notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 13, 2010
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REFLECTIONS
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My two ambitions in life as a writer:
(one) to explain why many Armenians are alienated, and
(two) to expose the arrogance and incompetence of those who alienate them in the name of patriotism.
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If rabbis, imams, and bishops were to renounce their monopoly on truth, would the number of their followers go up or down?
Hard to say.
But one thing we can say with certainty: they would be promoting tolerance instead of intolerance.
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As a reader, I prefer bad dialogue to good descriptions. I should like to read a work of fiction that begins with the words: “In what follows, I will not speak of the appearance and wardrobe of my characters on the assumption that what's most important about them will emerge in what they say.”
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The trouble with some of my critics is that
they don’t consider me worthy of criticism.
Instead, they insist that I either give up writing
or change my views in such a manner as to jibe with theirs.
In short, they demand that I become a disciple and an echo.
Their disciple and their echo!
My critics are not literary critics in the usual sense of these words,
but messianic figures whose message is
“Abandon your ways and follow me,
for I am the only path to wisdom and salvation.”
To such an Armenian to say anything but “Yes, master!”
would be heresy leading to eternal damnation and hellfire.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 14, 2010
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SLOGANS
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To be brainwashed is bad enough.
What is infinitely worse is to be brainwashed by idiots who pretend to be smart. And what could be easier for an adult than to appear smart to a child, which is when they get you – when you are a child and cannot yet think for yourself. And they get you not with logic or sentences that make sense or have any connection with reality, but with slogans – slogans like “America the Beautiful,” “The Land of the Brave and the Free,” “Deutschland uber alles.”
Massacres and genocides come naturally to people who are brainwashed to parrot slogans like “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
All slogans should come with a warning or a counter-slogan, such as “Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.”
“Workers of the world unite, provided you don't drop your pants and bend over to murderous morons.”
“Allawa akhbar!”
God may be One.
God may be Great.
God may even be Almighty.
But God is also Incomprehensible, and to speak in His name is to bluff and blaspheme.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 15, 2010
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QUESTIONS
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Toynbee: “When prophets disagree, are we to give credit to either of their opposing voices?”
Likewise, when our dividers disagree...
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The difference between an agnostic and a man of faith: the agnostic will not kill and die in the name of an entity whose existence is based on hearsay evidence.
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Simone Weil: “It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.”
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A noted French philosopher (Merleau-Ponty) once described the German occupation of France during World War II, as being “raped by history.”
How are we to describe our own experience?
After being gang-raped for 600 years we were eviscerated?
Are we dead or alive?
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Questions that I ask myself seven times every day (which is how many times a pope is said to doubt his faith every day):
Am I wasting my time?
I am.
Why do I go on?
I don't know.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 16, 2010
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IF YOU LIE DOWN WITH DOGS....
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If you lie down with cannibals, you are sure to end up in their digestive tract. Perhaps genocide was the price we had to pay for being not only subservient to them for 600 years but also their “most loyal subjects.”
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Winners say they won because God was on their side or it was their “manifest destiny” to win. Losers say they lost because their enemies were barbarians who spoke with a forked tongue.
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Prejudice comes as naturally to men of faith as extremism to fanatics and big lies to dupes.
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The greater the number of divisions, the great the number of panchoonies and letters that end with the words “mi kich pogh.”
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Who benefits from our divisions? Only our dividers.
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I plead guilty to the charge that I recycle ideas as opposed to propaganda, and to propagandists, recycling ideas might as well be a capital offense.
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Our crypto-sultans and neo-commissars are so insecure that they will promote any mediocrity that knows how to flatter them and silence anyone who dares to question their infallibility.
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I am not personally acquainted with any one of our leaders but I have dealt with some of their underlings and I am appalled by their intellectual mediocrity (which I am willing to forgive) and moral moronism (which is at the root of all crimes against humanity”).
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Incompetent leaders might as well be shepherds who drive their flocks in the direction of ravenous wolves.
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A belief system or faith is a product of man's creative mind as surely as the composition of a great symphony, and man has created many more gods than great symphonies.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 17, 2010
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THIS & THAT
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The Irish like to say, “There are two kinds of people: the Irish and those who would like to be Irish.” How many kinds of Armenians are there? I would say, as many as there are Armenians; but I could also say there are also two kinds: dividers and their dupes.
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If I am wrong, I can be corrected. But if those who are in charge of our destiny are wrong, the result may be another massacre – if not “garmir” (red) than “jermak” (white).
If I have said this before, I apologize. I happen to be an addict of reiteration. Or, as Socrates used to say, “To know is to remember.”
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Awareness of ignorance is better than false knowledge.
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When an American politician needs a dedicated aide, my guess is, he says: “I need a Young Turk.” I doubt if anyone of them says “I need a rug merchant.”
I read recently that Khrushchev referred to Mikoyan as “my rug merchant.”
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My English dictionary defines “Young Turk” as “a young person eager for radical change to the established order.”
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If what you say makes sense,
let your words speak louder than your emotions.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 18, 2010
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OLD-TIME RELIGION
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What does the average Armenian know or understand about the reasons why we are divided? I suspect most Armenians follow the old-time religion routine: if it's good enough for my father, it's good enough for me. It follows the son of a Tashnak will be a Tashnak, the son of a Ramgavar will be a Ramgavar, and so on. It also follows, our divisions are based not on facts or values but on habit and tradition. Which may explain why even our revolutionaries are right-wing conservatives. As a result, instead of renewal we have stagnation, instead if progress paralysis, and instead of dialogue two monologues that never cross.
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To join a group means to surrender a fraction of one's individuality and uniqueness.
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In a group it is not always the best that rises to the top but the most cunning and ruthless.
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Even the most absurd slogan will make sense if it flatters our ego.
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Sometimes I am accused of repeating myself. If you agree with a slogan, you don't mind to have it repeated countless times. But if you disagree with an idea, being exposed to it even once will be a source of annoyance, irritation, and hostility.
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Who is more guilty? The leader or his dupe?
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The 11th Commandment in the Armenian Decalogue: “Thou shalt not be a dupe.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 19, 2010
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OPIUM
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Marx said religion is “the opium of the people.”
The word assassin comes from the Arabic “hashish” (opium).
Voltaire: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.”
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As a nonbeliever I respect equally both believers and nonbelievers– both Sartre and Schweitzer (who were cousins).
Sartre, the atheist, writes in his memoirs: “I depend on people who depend on God.”
A contradiction?
Walt Whitman: “So what if I contradict myself? I contain multitudes.”
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Nationalism is defined as an ideology by nationalists, and as pathology by those who have studied its history.
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Some are too big to fail, and some are too insignificant to register on the consciousness of the world. You may now guess to which category we belong.
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Incompetence and intolerance of dissent is a lethal combination that might as well be a death warrant.
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What makes life bearable is the idea of death.
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Whitman: “Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”
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Optimism? Nothing wrong with it, provided you are prepared to be disappointed.
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Why do I write in short sentences and paragraphs?
The short answer is, fear.
Fear of boring my readers.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 20, 2010
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ON PATERNALISM
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Our genocide is not only a symptom of man's humanity to man but also of our own misplaced and naďve trust in an alien power structure that we were led to believe to be paternalistic because that is how it had (mis)represented itself to us for 600 years. One reason we don't emphasize this aspect of our past is that paternalism continues to be our favorite mode of perceiving our own leadership.
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Xenophobia blinds us to the virtues of our adversaries to the same degree that it blinds us to our own vices.
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In our traumatized partisan environment you are safe only if you parrot the partisan line. But if you dare to think and speak for yourself – that is to say, to give expression to your own thoughts. convictions, and experiences – then prepared yourself to be verbally abused by dupes who know and understand even less than their “educators” -- meaning, those who brainwashed them.
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Oliver Goldsmith: “The laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 21, 2010
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METAPHYSICAL SPECULATIONS
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Perhaps Existence or Reality and God are one and the same
if only because they share one very important quality in common,
namely, total indifference.
One way to explain this indifference is to say that
if we were to add up the positives and the negatives in a man's life,
the result will be zero.
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The end of being is nothingness,
and from nothingness to being again.
From stardust to existence
and from existence to stardust again.
From here to eternity.
A cycle whose beginning is shrouded in mystery
and whose end is invisible and inconceivable,
very much like God Himself.
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Scientists speak of the Big Bang.
But so far no scientist has ever ventured to speculate
about the nature or dimension of existence before the Bang.
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The dead enter a timeless realm
in which a second may last a billion years.
In cosmic time, a life lasts no more than a fraction of a second.
The purpose of life – assuming it has one –
is to experience the human dimension,
and of dimensions there may well be an infinite number.
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Nothing is impossible to an Almighty God,
the creator of the Universe only a small fraction of which
we can see even with the most powerful telescopes and microscopes.
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Am I trying to explain the meaning of life?
No! Only doing my utmost to come to terms with Reality,
which is beyond our comprehension
and will remain so until we die, perhaps even after...
assuming there is an after.
The rest is propaganda.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

March 22, 2010
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READING TOYNBEE
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“Private intellectual enterprise, unlike private economic enterprise, lives by co-operation not by competition.”
Translated into every-day language and applied to us, this simply means, Armenian writers dig their own graves if they continue to crap on one another as Oshagan did on Zarian, and as Oshagan's disciples continue to do so to this day.
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“It is always easier, both intellectually and morally, to debit one's ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”
What Toynbee is saying here is this: if you paint the opposition all black and yourself all white, as our dividers and Turcocentric ghazetajis tend to do, you will be believed only by those you have brainwashed and no one else.
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What follows is one of my favorite passages from THE STUDY OF HISTORY:
“In the life which Man has made for himself on Earth, his institutions, in contrast to his personal relations, are the veritable slums, and that taint of moral obliquity is still more distressing in the least ignoble of these social tenements of the Human Spirit – for instance, in the churches and the academies – than in such unquestionably malignant institutions as Slavery and War.”
As I see it, what Toynbee is saying here: wars and massacres are extensions of the lies taught in schools and preaches in churches (including temples and mosques); or again, there is more evil in legitimizing and promoting intolerance than in violations of human rights and in crimes against humanity, including genocide. But whereas war criminals are occasionally arrested, tried, found guilty, and punished, or are assassinated, hanged, or commit suicide, rabbis, bishops, and imams go on preaching their venom unmolested.
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