notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 15, 2010
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UNDERSTANDING HISTORY
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Some of our ablest writers lacked the faculty of understanding history or of seeing “the other side of the hill” (to use a military metaphor) or “the angularity of time” (Sartre). Face to face with history, even our realists remained romantics at heart. They were more influenced by French literature and less by real events that made headlines in the international press. I am not talking of prophetic insight or vision but simply of deciphering the writing on the wall. I am talking of a myopia so advanced that it might as well have been blindness.
Consider Zohrab as a case in point, without any doubt one of our most sophisticated, experienced, and politically savvy observers of the Ottoman scene. And yet, instead of warning his readers of the coming catastrophe, he wrote fiction about adulterous women, golden-hearted prostitutes, and the death of a salesman. He wrote a pamphlet about the Hamidian massacres, true, but he saw them not as preludes to a greater tragedy but as aberrations that if exposed may not be repeated. His naïve faith in the Ottoman power structure was such that he even saved the life of the future architect of the Genocide by risking his own. If one were to compile profiles of famous Armenian dupes, surely Zohrab would qualify as the greatest of them all.
As for Baronian and Odian: they wrote more about the moral bankruptcy of the Armenian community and ignored the apocalypse looming on the horizon.
If the sins of our intellectuals were sins of omission, those of our political leadership were sins of commission. Instead of doing their utmost to prevent the coming catastrophe, they did the exact opposite: they provoked it.
History repeats itself today. Our academics and pundits prefer to speak of past massacres and are blind to the “spitak chart” (white slaughter) or alienation in the Diaspora and mass exodus from the Homeland.
It seems to me, we worry too much about our identity and not enough about our soul, and “what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 16, 2010
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NOTES & COMMENTS
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Talaat and Stalin murdered two generations of our best writers. We cannot forget that. But it seems we have forgotten or we don't even like to mention the fact that there is more than one way to slaughter a writer and we are not as innocent as we pretend to be.
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There are two kinds of Armenians: those who think and those who recycle propaganda. Those who recycle propaganda speak louder and they are never wrong; and armed with that conviction, they persecute and silence anyone who dares to think for himself. Examples from the past: writers from Abovian to Zarian.
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You can always rely on an Armenian to justify his selfish interests with a verbal avalanche of noble principles and ideals. In the words of a friend: "After fattening themselves on the blood of the innocent and the helpless, our Count Draculas are good at delivering lectures on the virtues of vegetarianism."
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Celine was a notorious anti-Semite but he is viewed as a great writer even by some xxxs (among them Philip Roth) because he had enough hatred in him to cover most of mankind, including his fellow countrymen, about whom he had this to say: “Vicious and spineless, raped, robbed, gutted, and always halfwits. That's France and that's the French.”
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Beethoven suffered horribly over his deafness, but I doubt if anyone listening to his music thinks of it. I don't. The things that mean most to us may not even register on someone else's consciousness.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 17, 2010
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MISTAKES
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Because I was not a gentleman, I assumed everybody else was. That was a big mistake.
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If instead of ten thousand belief systems mankind had adopted the Socratic dictum “The only thing I know is that I don't know,” or “Of the gods we know nothing,” history would not have been an endless horror story.
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The two most frequently abused words in all languages are “I think.” When a brainwashed idiot or, for that matter, a man of faith (but I repeat myself) begins a sentence with the words “I think,” he should be interrupted and informed that perjury is a serious criminal offense.
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The exercise of power over the powerless is an insult. Hence Hamlet's phrase “the insolence of office.” As for law and order: I am reminded of the Roman saying: “They make a desert and call it peace.”
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No matter how you describe me, there will be some truth in it. But this is true of all men. We are not a single person but a crowd. There is a particle of all men, both dead and alive, in all of us.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 18, 2010
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INFIDELS
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Muslims call us infidels. But, it seems to me, the real infidels are Muslims who slaughter other Muslims, and I am not talking about Muslim warriors killing other Muslim warriors but brainwashed fanatics killing innocent women and children.
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Imams share with our bishops and bosses the false assumption that to divide and rule might as well be synonymous. They are too blind to see that their real enemy is themselves; and that a war fought on two fronts against a united enemy is doomed to end in defeat.
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Let others speak of the long arm of the law. Ours, which was short to begin with, has been amputated.
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Winston Churchill: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
Where were our “rough men” when we needed them most?
Did we ever have them?
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The fewer the number of “rough men,” the greater the number of sermonizers, speechifiers, and ghazetajis.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 19, 2010
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REFLECTIONS
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We live as though we will never die
and when death knocks on the door
we pretend it's Beethoven's 5th.
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You want to know why I stress the negative?
Because whenever I take a closer look at a positive,
it reveals itself as propaganda.
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There are no shortcuts to Golgotha.
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Civil wars too are fought in the name of patriotism.
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In theory – truth.
In practice – lies.
A great deal is lost in translation.
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The difference between mathematics and life is that
in life to solve a problem very often means
creating more of them.
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Literature: Art irritating life.
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Life is a harsh taskmaster and being a fool
is a luxury no one,
not even the most powerful man on earth,
can afford.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 21, 2010
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AUTISM
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There is an element of autism in even the mildest form of nationalism or patriotism, and autism is defined as “a state of mind characterized by daydreaming, hallucinations, and disregard of external reality.”
It is autism that leads some people to believe they belong to a superior race or they are God's chosen people.
It was autism that led our revolutionaries in the Ottoman empire to believe we were invulnerable because the Great Powers of the West were on our side.
It is autism (what else?) that makes us believe we are survivors par excellence. So what if the best perished and it is the worst that survived?
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Since I have been a dupe most of my life, I don't particularly care to be duped even if it is for the enhancement of my own self-esteem or for some other nebulous or poorly defined term whose aim is to make me disregard or ignore my perception of reality, and reality tells me in no uncertain terms that God doesn't choose, men do, and when men do the choosing, they invariably choose themselves.
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[SevSpitak]

Re: elegy

hahaha baliozian. That's a sick last name I'd like to have. Translate that to english: Sledgehammerian.

Imagine you become a member of a neo-ASALA organization XD
"Balyoz bizi bastirdi! (Sledgehammer smashed us)" on the front page of hurriyet!

Sorry, off topic. Don't hate me for this.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 22, 2010
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COMPROMISE
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To reach a consensus, one must compromise, and compromise has been defined as “the introduction of inconsistency to closed minds.”
The key qualifier here is “closed minds.”
Another symptom of closed minds is to think of criticism as negative and of propaganda as positive. Or to view political speeches and flattery as patriotic and to reject objective assessment and analysis as treason. Also to think of free speech not as a fundamental human right but as a crime against humanity.
Our history is clear on this point.
No writer has ever been in a position to silence a boss, bishop, or benefactor.
And now consider the manner in which we treated our best writers from Abovian to Zarian.
A nation addicted to lies may survive, but can it live?
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We have become a nation of cynics as defined by Oscar Wilde – people “who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.”
I doubt if there is a single Armenian today who has not heard of Gulbenkian, Kirkorian, or Manoogian. But how many have read or even heard of Massikian, one of our three most brilliant satirists – the other two being Baronian and Odian.
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Once more I am reminded of my favorite literary anecdote which I never tire of retelling because it so beautifully exposes the dark side of our ethos. When on his deathbed, community leaders asked him to leave his estate (Massikian was also a successful lawyer, a wealthy man, and a lifelong bachelor) to an Armenian educational foundation, he is said to have replied: “I'd much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 23, 2010
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THERAPY
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How do you convince someone that he may be smart in the marketplace but a retard in politics?
In psychology, there is a school of thought that believes in “aversion therapy,” which consists in exposing the patient into repellence against his neurotic convictions.
By saying and repeating that we have been moronized into thinking we are smart not just in the marketplace but in all fields of human endeavor, I emphasize not the negative, as some of my critics accuse me of doing, but I engage in the practice of aversion therapy.
I do this because that's how I acquired my objectivity on this issue.
Once, when I said “Armenians are smart” to an alienated Armenian academic (may he rest in peace) whom I respected, he for the first time in our many conversations literally lost his temper, and that made such a powerful impression on me that I suddenly saw very clearly the absurdity of my assertion and the systematic way in which I had been turned into a dupe by our propagandists.
If so far I have failed to expose the lies of our nationalists by aversion therapy, it may be because most ideas, even the best, fail. Violence continues to be popular in films as well as politics notwithstanding Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.
And consider what happened to Marx and his ideas.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 24, 2010
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POLITICS
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To support a leader simply because he is “our” leader is a fascist concept. So is obeying laws because “the law is the law.” To be subservient to a system because “you can't fight City Hall” is not good citizenship but cowardly subservience. We owe all our freedoms and privileges today to men who dared to say “No!” to incompetent or corrupt leaders.
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LITERATURE
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We have two kinds of writers: those who look backward (Mesrob Mashdots, Vartan Mamikonian, Turks and massacres) and those who tell us looking backward has turned us into “pillars of salt.” This has been said before and it bears repeating. And I will go on repeating it even if it means being ostracized, unpublished, called “consistently negative,” and “an enemy agent.”
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PROPAGANDA
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Propaganda does not solve problems, it creates them. The illusion of moral superiority, for instance, or the illusion that God takes sides in human conflicts is worse than propaganda; it is a Big Lie and a curse that has destroyed nations and empires and continues to do so in our own days. We are people like any other people because “all men are brothers.”
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RELIGION
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In POWER AND GREED: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Philippe Gigantes (London, 2002) I read the following: “Very early in human history, the autocrat with the big club and the witch doctor with his potions and maledictions, became natural allies. The one with the big club organized the hunt and the defense of the territory. The sorcerer took care of the uncontrollable, the unpredictable and the inexplicable – he took care of God, in other words. The two, king and priest, in modern parlance, ran the tribe through the fear of violence and the fear of 'God.' In that tribal system, they each took a much bigger share of everything.”
To which I will only add: “Nothing further, Your Honor.”
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