
xxxxxing endlessly about your enemies.
In that sense, Naregatsi, like so many of our writers
from Khorenatsi to Zarian,
may be said to have been a dissident.
*
You want to know why I write the way I write?
To keep alive the voice of dissent in our literature.
*
If revolution is organized and armed dissent,
I may be said to be an unarmed and solitary revolutionary.
Which is why I feel justified in maintaining
I am not silenced by the offspring of revolutionaries
who dared to challenge the might of an empire,
but by empty suits whose greatest enemy
is neither the Turk nor the Russian,
but their own fear of being exposed as cowards.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 30, 2010
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ON OUR MEDIA
*********************************************
Freedom of the press will not turn bad writers into good ones.
Granted. It may, however, de-emphasize Turcocentrism,
which shamelessly exploits our emotions
and distracts us from focusing on our present problems
of which we have many.
*
SCUMBAGS (I)
***********************
A capitalist makes money at other people's expense
and to combat his guilt, he builds churches
and by doing so he compounds his felony
by making the blasphemous assumption that
God can be bribed by scumbags.
*
A MATTER OF CHOICE
*********************************
The world or reality provides evidence
for contradictory belief systems.
As a result, both a believer and non-believer
will find all the evidence they need
to justify their choice of credo
and to accuse the other of siding with the devil.
Our convictions are not based in reality
but on our perception of it
and our choice of evidence.
*
SCUMBAGS (II)
*****************************
There is a type of scumbag
who thinks the only way to prove he is right
and the other wrong
is by going down into the gutter
on the assumption that a decent man
will refuse to follow him there.
But then he runs the risk
of running into a scumbag like me
who can take it as well as dish it out.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

July 1, 2010
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ON BEING RIGHT
*********************************************
Being right has nothing to do with logic, common sense, and evidence. Being right is a state of mind which can be controlled by auto-suggestion. If you want to assert superior knowledge, assume you are right, raise your voice, or pull rank. Once when I disagreed with a bishop, he said: “I have a degree in theology from a university in Rome.” Which is why whenever a coward insults me anonymously and from a safe distance, I think: “He must be a bishop or the son of one.”
*
OUR BETTERS
*******************************
Heine's definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.”
We don't have aristocrats. What we have are empty suits with money; and in our environment money doesn't just talk, it sings like Pavarotti even when it brays like an ass.
*
ON SOLUTIONS
******************************
To readers who demand solutions from me, I ask: “How many problems have our Turcocentric ghazetajis solved?” And now consider the number of real problems we could have solved with the money, energy, and manpower wasted on Hai Tahd.
Organized hatred is the glue of nations.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

July 2, 2010
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THAT WHICH WE SHARE
*********************************************
Every Armenian is different, granted.
But all Armenians share in common the same history,
the most salient feature of which is
a thousand years of subservience to ruthless and alien tyrants.
In “Rule Britannia” the Brits may sing the words
“An Englishman cannot be a slave,”
but we are in no position to make the same claim.
Subservience – a euphemism for slavery –
comes so naturally to us that
it has become an integral part
of our psyche, character, and worldview.
Our nationalist historians may rewrite history,
but so far none of them has gone as far as suggesting
that we are all reincarnations of David of Sassoun.
*
It is true that at the turn of the last century
we finally did produce a generation of revolutionaries
who dared to challenge the might of the Ottoman Goliath.
But unlike the American, French, and Russian revolutions
ours wasn't exactly a popular uprising
and worse, our revolutionaries relied less on themselves
to carry out their mission
and more on the Great Powers of the West.
As a result, in addition to being an abortion,
our revolution may be said to have been
one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind.
*
If we were to rely less on our propaganda
and more on historic realty,
we shall have to conclude that
our past is a litany of internecine conflicts,
defeats, blunders, and lies.
*
Am I saying anything that hasn't been said before?
Listen to Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973):
“Our history is a litany of lamentation,
anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception
and abysmal naiveté mixed with the smoke of incense
and the sound of sacred chants.”
*
Raffi (Hagop Melik-Hagopian: 1835-1888):
“We are like sheep without a shepherd.”
*
Baruir Massikian (1912-1990):
“Instead of books, they [Armenians] want basterma.”
By “books” Massikian means here writers
who assume the role of honest witnesses.
*
As a nation we have no use for honest witnesses.
We prefer vodanavorjis who, in the words of
Leo (Arakel Babakhanian: 1858-1925):
“...like birds perched on a branch
and at a safe distance from reality,
they have entertained the moon and the stars
by singing songs about roses and virgins.”
*
I am all for emphasizing the positive,
but I am against bare-faced lies,
and I am deeply offended whenever I am treated
like a cowardly dupe whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
*
Allow me to conclude with a remark
by President Harry S. Truman:
“There is nothing new in the world
except the history you don't know.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

July 3, 2010
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THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE
*********************************************
Because I refuse to recycle propaganda,
I am told I am consistently negative.
Charents said our salvation is in our solidarity;
and all I have been saying is,
solidarity, very much like the Kingdom of God,
is within us.
It is an act of will within everyone's reach.
*
If so far we have failed to achieve solidarity
it may be because we have trusted our fate
into the hands of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
To those who say our leaders are essentially good men
who are doing their best
under unfavorable conditions, I ask:
How so? By ignoring the word of the very same God
they profess to believe in, and Who tells us
“a house divided against itself cannot stand”?
Who is being consistently negative here?
Those who promote solidarity
or those who divide the nation?
And why do they divide us?
Does anyone know?
Can anyone enlighten me on that score?
*
Our divisions are buried in our past?
What past? If you rewrite history
you can justify anything;
and if you don't want to learn from history
you rewrite it.
It's a vicious circle.
*
Dealing in abstractions is easy.
The question is: What do we do in concrete terms?
I suggest the following:
If you are a Protestant, Catholic, or Anteliassagan,
visit the opposition.
If you are a Tashnak, apply for membership
in the Ramgavar Party and vice versa.
You may discover that all Armenians
regardless of their loyalty to a party or church
are human beings like you
– that is to say, dupes of propaganda.
*
Sooner or later we all have to discover that
not only all Armenians are brothers,
but also all men, including Turks.
#