notes and comments

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

February 24, 2010
************************************************** *
POLITICS
*********************************
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.
*

Sounds good in theory but they control the police and military.

ITERATURE
*******************************
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 And I will go on repeating it even if it means being ostracized, unpublished, called “consistently negative,” and “an enemy agent.”
*

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" ~quoted by many, followed by none

PROPAGANDA
*******************************
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.”
*

Ask Americans what they think about the Japanese. They are far from brothers, they don't even want to admit that they build better cars just inspite of their cultural differences. Although, propaganda plays a huge role in that as well.

RELIGION
*****************************
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.”
#

So the one with the big club that organized the hunt....... military
The sorcerer would be the......... scientist
The king would be the ........ president/prime minister
Priest........ for those that don't got to church, it can be replaced by TV/news/media preaching their $0.02 on everyday occurences.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 25, 2010
************************************************** *
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*******************************************
Jean Rostand, French biologist and son of Edmond, author of CYRANO DE BERGERAC: “Afterlife? It is the body that survives the mind, for several hours.”
*
John Crowe Ransom, American poet:
“In all the good Greek of Plato,
I lack my roastbeef and potato.”
That's like going to hell for a cold beer.
*
The best I can say about our benefactors and their flunkies is to quote Pushkin's line: “Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”
*
Chinese proverb: “Behind an able man there are always other able men.”
The reverse is also true: Behind a failure...
*
I don't remember any references to Armenians in John Updike's works. I am a little surprised therefore to read the following in TOWARDS THE END OF TIME (New York, 1997, page 124): “The Armenians of the region [Asia Minor] remained loyal to Christianity but were savagely slaughtered during World War I.”
The only other Armenian connection to Updike that I can think of is Cher starring in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.
*
In the mind of most odars Armenians are invariably associated with slaughter or hunger.
*
Armenian arguments polarize. When two Armenian friends start an argument, the chances are not only will they disagree but they will also end up as enemies. I speak from experience.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 26, 2010
************************************************** *
ON POWER
*******************************************
Capitalism is the best system for capitalists.
So is Marxism for communists.
The same could be said of all organized religions and ideologies.
It never fails. As soon as a religion or an ideology is established, it creates and persecutes heretics. That's because men of power hate to share it. Power and corruption might as well be synonymous. To cover up this obvious fact, men of power in a democracy call themselves public servants. But one man's public servant is another's fascist dictator. In the eyes of right-wing racists, Obama is another Hitler.
*
It has been said that a good diplomat can charm a cobra. If only our diplomats had been as good as our carpet dealers.
*
Confucius: “Oppressive government is worse than a tiger.”
*
We disagree like people who have tasted blood. We behave like sharks even if our opponent is a sardine. Which may explain our abuse of writers. I am not voicing a theory, just summing up the history of our literature.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 27, 2010
************************************************** *
PLAGIARISM
*******************************************
Shahnour once accused Siamanto of plagiarism and quoted chapter and verse.
Oshagan accused Zarian of plagiarism too but without quoting chapter and verse.
Perhaps because Oshagan thought of himself as the best and refused to consider the possibility of anyone else being as good or even better without foul play.
Sometimes I too am accused of plagiarism minus chapter and verse. But I don't mind pleading guilty as charged.
Nothing I write is original.
Everything I say has been said before if not in the Bible than by Plato.
All I do is paraphrase, expand, and emphasize.
Bertrand Russell used to say that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Plato has been accused of being a fascist. There are those who believe Heidegger to be the greatest philosophy of the last century. Not only was he a fascist but also a member of the Nazi party. A coincidence?
It has also been said that if you want to have an idea of infinity, think of human ignorance. Even better, think of human history where ideas are translated into action – that is to say, wars, revolutions, and massacres.
No one wants war, except of course deranged megalomaniacs and their dupes who seem to have their way every time.
How to explain that?
Or rather, what must be done?
This simple question has a simple answer but no one seems to listen or care. Homo sapiens seems to be more easily seduced by lies than by truth – namely that, all men are brothers. And because I say and repeat as much, I am accused of plagiarism. But I shouldn't complain. Far better men than myself have been crucified or assassinated for uttering that blasphemy.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

February 28, 2010
************************************************** *
#1
*******************************************
When it comes to my own self-interest, or taking care of #1, I have an instinctive drive to work against it on the grounds that the difficulties that confront me will become more challenging, and the greater the challenge, the greater the rewards, even if the rewards come not in this life but in the next, and I don't believe in an afterlife. Figure that one out, if you can. Because I can't!
*
It takes faith to see meaning in the meaningless or the incomprehensible. Has anyone ever been successful in explaining if God is love, why does He allow the massacre of the innocent?
*
When the mother of a good friend died a few years ago, to console her, I said: “Think of it this way: God has given you two lives – one with Mother and another without her.”
When my own mother died I said and repeated the same thing to myself, but it didn't work; and I now think of it as one of the dumbest things anyone can say to a friend who has lost a loved one. It's like saying to a blind amputee: “God has given you two lives – one with your eyes and limbs, the other without them.”
*
How easy it is to bear another's grief! And how impossibly hard it is to come to terms with one's own.
#

[freakyfreaky]

Re: elegy

Dear Mr. Baliozian,

My condolences for the loss of your mother. May she rest in peace.

FF

[Haykakan]

Re: elegy

February 28, 2010
************************************************** *
#1
*******************************************
When it comes to my own self-interest, or taking care of #1, I have an instinctive drive to work against it on the grounds that the difficulties that confront me will become more challenging, and the greater the challenge, the greater the rewards, even if the rewards come not in this life but in the next, and I don't believe in an afterlife. Figure that one out, if you can. Because I can't!
*
It takes faith to see meaning in the meaningless or the incomprehensible. Has anyone ever been successful in explaining if God is love, why does He allow the massacre of the innocent?
*
When the mother of a good friend died a few years ago, to console her, I said: “Think of it this way:When my own mother died I said and repeated the same thing to myself, but it didn't work; and I now think of it as one of the dumbest things anyone can say to a friend who has lost a loved one. It's like saying to a blind amputee: “God has given you two lives – one with your eyes and limbs, the other without them.”
*
How easy it is to bear another's grief! And how impossibly hard it is to come to terms with one's own.
#

There are rewards in this life for not being self centered and not being self centered does not mean you have to go out of your way to make life harder then it has to be on yourself. As for death of a loved one-just physicaly being there for a person in mourning will do more for them then anything you or anyone else can say. I would imagine the person in mourning did not feel reborn after the "God has given you two lives – one with Mother and another without her” comment.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 1, 2010
************************************************** *
CRITICS
*******************************************
The function of a critic is not to know better or to speak in the name of a superior brand of patriotism or loyalty to the nation, but to expose contradictions. To say, for instance, that it makes no sense to brag about survival when it is the best that perish and the worse that survive. Or, to praise freedom in theory and to ban free speech in practice.
Whether we like it or not, whenever we make an assertion, more often than not we speak in the name of an ideology or belief system whose fundamental principles we refuse to question or doubt.
It is not that ideologies and religions can be wrong, but that they are never right because there are no final answers or answers to the most important questions. And as everyone knows by now, for every belief system there is another that contradicts it.
Which belief system is the best?
It depends where you were born and educated – make it, brainwashed. Which means, belief systems are an extension not of reason but of geography. Mountains, valleys and climate have more to do with what we believe than our brains.
Am I advocating skepticism? No! Only reminding my readers that none of us is infallible, not even the Pope of Rome or, for that matter, the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin or Antelias.
*
It is not easy to see meaning in the meaningless. But what is even infinitely harder is to question the validity of meaning itself. A philosopher (I no longer remember his name) once wrote a book titled THE MEANING OF MEANING. It seems to me, in a historic context, it would be far more accurate to speak of the meaninglessness of meaning, in view of the fact that countless innocent victims were slaughtered in the name of a belief system or heresy that is no longer a heresy.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Dear Mr. Baliozian,

My condolences for the loss of your mother. May she rest in peace.

FF

thank you, my good friend!

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

It takes faith to see meaning in the meaningless or the incomprehensible. Has anyone ever been successful in explaining if God is love, why does He allow the massacre of the innocent?

One cannot take from another and expect not too have the same taken from them, one cannot believe in the illusion of control to the point of creating a reality because control of this world is not a truth. All things one seeks to control there is only illusion, for all things one holds true to themselves and true for all others, there is reality. Truth is in reality and truth will always even the balance.

There is a popular saying that goes "All that is needed for evil to exist is for good men to stand by and do nothing."