notes / comments

[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

Wouldn't it be better to be up front with your thoughts in the first place? "Reading in between the lines" is not only an inefficient way of facilitating diolauge, but it also gets stale after a while - especialy when what you are trying to say is less than obvious.

I agree, Ara half the time I don't understand your objective? What is the message? By the way, under nationalism and capitalism, there exists no world citizens, states are always in a perpetual state of war.

With regards to your idea that "Armenians should unite", no, this is another lie, Armenians don't need to "unite", they have a state that is "united", they need to move back to the state instead of treating the state as their personal caged pet.

Let me reiterate, the idea of "uniting" is a redundacy, what the hell are you uniting under? Furthermore, not all Armenians have the same viewpoints and in my opinion, this idea of "uniting" fails here. I would never support any liberally minded Armenian, I mistrust liberal Armenians more than Turks, they are the reason we are in such a state of depression, they are naive, weak, and useless to the state. I personally am a moderate, but I would pick any diehard conservative Armenian over a liberally minded Armenian.

[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

With regards to your idea that "Armenians should unite", no, this is another lie, Armenians don't need to "unite", they have a state that is "united", they need to move back to the state instead of treating the state as their personal caged pet.

One more thing, when I mean "go back", don't go empty handed (i.e. hinting at reverse imperialism, the 2 trillion GDPs of various European states were not earned overnight, years of colonization, imperialism, and industrialization lead to the vast sums of wealth, the micro actions of the citizens). Unfortunitly, the reality in this modern age is that everything boils down to real terms, cash and assets, with enough money and determination you can succeed, it takes hard work and this is "nation building" process, but having assets with no determination to succeed (i.e. having vast sums of wealth but no people to command the wealth) is useless. Likewise, having the will to shape the state, but no resources to shape the state with also leads to a deadend.

This 'ideology or 'goal' should be the base of any "solution". The problem is that for most Armenians they either talk about a solution or highlight a problem, but any solution and or problem stems from action, you have to get the ball rolling first, once the ball is rolling IT WILL build momentum. If it takes 10 years, 20 years, or 100 years, hard work and sacrifices will payoff, then their exist no question on where I stand and where my future stands, the question you have to ask yourselves is, do I want to build a nation? Don't get retracted by anyone or any entity, decide for yourself and do it.

Understand the idea should not be a devoition to one specific "goal", this limits and demotivates a individual within a state, no American wakes up with a constant drive to "make the state better", but they opt to live their lives in the United States, contributing to this way of life, essentially, automatically developing the state. By just living in the state they are contributing to the expansion of the state, every man, women, and child unknowingly and indirectly contributes to the state and the legitamacy of the state. You shouldn't do anything if you are uncomfertable with it, but you should live your life with the idea that your life and lifetime shapes the future of a people and state, the summing of a lifetimes determines the future of a nation and people, its the micro moments, the marginal moments, and the infinitesimal sum that add up to the "big picture". In laymen's terms, you can't make a omelette witout breaking a few eggs, but certainly, if you do break enough eggs, you will make a omelette, the question that you have to ask yourselves, do I want to break a few eggs?

Understand, individual actions shape the destiny of a people, the individual ideas taken to the infinite power shape a people, the micro ideas shared by individuals is the driving force, this is a important point. When a people allow degenerate ideas to spread they eventually start fighting these ideas, it becomes a two front war. Degenerate ideas will destroy our state, they are as dangerous as any invading army, you must oppose them, by opposing them you are stiching these micro ideas and interests together. If enough people band together, change will occur and certainly, if enough positive minded people with a willingness to devote themselves to a idea, a cause, positive change will occur that fosters state building.

Understanding, by ignoring me you are accepting your fate, your destiny, you are destroying the idea of state, you CAN NOT adapt, adapting means you are accepting the injustice towards you and your people, don't adapt. But again, what good are these words? The media has a monopoly on human emotion, hopefully it reaches someone, but understand nothing is more worth while than owning yourself. Attachment to things, this is entrapment, attachments to primative needs, this is enslavement, its a vicious cycle of the "western state" that Armenians find themselves in. Again, with all my ideas and opinions, there exist the face value, then underneath it all it is the emotion it creates in people, this is the driving force, emotions, you have to create some kind of fire in people, consider primative mechanics, cars move via combustion and humans do as well, take care.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, December 02, 2007
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ON OUR PROBLEMS
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In a recent widely circulated commentary I read a list of our problems so long that it reminded me of the celebrated Stanislaw Lec aphorism “No snowflake in the avalanche ever feels responsible.”
If, instead of making long lists of problems we concentrate on those who create them, we may end up with Avedik Issahakian’s triad: “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders.”
Problems like corruption, divisions that make no sense and serve no purpose, intolerance, xenophobia, Turcocentrism, incompetence, exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora, cultural decline, an appalling rate of unemployment, poverty, absence of solidarity, among others, have a single source: the undemocratic character of our institutions or the absence of accountability in our leadership.
In an authoritarian environment (and I say authoritarian to avoid saying Ottoman) problems will be explained and justified by saying they are extensions of political conditions and environmental factors beyond our control.
A partisan press will at no time shoulder responsibility so long as it can blame it on the opposition. Those who divide us will even go as far as saying that they divide us for our own good, to save us from the evil plans of their adversaries.
Where there is no free press, problems will proliferate until they become an avalanche, which will be explained as an act of god, and those responsible will emerge as innocent as a snowflake.
Now, suppose a small group of pundits come together and issue a number of recommendations, who will listen to them? Who will even acknowledge their existence?
Brainless leaders? Rather, brainy enough to make number one their number one concern and make it look like they are dedicated to the challenging task of saving the nation.
*
Speaking of our problems: you will find a pretty good list in Khorenatsi’s “Lamentation” written fifteen centuries ago. Which may suggest that it is not unawareness of our problems that makes them hard to solve but irresponsible leaders who might as well be deaf, dumb, dim, dull, and dense.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wouldn't it be better to be up front with your thoughts in the first place? "Reading in between the lines" is not only an inefficient way of facilitating diolauge, but it also gets stale after a while - especialy when what you are trying to say is less than obvious.

to a man of faith, common sense and logic will be less than obvious.
i am not a believer. i trust only my common sense and i appeal to the common decency of those who take the trouble to read me...as opposed to those who are so busy reading themselves that they can only project their confusions onto others. / ara

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

I agree, Ara half the time I don't understand your objective? What is the message? By the way, under nationalism and capitalism, there exists no world citizens, states are always in a perpetual state of war.

With regards to your idea that "Armenians should unite", no, this is another lie, Armenians don't need to "unite", they have a state that is "united", they need to move back to the state instead of treating the state as their personal caged pet.

Let me reiterate, the idea of "uniting" is a redundacy, what the hell are you uniting under? Furthermore, not all Armenians have the same viewpoints and in my opinion, this idea of "uniting" fails here. I would never support any liberally minded Armenian, I mistrust liberal Armenians more than Turks, they are the reason we are in such a state of depression, they are naive, weak, and useless to the state. I personally am a moderate, but I would pick any diehard conservative Armenian over a liberally minded Armenian.

consensus does not mean agreement, and solidarity does not mean unity.
they mean working together, advancing in the same direction.
the mightiest empire that is divided will fall prey to the weakest tribe, because the tribe does not even have to fight the empire to defeat it; all it has to do is wait until both side within the empire wear each other out.
If the United States is the mightiest empire today it's because it fought a bloody civil war to stay united. and not every american agrees with every other american. but they have developed a mechanism whereby they take votes and make decisions = consensus.
unlike us whose slogan seems to be, every jack s. avanakian for himself and to hell with what everybody else thinks.

[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

Aznavour in a recent interview published in PARIS MATCH on his “Benetton family”:
“We are of all colors and creeds. My daughter’s husband is Muslim, I am Gregorian, my wife is Protestant. With such a family one is in a better position to understand other people’s problems. To have many cultures is great!”

The irony, his parents escaped Islam, they fled to a foreign land, thus, in the process his marginalization was a product of Islamic radicalism and Turkish nationalism. And yet his daughter and grandchildren willing accepted Islam. One wonders, one truly wonders at the idiocy of the Armenian people.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, December 03, 2007
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DENIALISM
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Those who are at the root of our problems will at no time admit we, or rather they, have problems, and if they have them, they can be solved, and if they can be solved it is up to them to solve them. Denialism is a favored word of ours provided of course it’s of the Turkish variant. As for Armenian denialism: we don’t even acknowledge its existence.
*
THE FASCIST AND THE PHILOSOPHER
************************************************** *******
The Fascist general who drove Miguel de Unamuno out of his university at gunpoint in 1936 is said to have screamed “Death to Intelligence,” and “Long live Death.” Shortly thereafter Unamuno had a heart attack and died.
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OTTOMAN WISDOM
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Ours is the wisdom of former slaves whose secret ambition is to emulate their former masters.
*
ON APOLOGY
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It’s easy to apologize after you step on someone’s foot. But how do you apologize for leading a million and half innocent human beings to the slaughterhouse? That’s why neither their leadership nor ours will ever apologize to the people.
*
NATIONALISM (i)
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My land, my people, my home, my rivers, my lakes, valleys and mountains, my backyard, my chickens. But never – never! – my blunders.
*
NATIONALISM (ii)
*******************************
They brag about our victories and blame our defeats on others. If it were up to our propagandists, we would be the only nation on earth that has never committed a blunder or lost a single war.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, December 04, 2007
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MY PARTISAN FRIEND AND I
*****************************************
“You call us dividers as if that’s all we have done,” an angry friend tells me during a recent telephone conversation, and goes on: “Why don’t you ever mention the many positive contributions we have made to the community and the nation?”
I say nothing. I have learned never to contradict an angry Armenian.
Dear friend, if you are reading these lines, I would invite you to consider the case of the butler who after serving his master faithfully for fifty years, he poisons him. At his trial and in his defense he says to the judge: “Your Honor, the prosecution and its witnesses speak of me as if I were a murderer. I suggest that is a gross distortion of my character.”
Or consider the case of a surgeon who kills a patient in a botched operation. When taken to court he says: “I have performed many successful operations. There are hundreds of people alive today because of me. And here I am being treated as a common criminal.”
What I am trying to say is that we all have a role to play in the community. We all make a living for our positive contributions. No one gets a raise or a medal for his blinders or crimes. And when a man, after being a law-abiding citizen all his life, breaks the law, he has no choice but to pay the penalty.
I don’t believe in capital punishment but I would gladly make an exception in the case of a political boss whose number one concern is number one. As for a political leader who declares a war he cannot win, I say impeachment is too good for him. I believe the only honorable course of action for such a leader is to follow Hitler’s example and shoot himself. Finally, I urge you to consider the case of revolutionaries who rise against an empire they cannot topple and as a result of their failure millions of innocent civilians die...
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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VISIBLE & INVISIBLE ARMENIANS
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You cannot argue with someone who is in a position to silence you. He has much more to lose than an argument. He stands to lose his infallibility. And no one can make an ass of himself as surely as he who thinks himself to be infallible.
*
I have said this before and it bears repeating: the need to assert superiority is the surest symptom of inferiority.
*
The only way for the inferior to come to terms with himself is to think he is better than others; and the only way to reach that objective is by being his own dupe. The problem with dupes is that they feel justified in deceiving others, as if to say, if deception is good enough for me, it should be good enough for you too.
*
To confuse visible Armenians (fund-raisers, speechifiers, ghazetajis, wheeler-dealers) with their invisible counterparts would be like confusing la crème de la scum with la crème de la crème. I know many hard working, decent Armenians who have never delivered a speech or made a headline in any one of our papers; Armenians who do not pretend to know and understand more than they do; Armenians who have not written a single line for publication.
*
It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing. It is better to know nothing than to know the wrong thing.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, December 06, 2007
************ ********* ********* ********* *******
OF JACKASSES
************ ********* *********
In America the higher your rise on the greasy pole the more of your posterior you expose. The average American today probably knows more about the Clintons than about his next-door neighbors. What do I know about our own leaders? Just their names and sometimes not even that. “I once called the Catholicos in Etchmiadzin,” a friend tells me, “and it was the KGB that answered.” When a Ramgavar semi-boss once promised to pay me a goodly sum if I undertook the task of writing profiles of prominent Ramgavars, I informed him I didn’t even know who they were, neither was I interested to know. Speaking of bosses, I am reminded of another incident with one of our national benefactors – let’s call him Jack S. Avanakian – who wanted me to translate his father’s youthful diary. “I translate only literary works,” I explained and added: “I am not aware of anyone by the name of Avanakian who has written a single line worth translating.” On the subject of jackasses: Did you know that our writers refer to one another as “boys”? I once heard an 80-year old writer say about Zarian: “I knew him – he was a good degha!” This was at a convention of Armenian writers (my first and last) during which I heard another writer refer to a national benefactor as “baron.” “Baron Jack S. Avanakian would not be interested in supporting such a project,” said he. I was a newcomer then and the thought occurred to me that I had landed not only on a different continent but also on another planet.
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Of all fears, fear of free speech is the most cowardly.