notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 2, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Nationalists are not born but made. Same with fanatics. And what makes them is education -- a euphemism for systematic brainwashing that starts at a very early age.
*
There is a natural tendency in all of us to “stick to our own kind.” There is an equally strong tendency to be intrigued (and attracted) by the strange, the alien, the unknown, and the “other.”
*
If Wittgenstein is right – and I have every reason to think he is – we may have answers to many questions but not to the most important ones. It follows, anyone who claims to have them is either a liar or a dupe who simply repeats what a liar told him.
For more on this subject, see LOGICOMIX: AN EPIC SEARCH FOR TRUTH by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (New York, 2009) which is less about Wittgenstein and more about Bertrand Russell, who was Wittgenstein's teacher.
LOGICOMIX has been described by critics as “breathtaking,” “a titanic artistic achievement,” “extraordinary,” “daring,” “engaging,” and most important of all, “accessible.”
*
In Antonia Fraser's diary, we read: “In the spring of 1985 Harold Pinter visited Turkey with Arthur Miller on behalf of PEN International, to protest against the imprisonment and torture of intellectuals. Their guide incidentally was a young writer called Orhan Pamuk.”
We further read here that Pinter's play “Mountain Language” was written after “he learnt that the Kurdish language was forbidden, even among Kurds themselves.”
To my Turkish friends who have written a thousand lines to prove that the Armenian genocide is a fiction of our imagination, I ask: “Have you ever written a single line against torture?”
#
Friday, December 3, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Heine: “Whenever books are burnt, men, also in the end are burned!”
And whenever writers are silenced, tongues are also cut out.
The question we should ask is not “Where does Ottomanism end and Armenianism begin,” but “When will Ottomanism end?”
*
The ideal candidate for membership in an Armenian political party is a dupe who has not yet acquired the ability to think for himself.
*
Is the silent majority with me or against me? Neither. You don't have to be a Russell or Wittgenstein to see that you cannot be for or against someone whose existence you don't acknowledge. And when I say “me” I don't mean myself but our dissidents from Khorenatsi to Massikian whose ideas I recycle.
*
A man is shaped by his mistakes. Those who assert infallibility are monsters.
*
I hate to work for money. Hence the choice of my present job. Please note that I say job and not career.
*
While I lived in Athens and Venice it never occurred to me to say I was walking where Socrates and Plato, and Vivaldi, Thomas Mann, and Stravinsky had walked.
*
The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.
*
In a dictionary, I read the following definition:
“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party, as against people’s interests generally.”
#
Friday, December 3, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Power means first and foremost the power to brainwash.
*
Once upon a time we were brainwashed to believe
what the Pope is to Catholics,
the Sultan and Stalin were to the subjects of their respective empires
and anyone who dared to say otherwise
was declared guilty of a capital offense.
If I have been and continue to be subjected
to verbal abuse by readers
it's not because they disagree with me
but because I disagree with those
who brainwashed them.
Which means, we are the slaves of former slaves
who have brainwashed themselves to believe they are free.
*
Sometimes reality can be
more fantastic than science fiction.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 4, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Bob Woodward in a recent interview: “I get up in the morning with the question: what are the bastards hiding?”
*
When I run out of things to say, I repeat myself, but not as often as our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and Turcocentric ghazetajis -- especially Turcocentric ghazetajis who, like me, have no choice but to speak about repellent things: Turks, in their cases; our leadership in mine.
*
It is a writer's duty to make sense. Unlike speechifiers, sermonizers, and propagandists, he is not allowed to be irrational.
*
An old Armenian composer once said to me: “I am grateful to all Armenians who refrained from obstructing my path.”
*
To say that I am an unpopular writer is to distort reality. The truth is, in the eyes of those who decide who is and is not popular, I don't even qualify as a writer -- a nuisance and a sh*t-disturber, maybe, but a writer, no!
*
Are we survivors as our propagandists like to tell us? The answer is, only in so far as the brain-dead and the comatose may be said to be alive.
#
Monday, December 5, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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With Russian military support, Iranian friendship, and American dollars, we are now masters of our own house. We never had it so good. So what if our best and brightest emigrate? So what if we don't have popular support? What matters is that we are no longer “tshvar, ander” but “azad, angakh!”
*
Once upon a time Turks were subjects of the Sultan. They are now children of Atatürk. They didn't lose an empire, they gained a papa.
*
The only thing our benefactors know about literature is that all writers are beggars.
*
When it comes to writers, what our leadership wants is not their ideas but their cojones surgically removed and presented to them on a platter; and the astonishing part is that most writers don't mind singing soprano.
*
Some of my Turkish friends think because I am critical of Armenians I must be anti-Armenian and pro-Turkish. It doesn't even occur to them to think that I may be against lies, intolerance, and corruption regardless of nationality.
#
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Think of ideas – all ideas – as experiments,
because if you don't,
you may end up as a Catholic, a Bolshevik,
or even a suicidal Muslim terrorist.
That's what happens to people
who take what they think or believe seriously
with no margin of error, no humor, no doubt,
no objectivity...and no sense.
Claude Levi-Strauss may well be closer to the truth
when he says, there is no difference
between a primitive jungle tribe
that trusts its witch doctor
and a so-called 21st-century industrialized, civilized,
and progressive society
that takes its popes, imams, and rabbis seriously.
What matters about a man
is not what he thinks or believes
but what he questions and doubts –
beginning with his own religion.
Not “I think therefore I am,”
but “I doubt therefore I am a human being.”
#
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Where there is freedom of speech there will also be freedom to recycle lies and propaganda – in other words, fascism without fascists.
*
As power increases the number of brain cells decreases: there is an algebraic equation to prove this fact but those in power have been against its publication – for obvious reasons.
*
For everyone who knows what he is talking about there are at least ten (some say ten thousand) who don't.
*
I know what I write makes a deep impression when old friends become new enemies.
*
Harold Pinter: “Life is beautiful but the world is Hell.”
*
Rumor has it that writers, and artists in general, are unreliable and solitary eccentrics, unlike political and military leaders who oppress, exploit, deceive, lie, declare wars and commit massacres. In an abnormal world the normal is seen as an aberration.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 9, 2010
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SELF-RELIANCE
************************************************
In our environment money is used to stifle dissent and to subsidize propaganda. Truth is out.
Lies are in.
Flattery, yes.
Objective assessment, no!
Even worse: money is used to divide the intellectual class.
Brown-nosers are in.
Critics, let them eat cak (sic)!
We now have a generation of opportunistic careerists and cowards who calculate every word they speak. Will a wrong word or a misplaced comma offend anyone who may be in a position to advance my career?
In the words of an academic: “My family comes first.”
*
In this morning's paper I read: “A clown, a priest, an academic, and a convicted pedophile were among 25 Canadians arrested...”
My first thought: they arrest theirs, we promote ours.
Hence my loathing of benexxxxtors.
*
Remember: the men at the top don't always know better.
Respecting your elders does not mean ignoring the dictates of your own brain and its ability to tell right from wrong.
*
Do we have a word for self-reliance?
I am not sure. If we do, we seldom or never use it.
*
I agree with the wise man who said that we should treat our enemies as if they were destined to be future friends.
The reason I ignore this piece of excellence advice is that
I have acquired too many enemies and I don't have much of a future left.
#
Friday, December 10, 2010
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QUESTIONS I HAVE BEEN ASKED
************************************************
Why do you write?
I write because that's my way of thanking all those writers I have read, enjoyed, and learned from.
Why do you write more about Armenian blunders and less about Turkish criminal conduct?
I write less about Turks because I don't want to muscle in the territory of our Turcocentric ghazetajis who make a comfortable living by writing about nothing else.
Are you anti-Armenian?
I am against idiots who pretend to be smart regardless of nationality.
Are you pro-Turkish?
I prefer an honest Turk to a dishonest Armenian. If that makes me pro-Turkish I am more than willing to plead guilty as charged.
You write about our divisions as if that were a capital offense. But isn't it true that there are divisions everywhere, including America?
America is a big country with many small divisions. We are a small country with many big divisions all of which have an incomprehensible origin buried in the distant past.
Are you an atheist?
On that subject I have more questions than answers. Does that make me an atheist?
You are more critical of Armenians than Turks. Why?
Turks have critics of their own, including one who is a Nobel Prize winner.
You have said you have more enemies than friends. Does that bother you?
Of course it does. But I have come to terms with that reality and with the fact that when I die the celebrants will outnumber the mourners.
You have said on more than one occasion that we are not smart. Do you really mean that?
What I have said is that we have many smart Oriental carpet dealers but idiots for leaders.
Don't we have a rich culture?
What we have is a culture of intolerance. We have consistently rejected our ablest intellects. We have created an environment in which creativity and originality cannot survive let alone develop.
Don't you ever get tired of writing as you do?
I get more tired of listening to lies.
#
Saturday, December 11, 2010
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FILTH
************************************************
On the subject of our commissars, I once had the following exchange with one of our vodanavorjis:
“What makes you think he is a man we can trust?” I wanted to know.
“I once heard him say that poets are engineers of the soul,” she replied.
“He didn't say that.”
“He said it to me.”
“I meant, Stalin said that. Our commissar was quoting him.”
And I remembered the following lines from Zarian's TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD:
“They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Aharonian. They are spitting on Derian. And that with the borrowed spittle of Muscovite masters. Even their filth is second hand. Even their trash has not been picked up from our own streets. Danger, danger, danger!”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 12, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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When Socrates was mentioned in a discussion, a Soviet agent is reported to have said: “I regret to say, I am not acquainted with the gentleman.”
*
Brainwash a decent man to believe that the fellow on the other side of an imaginary line, who may well be as decent as he, is a mortal enemy, and he will turn into a killer. Unlike Dr. Jekyll, you don't have to drink a potion to turn into Mr. Hyde. All you have to do is expose yourself to state propaganda.
*
Some day, when mankind is civilized, there will be a law that says, brainwashing children (sometimes also identified as education) is a crime against humanity.
*
To confuse ideology with theology: that’s another function of brainwashing. Theology legitimizes and promotes intolerance and hatred in the name of God or Truth. Odium theologicum is a well-known Latin expression that means: “The bitter hatred of rival theologians. There are no wars so sanguinary as holy wars, no persecution so relentless as religious persecution, no hatred so bitter as theological hatred.” (BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE & FABLE, 16th edition, revised by Adrian Room, London: Cassell, 1999, page 841.)
*
Perhaps I should warn my readers that I don't write as a writer, or as an Armenian, or for that matter, as that most contemptible of all beings: an Armenian writer.
Once upon a time I did write as an Armenian writer -- a nightmarish experience I wouldn't wish on a Turk. I write instead as a human being who happens to be an Armenian – an identity imposed on me by circumstances beyond my control.
#
Monday, December 13, 2010
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WORDS
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In his CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Dostoevsky quotes a long letter – a polite and courteous letter – and tears it to shreds by exposing the venom that is hidden between the lines.
Reading between the lines is an art.
Diplomacy sometimes consists in saying the opposite of what one means or thinks.
*
A study of TV commercials has found that 95% of them are either false or misleading.
*
The Chinese don't have a word for “no” -- “perhaps” is as far as they will go – neither do they have a word for “husband.” When a Chinese woman wants to say “my husband,” she says “my good for nothing.”
True or false?
I don't know. I am only paraphrasing what I remember to have read somewhere.
*
Writes Saroyan's wife in her memoirs: “When I say la, you must understand lalabloo.”
*
One reason I am thought of as anti-Armenian or even pro-Turkish is that when I say chick I don't mean chickpeas.
I mean what I say because I speak only for myself.
I represent no one and I work for no one.
I can't be fired or demoted.
And I can afford a paycut in my salary because I work for nothing.
#
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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If you have the power and the money,
you can go on with the deception indefinitely.
That's the only way to explain the continued existence
of rabbis, imams, and popes.
*
Faith can remove only those mountains
that were raised by our own fears, ignorance, and prejudices.
*
Identity is revealed not only in what we say,
but also in what we choose not to say.
To the discerning ear
silence can speak louder than a thousand speeches
delivered by a thousand stentorian speechifiers.
*
The ambition of every Armenian dunghill is to be Mt. Ararat.
*
The torch of truth burns many asses.
*
From nature’s point of view,
chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion
than all the others put together.
#
Wednesday, December15, 2010
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WHAT I BELIEVE
******************************************
The aim of civilization is to civilize,
and the aim of religion is to make you a better person.
That's the positive view of reality.
To have a more balanced view however,
it is necessary to see the negative in the positive,
and vice versa.
Or to separate propaganda from fact.
*
Civilization is a jungle and religion has ruined many lives,
and i don't mean just the lives of heretics, infidels, and victims of religious wars (one of which lasted a hundred years), I mean...: see below.
*
If you are weak or defenseless,
you will be victimized by the strong (our history in a nutshell).
If you are young, you will be brainwashed by the old.
If you are innocent and inexperienced, you will be duped by the cunning.
If you are poor, you will be exploited by the rich.
And there will always be a rabbi, bishop, or imam
who will legitimize these aberrations in the name of the Almighty.
*
Benefactors and I share one important thing in common: generosity.
They are generous with money,
I am generous with unsolicited advice –
a kibitzer who doesn't know when to shut up.
*
“A man with an idea is my enemy,” said Napoleon.
A man with a thousand ideas must be a nightmare
to anyone with a Napoleonic complex.
*
I repeat myself because my aim is less to explain and educate
and more to deprogram the brainwashed.
*
A decent man will never murder another decent man.
But brainwash him to believe the other is his mortal enemy
and you will have a cold-blooded killer in your hands.
That's politics for you.
*
In our environment, selfless intellectual labor is so unpopular
that it might as well be some kind of self-inflicted insanity.
That may explain why I am a majority of one.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 16, 2010
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PHILOSOPHY
******************************
Our problem is not that we don't have the right answers,
but that, according Martin Heidegger, we don't even have the right questions.
What about Greek philosophy beginning with Socrates?
According to Plato, Socrates was better at asking questions
than at answering them;
and the most important questions he asked
remain unanswered to this day.
*
The real scandal is not that we don't yet have the right questions
but that so far we (including Heidegger himself who was a Nazi)
have been dependent on the answers of idiots.
*
Some of the best brains of the 20th century --
among them Russell, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein --
attempted to establish the rules of logic
but they failed to reach a consensus.
Assuming they will reach a consensus in fifty or a hundred years:
what are the chances that the world will abide by them?
*
If there can be one god,
why not a thousand gods? --
unless of course god is a fascist
whose most important number is One?
*
A fascist god is the only logical explanation
as to why so far mankind has been ruled
by so many bloodthirsty tyrants.
*
If god is a fascist, an atheist may be said to be
a member of the democratic opposition.
*
Nothing can be as dangerous as sanity in an insane world,
or honesty in a world run by swine.
#
Friday, December 17, 2010
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TRANSLATION
******************************
THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY FROM THE KING
************************************************** ****
BY AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN
**********************************
Once upon a time
A mighty king
Decided to see his realm
To visit and inspect
Every town and village.
Orders then he issued
And with him arose
A retinue of servants,
Soldiers, carriages, and horses.
*
Days later
As the crowds roared
And as His Royal Majesty
Made a triumphal entry
Through the gate
Of a distant town
A humble townsman
Made a sudden exit
From another gate
And he ran and he ran
Like a hunted beast he ran
Through forests and valleys
Through dark and uncharted regions.
*
“Hold it right there!”
Cried out a stranger
Standing in his path.
“What's the rush, tell me.
Is it the law you are trying to evade?
Are you a bandit perchance
Or maybe a cold-blooded killer?"
“I am innocent, I swear,”
Said the townsman,
“What bread I have eaten
I have earned with my own sweat.
I beg you, let me explain
Why I am running so.
His Majesty the King, you see,
Is visiting my town.
Now then, please understand,
What I am about to say.
His Royal Highness,
As everyone knows,
Is a man of great might
But his brains, alas
Is that of a child.
I have heard it said
That the further away
From such a king you are
The better off you are.”
*
After hearing this
The stranger let him pass.
And the townsman
Took to his heels once more
And he ran and he ran
Like a hunted beast he ran
Through forests and valleys
Through dark and uncharted regions.
(1935)
#
Friday, December 17, 2010
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SCENARIO
***************************
Before we were born, we were only inanimate scattered atoms. After we die, we will revert to our previous state, before we are born again and so on until the solar system burns itself out, the cosmos collapses, and is followed by another Big Bang.
*
In an infinite number of cycles there is always a remote possibility that there will be another Socrates, another Napoleon, another American Revolution, and another you. To ask whether this is good or bad is like asking is reality good or bad?
*
Life is a process in which the living organism sheds atoms with every breath it takes. So that the cycle or process I described above, also sometimes referred to as reincarnation, happens even when we are alive. The atoms we shed do not vanish but are constantly reassembled into other living organisms. The world as we know it is itself a living organism that constantly dies and is resurrected. The atoms we have shed are already in the living creatures around us, including the birds that migrate to distant continents. Parts of you now live in a South-American rain forest, an African jungle, and a Siberian river or lake.
*
What is the role of God in all his?
So far I have been dealing with scientifically verifiable facts. All questions dealing with God must be referred to metaphysicians or theologians which is a discipline I am not qualified to speak about, except to say that when two theologians disagree or contradict one another – and they almost always do – it is safer to dismiss both as charlatans.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 19, 2010
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DEGENERATION
************************************
Science tells us “most evolutionary change has been degenerative” (J.B.S. Haldane), and “natural selection does not guarantee progress” (Julian Huxley).
It follows, survival in itself is meaningless and may even be a liability and a visible as well as unmistakable symptom of moral degeneration.
*
Armenian psychology has evolved not in freedom but in subservience, which means, more cunning and less intelligence, more greed for material possessions and less interest in spiritual attainments. Hence our contempt for selfless intellectual labor, which is shared even by our intellectual class -- that is, our academics.
*
The hungry man thinks of food, the sexually starved man of women, the poor of luxuries, and the slave of freedom -- but only after he has satisfied his primary needs, that is, food and sex, by which time he may have acquired the burden of providing for a family and keeping up with the Joneses.
*
Like most oppressed people, the Armenian tends to see freedom as the freedom to oppress. Which is why Stalin was a more ruthless tyrant than Ivan the Terrible; the French Revolutionaries were more bloodthirsty than kings, and American capitalists chose to see no contradiction between the assertion “All men are created equal,” and slavery.
*
A fund-raiser's assessment of reality: if it can raise funds, it's good; if it can't, it's bad. You may have noticed that fund-raisers are neither vegetarian nor lean, but carnivorous fat slobs. Lean fund-raisers are only the front men. It never pays to underestimate the cunning of degenerates.
#
Monday, December 20, 2010
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DEGENERATION (II)
************************************
When things get from bad to worse and from worse to unbearable, you stay away from them. This is seen as a positive development by those in charge of things on the grounds that one less malcontent means one less potential trouble-maker.
*
Alienate, silence, and eliminate all potential trouble-makers and you end up with a bunch of dupes who will believe anyone who speaks in the name of God or with the blessing of someone who speaks in the name of God.
*
When two men speak in the name of God and they contradict each other, it's not because one of them is right and the other wrong but because both are about to do the Devil's work.
*
Remember, some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind (among them our own genocide) were committed in the name of God.
*
Belief systems are a dime a dozen and dupes are without number.
*
Dupes are not born but made and what makes them is a compulsory educational system.
*
Being a dupe is an addiction acquired at a very early age and as such difficult to kick.
*
In a world where everyone is brought up to believe his is the only true God, either there are no false Gods or there are no Gods.
*
Belief systems exist because there are deceivers and there are dupes. Now then, go ahead and say, my belief system is better than yours because my God is the only true God, my religious leaders are not deceivers, and I am not a dupe.
#
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
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CHOPPED LIVER
************************************
Throughout our long history we have fought and died by the thousand and by the million in the armies of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and more recently of the Soviet Union.
During World War II Armenians fought and died on both sides of the conflict.
In the 20th century alone Armenians have fought and died in Spain, France, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (with both the Soviets and the Yanks).
But when during World War I we were being massacred by the thousand and the million, no one lifted a finger to help us; and to this day some of the very same people in whose service we fought and died are unwilling to use the G word because it would be against the interests of Turks who are allies – unlike us, whose status apparently does not even rise above that of chopped liver.
That, my friends, is what it means to be weak.
And as if our weakness weren't enough of a burden and a curse, our leaders in their wisdom continue to divide us even as they speechify and sermonize on self-sacrifice, patriotism and solidarity.
How to explain these inconsistencies, paradoxes, contradictions, and oxymorons?
Many years ago, in the ghetto, I had a friend who used to brag about the fact that his father knew more Turkish swearwords than anyone else. When really angry, my friend said, his father would go on cursing forever and it was like music to the ears (my friend took violin lessons).
In one of his Prefaces G.B. Shaw speaks of a similar virtuoso, who it seems, one day lost everything he owned in an accident, and all he could say was: “I cannot do justice to this situation.”
Neither can I.
#
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
********************************************
CHOPPED LIVER (II)
************************************
It is a fruitless undertaking and a complete waste of time to argue with someone who has programmed himself to disagree with you.
A man who has brainwashed himself cannot be deprogrammed.
*
Religion has been a source of comfort and joy to many?
Yes, of course – but not to the countless victims, including those who were massacred in the name of Allah.
*
I am sure Germans felt more than just comfortable in the belief that they belonged to a superior race. In the same way that xxxs, Christians, and Muslims feel comfortable in the knowledge that theirs is the only True God and anyone who says otherwise is an infidel.
*
A belief system in itself and in isolation is harmless, of course. It becomes an instrument of the Devil only when it is organized and its leadership falls into the hands of arrogant, ambitious, and intolerant leaders.
*
Readers who are not satisfied with my arguments, urge me to reply to specific questions and to expand on others.
But everything I write is either a reply or an elaboration of a previous point.
As for answering all questions:
I cannot do that.
I don't have all the answers.
No one does – no one that is, except imams, popes, and rabbis, and if you believe them, you will believe anything, including the Big Lie that you know better on the grounds that your imam, bishop, or rabbi said so.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 23, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
Yanks speak of the American Dream.
We don't speak of the Armenian Dream
because we don't have one.
What we have in great abundance instead is nightmares.
*
Acknowledging blunders makes one humble, cautious, and wise.
Refusing to acknowledge them makes one arrogant, self-righteous, and stupid.
*
Whenever I see an anonymous insult
in a discussion forum on the Internet
I think he must be a bishop or the son of a bi-
shop.
*
The greatest misfortune that can befall a writer
is being born an Armenian.
The only benefit: no matter how many lies you expose,
you will never run out of them.
*
Emigration, alienation, assimilation, assassination:
they too are expressions of dissent.
*
Puzant Granian: “We have many national benefactors
but not a single national writer.”
*
Anonymous: “In his own home a mouse is a lion.”
*
Anonymous: “Patience is a tough tree that bears sweet fruit.”
*
Vahram Papazian: “The greater your worth
the greater the pleasure of the worthless to tear you down.”
#
Friday, December 24, 2010
********************************************
HUMBUG
************************************
The closer to the truth I get,
the more enemies I make.
*
For most of my life I thought my function as a writer was to inspire pride in my readers – even as I was degraded, insulted, lied to, and forced to flatter the colossal egos of megalomaniacal nonentities.
But then I saw the light and was born again as a human being,
after which things got from bad to worse.
There are no happy endings in Armenian literature.
If it's not TB, it's Turks;
if it's not Turks, it's commissars;
and if its not commissars
it's our own Ottomanized and Sovietized partisans and panchoonies.
*
I don't write to be controversial.
I write as a human being for readers who have shed their status as dehumanized dupes.
*
Here on earth money may perform miracles,
but in hell it can't even buy an ice cube.
*
Is there life after death?
The answer to that question is so valuable that its price is death.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Friday, December 25, 2010
********************************************
HUMBUG (II)
************************************
One of the professed aims of all believers is to make the world a better place, but they succeed only in butchering one another. You may have an explanation for this, but I don't.
*
May I state here and now and once and for all that I too am a believer, and I believe in the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible, and categorically reject anyone and everyone who says he speaks in the name of a comprehensible and knowable God.
*
We are told to judge a tree by its fruit. If we judge the Book by the number of innocent men and women it has victimized, we shall have to conclude that it is a tree not of knowledge and understanding but of prejudice, ignorance, intolerance, cruelty, exploitation, deception, and crimes against humanity.
*
And now from the sublime to the ridiculous: in all my life as a working stiff I have received four paychecks that have bounced and all four were from Armenian editors and publishers – that is to say, by the very same individuals who shape perceptions of reality.
This is either a meaningless coincidence or one pregnant with meaning. If the second, we have two choices: to cover up or to deny the reality of this meaning or to confront it.
I am all for confronting it.
*
Denialism is an aberration that consists in rejecting the reality of verifiable facts in the name of patriotism. It follows, both Armenian and Turkish denialism spring from the same source: namely, Ottomanism. Or as Nixon once put it: “When the President does it, it's not illegal.”
*
Once upon a time there was a mighty Persian king who hated the Greeks so much that he ordered one of his servants to say “Remember the Greeks” with every meal he served.
I see myself as that servant who with everything he writes he says, “Remember our crooks.”
*
I have seen the light and it is pitch-black darkness.
*
Roald Dahl's famous last words, “Ow, F*ck!”
#
Sunday, December 26, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
If you want to understand your fellow men,
their belief systems or religions is as good a starting point as any.
To begin with, there are “the people of the Book”
(meaning the Old Testament)
who identify themselves (in chronological order)
as xxxs, Christians, and Muslims,
and who say they believe in the same God
but call one another infidels and heretics.
And then there are Buddhists who consider
all talk of God, messiahs, and prophets as so much stuff and nonsense.
If you can reconcile these inconsistencies and contradictions
you may – repeat, may – begin to understand your fellow men;
or more reasonably, to conclude that
trying to understand them is a waste of time.
#
Monday, December 27, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
We speak and behave as if we had nothing to do with our misfortunes, whereas I think we had everything to do with them.
*
When theory meets reality, one of them is bound to lose, and it's never reality.
*
When I committed my greatest blunders, it didn't even occur to me to think that I may be doing the wrong thing.
*
We are not what we pretend to be; we may even be the exact opposite.
*
The negative should be covered up? That would be like treating a disease by ignoring its symptoms.
*
Just because our chains are invisible it doesn't mean they don't exist.
*
To be an Armenian means to be the citizen of an alien empire. Fifteen centuries ago we could speak of Armenian identity and culture. Today we can only speak of a culture that has been thoroughly bastardized by alien influences – among them Ottoman, Soviet, and American.
*
There is more merit in being a humble human being than a proud Armenian. He who speaks of pride deals in lies.
*
An Armenian is more interested in settling scores than in discussing issues.
*
We pretend to understand others better than we understand ourselves.
#
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
No one is immune to deception.
If smart men with the best education money can buy
and at the top of their game can be taken in
by the likes of Wall Street CEOs and Madoff,
who dares to assert immunity?
*
Trust a man if you must
but only if he speaks against his own interests and is dirt poor.
*
Philosophy after Plato,
music after Bach,
art after Leonardo:
what I see is not progress but degeneration.
Contemporary art is to me as phony as Madoff.
*
Turks are convinced they have been
misunderstood, misrepresented and maligned by the infidel West.
The Armenian genocide explains nothing because
to begin with it never happened.
What really happened was that
troublemakers within the Empire
(among them Armenians) started it
by assassinating Turks
and raping and massacring innocent Turkish civilians.
Everything that followed is now shrouded in the fog of war.
All talk of genocide is therefore politically motivated,
and politics is a filthy business
with one notable exception: Kemal.
*
To the overwhelming majority of well-educated and smart Turks,
Kemal is a combination of Washington, Lincoln, and Mahatma Gandhi.
#
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
What keeps me going is propaganda.
I am like the plumber whose business card said:
“Your sh*t is my bread and butter.”
*
There are so many contradictory belief systems
that the first line of every credo should read:
“I believe in lies.”
*
My definition of lie:
“Any verbal expression that legitimizes intolerance
and ultimately war and massacre.”
*
No one has ever heard of a society
that has survived and prospered
because its leadership silenced dissenting voices.
*
Me a pessimist? No way!
It takes a large amount of foolish optimism
and colossal arrogance to aim at success
when far better men than myself have failed.
*
My greatest achievement so far:
I have survived fifty Canadian winters.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 30, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
What have we learned from our Soviet experience and the Genocide?
As far as I can see, nothing.
When it comes to free speech, our revolutionaries in the Diaspora are as intolerant as our commissars in the Homeland.
In their eyes silencing dissent is not a crime, dissent is.
They'd rather be wrong their way than right in someone else's.
All they care about is maintaining and whenever possible increasing their power even if it means hoodwinking, bamboozling, flimflamming, and brainwashing innocent civilians and their defenseless children.
In their thinking (or unthinking) when truth (that is, their ideology) speaks, lies should be silenced, in the same way that when the wise (that is, the boss) speaks, fools should hold their tongue.
*
“From the crucifixion of Christ to the excommunication of Spinoza: what have you learned from history?” I once asked my old friend, the rabbi.
His reply:
“Who are you to tell us how to deal with our criminals?”
Spoken like a true commissar and a revolutionary.
#
Friday, December 31, 2010
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
To those who hunger for solutions to our problems,
may I remind them that
great reformers like Jesus, Mohammad, and Marx,
who provided solutions to mankind's problems
and changed the world,
did not always change it for the better.
*
If the Kingdom of God is within us,
so are the solutions to all our problems.
*
The blame-game is not a solution,
neither is lamentation –
and that's what Turcocentrism is --
endless and fruitless talk of Turks and massacres.
*
Turcocentrism is the absence of all ideas
and the denial of all solutions.
In that sense it is more pathology than ideology –
a pathology that says we are beyond criticism
and free speech is our only enemy
(which happens to be the official Turkish line too).
*
I suggest we don't need reformers.
What we really need is a good look at ourselves in the mirror.
*
It takes great courage to see ourselves as we are.
*
Speaking of solutions:
Talaat and Atatürk, and before them Sultan Abdulhamid II,
had one for the Turks.
So did Hitler for the Germans.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Saturday, January 1, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
We search for meaning in a meaningless world
and when we can't find it, we invent it
driven by the same urge that a drowning man
is said to cling to a serpent.
*
Life is made unbearable by ignoramuses
who make a comfortable living
by pretending to know better.
*
For every economist who says one thing
there will be another who says the exact opposite.
*
Mankind has always been at the mercy of a majority of dupes
and a minority of flim-flam artists
whose number one concern is number one.
*
No one has ever seen the mind of God
or the soul of man but theologians and psychologists
pretend to understand and explain both.
*
Socrates and Jesus did not write a single line
but ten thousand books have been written about them.
*
Logicians don't agree on the rules of logic
and philosophers can't explain why things exist.
*
Dupes of the world unite,
the light you pretend to have seen
is only the mirage of a black hat in a dark room.
#
Sunday, January 2, 2011
********************************************
MEMOS TO OUR WRITERS
************************************
MEMO I:
*********************
If you are paid by the line,
resist the temptation of being long-winded.
*
MEMO II:
**********************
If you deal in propaganda,
be honest enough not to pretend to believe everything you say.
*
MEMO III:
*************************
If you are a Turcocentric ghazetaji
or a member of the Genocide mafia
(i.e. academics whose field is massacres)
it would enhance your credibility if once or twice a year
you were to admit that not all Turks are bloodthirsty savages
and not all Armenians are civilized.
*
MEMO IV:
**********************
If you are a brown-noser
have the decency not to say it smells like roses.
#
Monday, January 3, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
ON REWRITING HISTORY
***********************************
We rewrite history for a number of reasosns, among them:
to cover up blunders;
to misrepresent military defeats as moral victories;
to prepare the nation for another war;
to play the favorite sport of nationalist historians
and their dupes – namely, the blame-game.
To project a better image of ourselves,
and since none of us is perfect,
we can all use some cosmetic surgery.
*
JUDGING MEN
*****************************
If we judge men not by their words but by their actions,
how do we judge men like, say, our activists,
who do nothing but speechify and raise funds?
*
SCAPEGOATS
**********************
Turks believe Kurds to be disguised Armenians
in the same way that Egyptians today
believe recent shark attack in the Red Sea
are the actions of Mossad agents
disguised as man-eating sharks.
Even as we say and repeat all men are brothers,
we fabricate ten thousand lies, fallacies, and misconceptions
to prove that most men are our enemies,
including our own brothers.
*
UNSPOKEN AMBITION
******************************
The secret ambition of all rulers
is to have subjects who are such simpletons that
they will believe everything they are told.
To our bosses, bishops, and benefactors,
a thinking Armenian might as well be as dangerous
as a bloodthirsty Turk with a yataghan
let loose in a crowd of unarmed giaours.
*
THE CONSTITUTION
**************************************
In America even criminals use the Constitution to their advantage.
Is that option available to the innocent in Armenia?
More questions:
Do we have a constitution?
And if we do, how much of it is empty verbiage –
is it 99% or 98%?
#
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
The world as we know it
and the life as we experience it
cannot be the beginning and end of all things.
What makes me say that is neither faith nor logic
but wishful thinking.
A gloomy view of life and death?
Maybe, but also the only one I can entertain
without running the risk of making a damn fool of myself.
*
The two theological assertions that make sense to me are:
“Of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates) and
“The kingdom of God is within you” (Jesus).
*
Ten thousand speeches and ten thousand sermons
delivered by the greatest speechifiers and sermonizers of all time
are not worth a single statement by an honest man.
*
How to recognize an honest man?
Both Socrates and Jesus were dirt poor
and were condemned to death by bullies
parading as political and religious leaders.
*
And now from the sublime to the ridiculous:
“Our political parties have been of no political use to us.
Their greatest enemy is free speech” (Zarian).
That to me is the only assertion worth making about Armenians.
The rest is propaganda.
#
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
For a thousand years we dreamt of freedom;
and now that we are free,
we have succeeded only in turning a blessing to a curse.
And this is especially true of the Diaspora.
*
By emphasizing one aspect of an occurrence and ignoring another,
one can speak the truth and lie at the same time.
*
Loyalty for the powerful by the powerless
is the foundation of fascism.
*
Under fascism free speech is defined
as the right to recycle propaganda.
*
Patriotism does not mean supporting the leadership
or being subservient to it.
It is this very misconception that is at the root of all massacres.
*
Fascism may be abolished but fascists live.
*
Marxism in a nutshell:
There is a slave in all of us.
The capitalist is a slave to his capital
as the exploited or unemployed worker is to his poverty.
And both are slaves to dead matter.
*
If there is a God and He is Almighty,
I can't imagine Him to be cruel.
And yet, look at history.
God may be incomprehensible but history is not.
*
When I read a bad writer
I can't help thinking that either his prose is unreadable
or I suffered a stroke in my sleep.
#