notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 6, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
In a recent issue of LE POINT (Paris: December 2, 2010) I read that Mario Monicelli, one of my favoried Italian directors, has committed suicide (“by defenestration from a hospital window”) at the age of 95.
*
In the same issue there is talk of a contemporary Syrian poetess by the name of Maram al-Masri who has translated into French (from the Arabic) a collection of her own verse titled SOULS WITH NAKED FEET. She is identified as a social worker in the suburbs of Paris and her poems are said to be testimonies of “abused, insulted, raped, sequestered, and abandoned women.”
I have retranslated from the French two samples of her poems.
*
First marriage at 16.
Eight children at 27.
First divorce at 30.
*
Why does my dad
beat my mom?
She doesn't know
how to iron shirts.
When I grow up
I will know
how to iron shirts.
*
I wish we had more poets like al-Masri as opposed to the kind of vodanavorjis who produced Bolshevik-chauvinist inspired nonsense that earned Sylva Kaputikian her Stalin Prize, or the hermetic verbiage by the likes of Krikor Beledian and Garo Armenian.
*
“The demonization of Israel – will it ever end?” writes Bernard-Henri Levy in a commentary in the same issue. xxxs, he writes, are the only people in the history of mankind who have known nothing but totalitarian and tyrannical regimes but who have freely chosen a democratic form of government from the very beginning.
#
Friday, January 7, 2011
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ON FAITH AND RELATED ATROCITIES
************************************************** **
Certainties driven by faith are illusions (a euphemism for lies).
*
It should be a crime punishable by law to say or imply,
my imam is a man of God,
but your pope is a baloney artist, or vice versa.
*
Plato believed in the existence of universal ideas.
Aristotle, who was his student, did not.
Schopenhauer believed Hegel to be
one of the greatest charlatans that ever lived.
Marx (who changed the political map of the world) was a Hegelian.
This may suggest, charlatans enjoy a greater degree of credibility
than honest men.
*
It is safe to assume that whenever a man begins a sentence with the words
“I believe,” he either deceives himself or is about to deceive others.
*
Othello believed Desdemona to have been unfaithful to him.
Result: after murdering her, he committed suicide.
More recently, our own revolutionaries believed
the Great Powers of the West would never allow the Ottoman authorities to massacre unarmed Armenian civilians.
So much so that at one point they even challenged the Sultan to massacre.
How could they have thought to be 100% right
when they were in fact 100% wrong?
One way to answer that question is to say that
they were blinded by faith or rather by their own b.s.
I also suspect they were not and could not have been 100% sure
because they had a Plan B for themselves.
Which may suggest that even when deceivers believe in their own lies,
there is always a residue of unspoken doubt in them.
Hence the old sayings “Idol-makers do not believe in idols,”
and “Even the Pope doubts his faith seven times a day.”
*
For many centuries millions of people believed kings ruled by the grace of God.
Man, we are told, has created and believed in ten thousand gods.
In a historic context, faith cannot be said to have been an asset to mankind
but the most misleading and dangerous liability.
*
We should teach ourselves to say,
“Because I believe it, it cannot be true.”
*
Instead of saying what I believe is true,
and what you believe is a lie,
we should teach ourselves to say,
“We are both dupes at the mercy of deceivers
who are themselves dupes
of their own illusions, arrogance, stupidity, and greed for power.”
*
We should teach ourselves to say,
“I believe that I believe but I don't believe” (Sartre),
and “The function of philosophy is to introduce doubt
where there are only certainties” (Bertrand Russell).
*
Finally, if you say “If all belief systems are wrong,
so must be your own unbelief.”
To which I can only reply:
“Like fire and water, faith is a good servant but a bad master.”
#
Friday, January 7, 2011
********************************************
QUESTIONS I ASK MYSELF
************************************************** **
You have been writing for three decades now:
what have you accomplished?
Nothing.
Why go on then?
In the name of consistency.
The era of messiahs may be over
but they go on waiting, why?
In the name of consistency rather than hope.
Why do you keep writing about Armenians?
I don't write about Armenians,
I write against myself and dupes in general –
the world is full of them.
As I see it, our choice is between being objective about ourselves
or being exterminated by either “red” or “white”massacre
(that is, alienation and assimilation).
*
ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS
******************************************
Anonymous: “A clear conscience is a soft pillow.”
*
Vahram Papazian: “To be indifferent to crime is to conspire with criminals.”
*
ON THE ARMENIAN IDENTITY
***********************************
The Armenian identity
is an extension of the Armenian experience
and the Armenian experience
is a collective possession
as opposed to an individual acquisition.
None of us is in a position to assert,
“My experience is pure gold, yours counterfeit.”
Every Armenian – from the most assimilated
(who doesn’t even want to identify himself as an Armenian)
to the most dedicated chauvinist –
may be said to be the custodian
of a facet of the Armenian experience and identity.
And some day if and when we are allowed
to cross-examine assimilated Armenians,
we may discover that their alienation was a direct result
of the fact that at one time or another they were seen by
so-called authentic Armenians
as deviations from the norm.
It follows, self-assessed authentic Armenians
may well be at the very root of all our problems –
from dogmatism and intolerance
to tribalism and Ottomanism.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Saturday, January 8, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
The shortest book in the world:
HUMAN RIGHTS IN ARMENIAN HISTORY.
*
Pragmatism always asks: What is the practical or cash value of an idea?
If nothing or negative, it may be safely ignored. Hence the official American reluctance to use the G word. The “cash” value of Armenian friendship is less than the value of Turkish loyalty in the Middle East.
*
Armenian academics are quintessential pragmatists. They would never write a single line against God and capital – make it, Capital and god; and when I say god, I mean of course the god of imams and bishops.
*
What if the first thing we say after we die is neither “I was right,” or “I was wrong,” but nothing?
*
We have nothing to fear from God, but everything to fear from men who speak in His name.
*
For a thousand years we were not allowed to shape our destiny. We know now that our so-called declaration of independence changed nothing.
*
Because for more than a thousand years we have been abused by alien tyrannies, we assume abuse and tyranny to be an integral part of the human condition, very much like death and taxes.
*
Whoever said “friends are God's apology for relatives,” knew what he was saying. Whenever I think of my relatives, I look forward to Alzheimer's.
#
Monday, January 10, 2011
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THINGS THEY DON'T TEACH IN SCHOOLS
************************************************** **
Real education begins
after you drop out or graduate.
*
God is an absentee landlord.
We remind ourselves of this fact whenever we say
“Our Father, Who art in heaven.”
*
You may not be Samson
and she may not be Delilah
but the only thing
you will get from her for nothing
is a haircut.
*
Gandhi on the British in India:
“A satanic force.”
Churchill on Gandhi:
“A malignant subversive fanatic,”
“a thoroughly evil force,”
and “the most successful humbug.”
*
Even our betters don't always know better,
and sometimes what they pretend to know
may well be worse than ignorance.
#
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
A headline in my morning paper reads:
“Oldest known winery unearthed in Armenia.”
We now have anoither thing to brag about:
we are the offspring of winos.
*
I was brought up to respect my elders and I did,
until I became an elder myself.
*
To speak of God amounts to translating an incomprehensible text
into a non-existent language.
*
To judge a religion by its scriptures
or an ideology by its political platform
is as absurd as judging a man by his intentions
as opposed to his actions.
Religions and ideologies should be judged by their history.
*
Every time a man speaks the truth
he makes a thousand enemies;
that’s because for every bitter truth
there are a thousand sweet lies
and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.
#
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
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I MAY HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE...
************************************************** **
...But it bears repeating.
*
A revolution in which the revolutionaries survive
but the people perish by the million.
*
A status quo in which the offspring
of the very same revolutionaries
now say to the offspring of the victims:
“We promise to get even with the Turks
provided we have your financial support.”
*
“In politics,” it has been said,
“lies are called promises.”
*
In the Homeland, rule by mafia.
In the Diaspora, rule by fund-raisers.
*
A nation of sheep
deserves wolves as leaders.
*
Our collective IQ is negative.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 13, 2011
********************************************
ON SUBSERVIENCE
************************************************** **
Once, a few years ago, when i pointed out to some children what they were doing was dangerous, I heard one of them saying, “You can't tell me what to do, you are not my father.”
What a difference, I thought, between their ways and ours.
I was brought up to respect my elders even when I did not respect them, even when I sensed they were throwing their weight around -- perhaps because I didn't know – I was never taught to see the line that separates respect from subservience.
Respect is earned.
Subservience is imposed by the powerful over the weak, or by bullies over cowards.
*
In the early chapters of memoirs by xxxish celebrities in America mention is invariably made of bullies who insulted, humiliated, and beat them up on the grounds that they were the offspring of Christ-killers.
I spent my childhood in an Armenian ghetto in Greece and I too was beaten up by bullies – not Greek bullies but Armenian bullies.
When I grew up I dismissed and forgot these painful early experiences because I was taught to believe Armenians were civilized, compassionate, and innocent victims of bloodthirsty barbarians. I even wrote a dozen books recycling this propaganda line.
*
I know now that we are not what we pretend to be.
I also know now why Zarian said, “Our political parties have been of no political use to us, their greatest enemy is free speech.”
Free speech is our enemy because it threatens to expose our “betters” as bullies and ourselves as cowards.
The truth is, we have been abused and intimidated into subservience for such a long time by alien bullies that we assume intimidation and subservience to be an integral part of the human condition.
If I have said this before, it bears repeating.
#
Friday, January 14, 2011
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SEMIRAMIS
************************************************** **
There was a time when I wrote nothing but fiction.
That's when I worked in factories, department stores,
and insurance companies and came into contact
with a rich variety of characters.
It was at the head office of a large insurance company
that I met and worked with a foul-mouthed young divorcee
who was fond of delivering lines like
“Let me sit in your lap and we'll talk about the first thing that comes up.”
She inspired me to write a novella titled SEMIRAMIS
which was accepted for publication in an American periodical
but never saw the light of day
because the periodical went out of business.
When I sent it to a literary agent in New York,
I received a letter that said in effect:
“The story you have submitted is better suited
for university periodicals with which we don't deal.”
Later when I submitted it to ARARAT,
a literary quarterly published in New York,
the editor rejected it with a single line that stated
“We don't publish pornography.”
All this happened decades ago
and I lost track of my real-life Semiramis.
As for the editor, he died three years ago,
may the Good lord have mercy on his soul.
#
Saturday, January 15, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
A headline in this morning's paper reads:
“Tunisian president flees amid rioting.”
That will never happen in Armenia for two reasons:
old men, women, and children don't riot;
like Turks, the Russians will exterminate the people
before they even consider submitting to their will.
*
A writer conducts a war on three fronts:
against the prejudices of the ignorant and brainwashed masses;
against the diabolical cunning of the competition;
and against the ruthless intolerance of those in power.
*
Any day now I expect a new translation of the Old Testament
to have a footnote identifying the Serpent in the Garden in GENESIS
as a Mossad agent.
*
One of the worst mistakes an Armenian can make
is to confuse Turkish venom with Armenian voki.
*
Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus.
Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs.
*
Prejudices are stonewalls erected to obstruct the path of reason.
#

[jgk3]

Re: elegy

Ara, have you read Marc Nichanian?

[arabaliozian]

notes and comments

Sunday, January 16, 2011
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VOODOO
************************************************** **
Don't believe everything you read in the papers or books -- including holy scriptures. Likewise, don't believe everything you are told by men who pretend to know better including so-called experts because for every expert there will be another who will say the exact opposite.
*
There is patriotism and there is voodoo patriotism.
Voodoo patriotism may be defined as the fallacy that says “My country, right or wrong,” which is not patriotism but fascism, and fascism is not based on political science (an oxymoron if there ever was one) but on voodoo.
*
We wallow in superstitions of all kinds and call it science or faith. That's because mankind has not yet emerged from its primitive state and finds voodoo more accessible and flattering to its powers of comprehension than science, which is based on verifiable facts reached by objective judgment.
*
When two experts in the same field contradict each other and make no effort to compromise and reach a consensus, laymen may be justified in concluding they are both engaged in voodoo.
*
There is a strong element of voodoo in all organized religions.
The epidemic of child-molesting priests is an extension of the superstitious belief that as men of God, clergymen can do no wrong.
*
When capitalists and communists disagree and make no effort to compromise and reach a consensus, it is safe to assume their economic theories are more voodoo than science.
*
All organized religions believe all other religions to be voodoo and they are all right.
*
Our present economic malaise is a result not of real economic theories but of voodoo economics.
*
The objective and irrefutable truth is, imams, popes, and rabbis care more about their own powers and privileges than about God, perhaps because deep down somewhere they know God to be beyond their or anyone else's reach.
#
Monday, January 17, 2011
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DIARY
************************************************** **
Reading Thomas Mann's DIARY 1918-1939.
His observations on his fellow Germans could also apply to us.
“The German desire for legend and for myth, which runs counter to truth and counter to intellectual honesty.”
*
“The German spirit wallows in the manure of myth.”
*
“The Germans' hatred of truth.”
*
“We no longer have real history, but only mock semblances and degenerate epilogues, counterfeit history.”
*
“...hatred for common sense and progress.”
*
His comment on C.G. Jung applies to our own academics:
“He is an example of the irresistible tendency of people's thinking to bend itself to the times. He swims with the current. He is intelligent, but not admirable.”
*
“Charming young chaps” are as ubiquitous in Mann's diary as little girls in Nabokov's novels.
#
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
********************************************
More Quotations from
Thomas Mann's DIARY 1918-1939.
************************************************** **
On Beethoven's MISSA SOLEMNIS:
“Great beauty of the Sanctus; the rest inaccessible.”
*
On Peguy:
“A spiritual forerunner of fascism.”
*
On Christianity:
“An abject and servile religion of the lowly.”
*
On a novel by Sinclair Lewis:
"Too horribly true to life and therefore very powerful.”
*
On Spengler:
“A hyena of history.”
*
On “an ugly anonymous” letter:
“The vile depths to which the world will perhaps descend...”
*
Only one very brief reference to Hegel, and three references to Verdi's REQUIEM (“great music”).
*
ON MIRACLES
****************************
Ten thousand biblical miracles don't impress me as much as the existence of the universe does.
*
ON GOD
*********************************
Since theologians have so far (after two millennia) failed to reach a consensus,
it is safe to assume that only God is qualified to speak about God.
#
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
There is only one issue about which we are not divided: Turks.
We see them as bloodthirsty barbarians,
they see themselves as avenging angels.
Who is right?
*
Our revolutionaries see themselves as heroes,
Zarian saw them as useless cowards who are afraid of free speech.
What a book one could write on the dangers of self-assessment!
*
If we judge Christians or Muslims by their holy scriptures and sermons,
they stand for love, tolerance and compassion.
And yet, there is more intolerance and hatred in their history.
*
Love and hatred come from a deeper place than commandments and scriptures. One does not have to be a psychoanalyst or a philosopher to see that
“white man speaks with a forked tongue,”
and sermons only “add hypocrisy to our previous list vices” (Bertrand Russell).
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 20, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
Some of the most progressive and civilized democracies in the West
share the same problem in common:
corruption in high places.
But if we are to believe our Turcocentric ghazetajis,
Turks are our only problem – a problem
they think they can solve by barking at them – a solution
that after one hundred years
has not generated a single red cent or a single inch of soil.
*
Insults are my most reliable source of inspiration.
Anger is my favorite muse.
*
Imagine a blind man trying to enlighten an audience with 20/20 vision:
that's what it feels like writing for Armenians.
*
The central concern of our leadership is not to lead
but to shield their fraction of the community from reality.
*
Born and raised as a subservient underdog,
I don't have any sympathy or respect for top dogs or leaders.
To me they are no better than white trash.
Dealing with them is almost like experiencing
what it must have been like living in the USSR and the Ottoman Empire.
*
I've had it with diplomatic double-talk.
Since I have nothing,
what can I possibly lose?
*
More lines from Mann's DIARY:
********************************************
“Read Brecht with increasing distaste.”
*
“Young American men not particularly appealing.”
*
“Impotent hatred must not consume me.”
#
Friday, January 21, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
Where money enters, temptation is sure to follow;
and where there is temptation, sooner or later someone is sure to give in to it;
and when someone gives in, others are sure to follow.
This is as true of financial institution on Wall Street as of the Vatican.
I would like to be part of a movement
in which not only money does not change hands,
but also money-changers are unceremoniously driven out.
*
Claims of uniqueness are suspect
because they are invariably made to advertise assets,
and where assets are advertised, liabilities are sure to be covered up.
*
Never underestimate the ruthless cunning of top dogs.
What makes them who they are is not love of truth
but a propensity to lie and deceive.
*
Intolerance of dissent means tolerance of lies.
*
Where there is no free speech,
speech will contaminated with lies.
Where there is freedom to lie,
there will be no freedom to speak the truth.
*
More lines from Mann's DIARY:
“Some music. Charmed by pieces by Rossini and Chopin.”
“The blindness of these people [Germans] is monstrous.”
“The fifteen or sixteen capitalist arch-villains in the world who call the tune.”
In a 1939 entry: “Einstein visited.”
Not a word on what was said. Was it small talk? Somehow I have trouble imagining Mann and Einstein engaged in nothing but small talk at a time when the world was on the brink of another war.
#

Saturday, January 22, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
How to recognize a killer?
If he speaks like a commissar, he qualifies.
*
How to recognize a Turcocentric ghazetaji?
If he quotes Talaat and Hitler more often than Naregatsi and Hitler,
he is one.
*
Whenever I am accused of negativity, I am tempted to ask:
Are you a fund-raiser?
Do you have political ambitions?
If no, who brainwashed you?
*
Our problem is not (in Donald Rumsfeld's words)
“known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns,”
but “knowns” whose existence we refuse to acknowledge.
*
If Armenia had been an American-style democracy,
immediately after the Genocide there would have been hearings
in search for answers to the question:
What went wrong?
Who miscalculated?
Who, beside Talaat, must be held responsible?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

i avoid armenian academics like the plague.

[jgk3]

Re: elegy

i avoid armenian academics like the plague.

That's funny, this one reminded me of your criticism of our historiography, he explains the crisis Armenians faced when they turned away from Zoroastrianism and adopted Christianity, along with Greek and Assyrian priests with their incomprehensible liturgies, and how the literate and royal classes addressed this problem by creating the Armenian alphabet, forging together an Armenian literate language for the first time. The Arshakunis who began this would finally lose their dynasty in 428 once and for all, and this prompted the leadership of Armenia to use the language as a political medium for reinforcing their grasp over Armenian lands, building churches everywhere and giving its people a new identity, a reaction of equal intensity to the Sassanid desire to reinforce its sect of Zoroastrianism over all her lands. It is from this climate that the desire of Armenians to identify with their myths, religion and standard language was born.

[Odar]

Re: elegy

What do you mean, that he's an entirely mythological figure, or that his relevance has been largely exaggerated?

[Tali]

Re: notes and comments

That's intriguing.
I wonder, have you read John Locke's the Second Treatise on Government? I'm interested in your opinions on Chapters 2, 3, and 19.