notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 17, 2005
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FOOLS AND KNAVES
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George Villiers (1628-1687), English writer: "The world is made up for the most part of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth."
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ON TRUTH IN HISTORY
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Gerald Brenan (1894-1987), British author: "You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that."
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MEMO TO A READER
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I never said Armenians are the scum of the earth - only Armenians who have assessed themselves to be as infallible as the Pope, as Magnificent as Suleiman, as wise as Socrates, and as invincible in argument as David Anhaght.
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FREE SPEECH - ARMENIAN STYLE
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Our partisans believe in free speech provided it freely consents to recycle their propaganda line.
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FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION
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Our religion teaches us to love our enemies. Not being a preacher or a hypocrite (but I repeat myself), I would never go as far as advocating love. I would only suggest that we think of them as fellow human beings, or, if we must think of them as bloodthirsty savages, let us at least take care to feel, think, and speak like civilized beings. And if we can't do that either, let us not brag about being the first Christian nation, or a Christian island in an infidel sea. Let us allow the possibility that we too, like the rest of mankind, are capable on occasion to give in to the temptation of speaking with a forked tongue.
#
Friday, February 18, 2005
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ON BEING A GOOD CHRISTIAN
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Only after we learn to love our enemies, we may learn to love our friends. As for loving our fellow Armenians: that may take a little longer.
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GENOCIDE GENESIS
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600 years ago we gave up the struggle and said to them: "We surrender our destiny into your hands. Henceforth you shall be our masters. You may do with us what you will." And they did. And they are now outraged when we reject their version of the story. After all, who has ever heard of a slave calling his master a liar, especially if the master happens to be one?
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ANOTHER MYTH EXPOSED
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We had the pen and they had the sword. The question we must ask is how many lives did our pen save?
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CONFESSION
***********************
God may not always be on the side of big battalions, but in 1915 He was. Some say it was not God but the Devil. But as a disoriented skeptic myself, may I confess that I cannot always tell one from the other.
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DEFINITIONS
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An expert has been defined as one who knows more and more about less and less. By contrast, a charlatan may be defined as one who knows more and more about everything.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF
MODERN ARMENIAN LITERATURE
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Modern Armenian Literature has been a blood sport whose survivors may be counted on the fingers of an unarmed leper.
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SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
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Helder Camara (1909-1999), Brazilian priest: "When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist." That's the way it has always been. Say "Yes, sir!" and you are a good boy. Ask questions and you are the lowest scum on earth.
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AN UNFORGETTABLE LINE
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Albert Camus (1913-1960), French playwright, novelist, essayist and winner of the Nobel Prize: "Everyone insists on his innocence, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven."
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APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
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When I speak of dupes and charlatans I speak of myself. I was a dupe once and like all dupes I engaged in charlatanism - in the name of patriotism, of course. Perhaps everything I write today is a confession and an apology.
#
Saturday, February 19, 2005
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CONFESSION
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As a boy I was taught to brag about our cunning. I know now that where there is cunning, there will be dupes, and I had been one.
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DUPES
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We like to say and repeat that the West deceived us. We don't say we were taken in because we were dupes, and we were dupes because, unlike our enemies, we were inexperienced in the jargon of international diplomacy and we allowed our wishful thinking to control our judgment.
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DISAGREEMENT
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Gutter is not the best place for it, neither is censorship the only answer.
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PATRIOTISM - ARMENIAN STYLE
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Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort (1741-1794), French writer: "Be my brother, or I kill you."
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CENSORSHIP
***********************
It has been said that great countries produce great saints. One could also say that small countries produce petty internecine feuds. Our textbooks don't mention this because if they did they would be banned.
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BAN THIS
******************
After visiting Turkey, a friend of mine (a well-known Armenian-American poet) wrote me a letter saying he had been surprised to discover that Turks too qualified as members of the human race and that he had found them to be more likeable than Armenians.
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, February 20, 2005
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Chinese saying: "Those who make idols, don't believe in them."
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Who believes in TV commercials? Surely, not the gentlemen on Madison Avenue.
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Propaganda is the language of politics, dissent that of honesty.
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Who believes in partisan propaganda? Not even members of the party. Remember Hitler's famous remark that people will believe in a big lie more easily than in small ones.
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In my encounters with high-ranking members of our parties, they have exposed more dirt than all our dissidents combined.
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Because I speak against lies and propaganda, I am called anti-Armenian, as if lies and propaganda were an integral part of the Armenian ethos.
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Jingoism will always find a receptive audience among jingoes.
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It is a thankless task to argue against someone who defends views that you held twenty years ago. Time was my refutation. Let time be his.
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One of the most liberating discovering in life is the sudden realization that you are no longer dependent on the opinions of others, you no longer feel the need to impress anyone, and life until that moment has been no better than self-imposed slavery.
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All arguments that make us feel better are arguments that flow from the go, and therefore false.
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We brag about our superior intelligence, resourcefulness, and adaptability that allowed us to survive, but we never ask the question: "What if we were meant to be a nation of a hundred million?"
#
Monday, February 21, 2005
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We have writers, critics, critics of critics, and commissars.
Writers write, critics criticize, critics of critics criticize the critics, and commissars silence. In such an environment, everyone should be united against the commissars because if they violate the human right of a single writer, they may violate the human right of critics, critics' critic, and members of the community at large.
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If a writer is wrong, he can be corrected. Infallibility is not a precondition of free speech. If it were only the Pope of Rome would enjoy the privilege. But who will correct the commissar?
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I for one am not surprised that the most celebrated Armenian literary work is titled LAMENTATION.
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When asked why he was begging for alms from a statue, Diogenes is said to have replied: "To get practice in being refused."
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Writing for Armenians has enhanced my understanding and loathing of all authoritarian power structures, commissars, and censorship.
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"United we stand." If after centuries of defeat, degradation, and suffering, this simple message has failed to penetrate the thick skulls of our leaders, one is justified to question not only their competence and integrity but also, and above all, their sanity.
#
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
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SOLUTIONS
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All human problems have human solutions.
If so far we have failed to solve our problems it may be because they are beyond our income bracket. Consider the following as only a handful of examples:
Less arrogance, more humility.
Less propaganda and more objectively assessed facts.
Less jingoism, more moderation.
More understanding and tolerance, less insults and venom.
More compromise, less intransigence.
More whispering, less shouting, screaming, yelling, barking, bellowing and braying.
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I don't agree with most Armenians because I don't agree with my younger self. I don't mind admitting that I was wrong yesterday, I may be wrong today, and I may never know the truth in the future. Neither do I believe God has ever been or will ever be on my side.
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Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), American former slave and civil rights campaigner: "The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
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Before we hope to reason together, we must learn to moderate our emotions. In practical terms this means: whenever you feel like slaughtering a fellow Armenian, force yourself to send him a declaration of love. The most effective way to prove you are a civilized being is to behave like one.
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Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist: "Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."
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If the Turks are unwilling to consider our side of the story, let us not emulate them. Let us consent to listen to their side of the story. To listen is not to believe. But it is not quite true to say that they are not willing to listen to our side of the story, since they have already translated and published Dadrian's book without cuts.
*
God save me from the Turk on the warpath and the self-righteous Armenian in defense of his prejudices.
#
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
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To those who search for meaning in the past, may I remind them of Gibbon's definition: "History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
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A propagandist's unspoken slogan: "It doesn't matter if a lie is small, medium, or jumbo as long as it flatters the vanity of the collective ego and it makes us look good in the eyes of the world."
Men love old clichés and familiar platitudes for the same reason than they find old carpet slippers more comfortable than new boots. The sad truth is, we are more easily taken in by our own propaganda than the world.
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If Turkey can be more useful to the West, the West will be on Turkey's side.
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To rely more on our reason means to rely less on our emotions, sometimes even to be against our emotions.
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Hatred cannot solve problems, it can only create new ones.
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If hatred were taxable, we would be the poorest people on earth and our state the richest.
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To remember the massacres means to continue being massacred every day in a dark corner of our psyche.
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We should question the existence of truth as frequently as we question the existence of God, and after we establish its existence, we should wonder if it cares to be on anyone's side.
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"You are no better than Asiatic barbarians and bloodthirsty savages! You should burn in hell for massacring two million innocent women, children, and old men!"
That's not the language of diplomacy.
The language of diplomacy goes something like this:
"We share 600 years of history, coexistence and cooperation. Let us make an honest effort to find out what it was that went wrong at the turn of the last century in order that we may enter another period of coexistence and cooperation that will be to our mutual benefit."
#

[Thai-Samurai]

You're right man, but the proper society doesn't exist yet. Just give it time.

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 24, 2005
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Lord Halifax (1633-1695), English politician and essayist: "The best [political] party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation."
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Whenever the word "massacre" came up, I would think: "Turks, Turks, Turks!" I still do, but I also think: "Bad planning, poor strategy, incompetent leadership."
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There are those who think I should be silenced because what I say matters. But I doubt if people who don't matter are in a position to determine what matters.
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To hate the Turks is one thing, but to hate a fellow Armenian because he does not share your hatred is another.
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Whenever an Armenian tells me his brand of Armenianism is superior to mine, I am reminded of Southern bigots who portray themselves as the sole defenders of Anglo-Saxon values, which, in their view, consists mainly in hating Blacks, Catholics, and Jews.
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I question the values promoted by worthless people.
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Criticism is an extension of concern, not an expression of hatred. But leave it to simple-minded readers who can see things only in terms of black and white, to ignore the gray areas, and to project their inner blackness onto others in the hope they will be perceived as all white.
#
Friday, February 25, 2005
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TAKES TWO TO TANGO
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Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), German novelist and essayist: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher: "True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood."
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I wouldn't negotiate with a Turk -- too much dirt. Neither would I negotiate with an Armenian - too much garbage. I would ask an odar to represent me. Let's face it: we are poor diplomats and lousy negotiators. Whenever I have tried to negotiate with a fellow Armenian, disagreement has degenerated to dislike, dislike to hating, and hating to verbal massacre.
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We may not care to negotiate with Turks, but negotiate we must because it is in our interest to avoid a confrontation from which we are bound to emerge the losers for the third time, thus certifying our status as perennial losers.
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We must negotiate, that's a certainty. We must compromise, that's another certainty. And who do you think should do most of the compromising -- the elephant or the frog?
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This much said, let me add that I have never been to Turkey and I am not personally acquainted with any Turk. But in my readings I have met a good number of Turks who no longer believe in their own propaganda. I have also met Armenians who treat the Genocide as if it were a religious doctrine and anyone who dares not to echo their sentiments and thoughts to the letter as a heretic who should burn at the stake.
#
Saturday, February 26, 2005
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Not all Armenians speak Armenian, but they are all fluent in disagreement, criticism, and contradiction.
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I don't always agree with what I say, but I hope some day to acquire the wisdom….
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When we allow the Genocide to determine our present and future, our unspoken slogan becomes "Genocide uber alles!"
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To say that the Genocide is the most important event in our history is to imply that the past of the nation is more important than its future.
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Sometimes I hesitate to criticize my critics, especially if they happen to
be my most faithful readers. Beggars can't be choosers. I don't have too many readers and the few that I have I cherish, even when they are too young and immature to understand everything they read.
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I question the value of preaching hatred of Turks in a world where for every Armenian there are more than ten of them willing and eager not only to preach hatred but also to practice it by means of massacre and dispersion (in the past) and blockade in the present and future.
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To hate your enemy means to provoke him to hate you even more.
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To love your enemy also means to disarm him. I am not preaching love of Turks to Armenians who have trouble loving even their fellow Armenians. What I am suggesting is that we change our tactics because so far our tactics have led us to failure.
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We don't have to tell the Turks "We understand why you behaved as you did." But we can pretend to understand them. Who knows, by pretending to understand them, we may end up understanding not only them but also our fellow Armenians, and ultimately ourselves and the world in which we live.
#

[arabaliozian]

notes

Sunday, February 27, 2005
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Horace (65-8 BC), Roman poet: "Whatever madness their kings commit, the Greeks take the beating."
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Armenian translation: When the leaders blunder, the people are slaughtered, after which they (the leaders) spend the rest of their lives putting the blame on the world at large and portraying themselves as white as the driven snow. The problem with this propaganda line is that nobody believes it, not even our "genocide uber alles" types.
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Perhaps I take after my father. Though himself a survivor of the Genocide, I don't remember him saying anything remotely unkind about the Turks. Call it Oriental fatalism. What's done is done. Kismet. It was God' will. Not that he was a believer. Or, if he was, he was not the church-going kind. Besides, he was too busy trying to survive in an alien and hostile environment. As for as he was concerned the massacre never ended, it only moved on another level - as it has in my case.
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It is written: "To know what to overlook is also an art form."
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Since all of us claim to use our common sense, eventually we are bound to meet in the same destination, even if some of us advance on a straight line and others on a meandering, zigzag path.
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If you write what you think, you will discover there are others who don't think as you do, and some of them are nasty enough to qualify as Turks on the warpath. Or, as Zarian put it in his inimitable way: "An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan." The massacre must go on….
#
Monday, February 28, 2005
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A Canadian academic by the name of Victoria Rowe has just published a book on Armenian women writers. There are about a thousand Armenian academics on this continent who are either alienated or assimilated, which also means they prefer to write about non-Armenian subjects. The very few who write about Armenian subjects prefer to stress the Middle Ages or the Genocide. I call them medievalists and massacrists who are addicted to either brag (about our past glories) or lament (about our recent victims).
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If you want to acquire a better understanding of Armeno-Turkish relations, avoid Armenian and Turkish academics. Read instead Irish and English writers.
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Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British author born in Ireland on Anglo-Irish relations: "Each turned to the other a closed, harsh, distorted face - a face that their lovers would hardly know."
Elsewhere: "I could wish that the English kept history in mind more, that the Irish kept it in mind less."
On collective guilt: "The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do, their victims lie strewn around."
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I have vegetarian as well as carnivorous readers. I prefer the first but I find the second more stimulating.
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Love of truth is more important than hatred of Turks.
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If you want to be a popular writer among Armenians, it helps if a foreign tyrant murders you.
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Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English critic and essayist: "In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."
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The overwhelming and irresistible temptation of pretending to know more than one does…
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Turks are fond of quoting statistics to prove that in an area where there were only one million Armenians, they couldn't have massacred two million of them. They neglect to mention the fact that statistics in the Ottoman Empire were outrageously unscientific and inaccurate. Whenever enumerators moved into a village, daughters were hidden and sons ran away - the first to avoid concubinage, the second to avoid military conscription.
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Understanding is an asset that grows in value when it is shared.
#
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
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Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Austrian satirist: "Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read."
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Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), American film director: "The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
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The only reason diplomats and historians don't say as much is "grub first, then ethics" (Brecht).
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A Turk that relies only on Turkish sources and an Armenian who relies only on Armenian sources are like defendants willing to face their accusers in a court of law only if the judge, jury and prosecution are on their side.
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If you don't understand something, concentrate on it until you do. It may well be your blind spot and the key to a whole set of new realms of perceptions and ideas.
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"He who speaks does not know," except when he speaks to expose the charlatanism of speechifiers, sermonizers, and propagandists.
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The criminal and his victim may well be the least qualified to be objective about the crime.
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Patriotism and propaganda might as well be Siamese twins.
#
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
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For a long time I thought honesty was only an attribute. I know now that it is also a struggle.
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As an Armenian writer, I can't afford a better class of enemies. The lowest of the low is as far as I can go.
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Our slogan should be, DISAGREEMENT, YES! HATRED, NO! And this applies not only in our dealings with the Turks, but also, and above all, in our dealings with fellow Armenians.
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In case of jihad, do we condemn the man or the religion? If the religion, do we condemn all religions or only his religion?
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Insults cannot strengthen a weak argument; they can only expose lack of breeding.
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Writing and writing for Armenians are two distinct activities as different as swimming and drowning.
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Don Marquis (1878-1937), American poet and journalist: "Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." There you have it, a brief history of Armenian literature from the origins to the present day.
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Karl Marx once bragged that the aim of his philosophy was not just to understand the world but to change it. He forgot to add that all change looks better on paper.
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Advice to a young Armenian writer: "Deal in clichés, received platitudes, propaganda, and verbal crapola. That's all they care about. But if you decide to write what you think, watch your back and have an escape route."
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, March 03, 2005
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There are two ways of painting a chair: the chair itself or the space around it. If so far Turks and Armenians have failed to reach a consensus on the Genocide it may be because we concentrate on the chair and they concentrate on the space around it.
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We should teach more tolerance to our schoolchildren; they can learn intolerance at home.
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Cunning is overrated. Cunning is suspect. If you had a choice between buying a used care from an honest Turk or a cunning Armenian, whom would you choose?
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Not everyone who disagrees with me is a brainwashed dupe. The brain-dead cannot be brainwashed.
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Every nation has its national sport. Ours is one-upmanship.
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When it comes to what we believe in, we are all fascists. I believe in doubt. That makes me a fascist in the eyes of our "uber alles" types. My God uber alles. My Country uber alles. Myself uber alles.
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But perhaps faith and doubt are mutually exclusive concepts.
I believe in many things but I doubt in many more. If I believe in God, I believe in an incomprehensible, unreachable, undefinable God.
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I find it extremely difficult to believe that a loving God is capable of punishing billions of innocent human beings simply because one of their ancestors ate an apple.
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I don't believe in the Devil either. Man is devilish enough without outside help.
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As you get busy trying to prove how smart you are to a few, take care not to expose your moronism to many.
#
Friday, March 04, 2005
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To those of my readers who obviously miss the good old days when Talaat and Stalin knew how to deal with meddlers like me, I say: "No need to go out of your way to understand the Turks. All you need to do is examine your own heart."
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To sum up 600 years of Armenian history: "Because we were subservient, we were oppressed. Because we revolted, we were massacred."
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What have we learned from our experience? As long as I was subservient, I was published, translated and praised. When I gave up recycling propaganda, I was silenced. I became a non-person.
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I was silenced because I could not be slaughtered. And I could not be slaughtered because they don't slaughter writers in a democracy.
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If it were up to our partisans, I would now be a civil servant and an underling to their minister of propaganda. If it were up to our bishops and benefactors, I would now be a brown-noser in the name of God and Capital. But because I think for myself, I am an enemy of the people.
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Perhaps everything I write should bear the warning: "Not for fools and dupes."
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More often than not, the disagreement is not between two sets of ideas but between those who think and those who are against thinking.
#
Saturday, March 05, 2005
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John Ruskin (1819-1900), English critic: "To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion - all in one."
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John Ruskin: "Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours."
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Turks now know that (a) they must reach a consensus with us, and (b) they must compromise. They also know compromise is a two-way street, and politics is not theology but the art of the possible.
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We either compromise or lose for the third time. And when I speak of compromise I don't mean denying the Genocide, but listening to their side of the story, and instead of calling them Asiatic barbarians or bloodthirsty savages, to call them…what the hell do we call them? -- How about, the offspring of Mongol mongrels?
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Turkish nationalism is bad, Armenian nationalism is good. This reminds me of Orwell's slogan (in ANIMAL FARM): "Four legs good, two legs bad."
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"After I retire I will expose our charlatans," a writer once promised me. He is now in his seventies and so far he has said nothing to displease his former bosses.
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"I have said everything that needs to be said in a book that will be published posthumously," said another writer who has been dead now for five years.
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That's one reason why I write posthumously, and I don't write as an Armenian but as a member of the human race. Call me a born-again human being.
#

[Thai-Samurai]

Duetchland uber alles in der walt!

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, March 06, 2005
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What do you think happened to the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy after Hitler committed suicide and Mussolini was shot and hanged? I will tell you what did not happen: they did not disappear. They adapted to the new order by assuming a new identity, role, and ideology.
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You will never hear an Armenian admit today that his father was a commissar. But don't think for a single moment that our commissars and their offspring have vanished from the face of the earth. If nothing much has improved in our Homeland after independence, it may be because power continues to be in the hands of former members of the Party; and where there is power, there will be oppression.
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"Writers are dreamers, soldiers deal with reality," a reader reminds me.
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In the 19th century Raffi warned Armenians that the Ottoman Empire was no place for them. He was ignored.
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Our revolutionaries promised freedom and a Greater Armenia, and the result was the needless slaughter of two million innocent victims. You may now be in a better position to identify the dreamers and the nightmares they foist on their dupes.
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Throughout history all revolutions have promised freedom, equality, and fraternity but delivered terror and a more ruthless tyranny than the one they toppled. That's because power speaks with a forked tongue.
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I once received the following message by e-mail: "I am a proud Armenian!" Signed "Anonymous." When asked why, if he was proud of his national identity, he was not equally proud of his personal identity, he replied: "Because I don't want to get into trouble with some Armenians." Short answer, "Fear."
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Whenever an anonymous reader attacks me, I want to know what is it exactly that he is afraid of. And if he is afraid of his fellow Armenians, wouldn't he be doubly justified in fearing the foreign tyrant even more? And how far would he go to save his own skin? Collaboration and the oppression of his fellow countrymen in the name of law and order, perhaps even patriotism and the survival of the nation?
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In the 1920s Zarian warned his fellow countrymen of the dangers of Soviet tyranny and was ignored. Result: some of our ablest intellectuals were ruthlessly slaughtered by our commissars or dealers with reality. The irony here is that after being silenced in the Homeland and forced into exile by our commissars, he was also silenced by our revolutionaries in the Diaspora and forced to return to the Homeland, where he was once more silenced and eventually murdered by our own commissars or their henchmen. The massacre must go on…
#
Monday, March 07, 2005
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Omniscience comes easily to a self-assessed pundit.
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There is something fundamentally wrong with the kind of patriotism that emphasizes love of country at the expense of love of fellow countrymen, and ultimately love of fellow men.
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History deals with facts as well as states of mind, and we will never understand the first if we ignore the second.
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After spending several generations dehumanizing their adversaries, Armenian and Turkish leaders must now confront the difficult task of humanizing them.
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We are brought up to believe there are just and unjust wars. But if you ask any nationalist historian, be he a Turk, Kurd, Armenian, or Zulu, he will tell you that his nation has never fought an unjust war and that the bad guys are always on the other side of the border.
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Compromise is an essential ingredient in all conflicts, and refusal to compromise on principle is also refusal to deal with reality.
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One should not judge a nation by its criminals, including war criminals.
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One man's freedom fighter, we are told, is another's terrorist. Likewise, one nation's war criminal is another's statesman.
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We live in a world where not only beauty but also morality and justice are in the eye of the beholder.
#
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
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A.J.P. Taylor (1906-1990), British historian: "Human blunders, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness."
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To how many of my hostile readers I could say: "In the Soviet era you would probably be a commissar and I would certainly be an inmate of the Gulag."
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I disagree with the notion that hating Turks makes us better Armenians. Surely, hating Armenians did not make Turks better Turks. Hatred improves no one. Which is why, when I want to understand Turks, I read odar writers. I am myself not particularly prone to love, but I consider that to be a liability and not an asset to be promoted, encouraged, and shared with others.
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MEMO TO A READER
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I don't expect you to agree with what I say. All I ask is that you learn to consider opinions that differ from yours, and in doing so to learn and to practice the difficult and un-Armenian art of tolerance, and to come to terms with the notion that, since you are human, you too may be fallible.
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When a partisan speaks, we don't hear a man speaking but a party propagandizing.
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A writer has only one duty: to be readable. He should leave popularity to poets. Prose should be ruthless.
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I am not a proud Armenian. I am a humble Armenian. Pride leads to arrogance. Humility provides more accurate coordinates of our place in the world.
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MEMO TO A READER WHO
DOES NOT LIKE MY IDEAS,
MY STYLE, AND MY MANNERS
***********************************************
Why waste your valuable time reading me if you can make yourself far more useful by discussing the ideas of those Armenian writers whose ideas, style, and manners meet with your approval?
#
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
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Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), English writer: "The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects."
*
Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher: "I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances."
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Laymen, who would not dare to tell a bus driver or plumber what to do, feel fully qualified to tell a writer how to think, feel, live, and write.
*
To say that being oppressed and massacred improves a nation's character is like saying being run over by a truck improves a man's health.
*
If oppression and massacre have improved our character, then, by all means, let us be grateful to the Turks.
*
The majority of Armenians today live outside Armenia, and the majority of them are either alienated or assimilated, or on their way there. It is a mistake to dismiss these Armenians as second-class citizens. As an alienated Armenian myself, may I confess that nothing offends my soul more than the spectacle of a scumbag parading as a noble specimen of humanity and preaching patriotism to the rest of us.
*
One reason I speak of considering the Turkish side of the story is that it may make us more receptive to the criticism of those among us who see no future in Armenianism. Because if nothing is done and the present trend continues, we may end up as a tiny and insignificant ethnic minority whose survival may not be of interest to anyone, including ourselves.
*
I say these things not to be negative but to make an objective assessment of our situation. We cannot solve a problem if we refuse to acknowledge its existence.
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[winoman]

Has me nodding yes yes yes

Ara - absolutly love your last two posts (106 & 108 in this thread)...I'd like to put an exclamation point after each line! Keep it up!

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, March 10, 2005
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MEMO TO A TURKISH READER
WHO DENIES THE REALITY
OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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No nation in the history of mankind has ever invented or imagined a genocide and believed in it for a hundred years.
*
Also to be noted: Armenia is not alone in asserting the reality of the Genocide. There are a number of other Western nations that at no time have questioned or doubted its reality.
*
A serial killer becomes a serial killer exactly because, after killing his first victim, he fails to come forward and confess his crime. If Sultan Abdulhamid II had come forward after the first massacres of the Armenians in 1894 and admitted to the world that he Ottoman Empire had been guilty of crimes against humanity, he would have changed the profile of the Turkish people far more effectively and radically than Ataturk with his superficial reforms (the elimination of the fez and the adoption of the Latin alphabet); and in doing so he (the Sultan) would have prevented the Genocide, with the result that Turks would now enjoy all the rights and privileges of members of the European Union, instead of being what they have become: rejects of their own country, garbage collectors of Europe, and unwanted candidates of the EU.
*
Hitler would not have admitted the Holocaust if he had won the war. As long as Stalinists were in power, they at no time admitted the existence of the Gulag. By denying the Armenian Genocide, Ankara is tacitly admitting to being the legitimate heir and successor of the despotism of the Sultanate and the fascist regime of the Young Turks.
*
As for the suggestion that it was the Armenians who committed genocide against the Turks: throughout history genocides have been committed only by armed majorities against unarmed minorities and civilians. Within the Ottoman Empire, Armenian communities were only "tiny islands in a Turkish sea" (Oshagan) and most of the victims were women, children, and old men. To say otherwise is to demonstrate an appalling ignorance of world history and a total absence of common sense.
*
I will not speak of common decency and fair play because these have never been attributes of despotic regimes.
*
History, it has been said, is the propaganda of the victor. It has also been said that the aim of propaganda is to deceive friends, not enemies. If Israel and the United States speak today of the Armenian Tragedy (as opposed to the Armenian Genocide), they do so not because they are dupes of Turkish propaganda, but because they happen to need Turkey more than they need Armenia. And if Europe has so far rejected Turkish membership in the EU, it's because it is against its own interest to have an underdeveloped and backward nation that may end up as a heavy burden on its resources.
*
On the positive side, not all Turks are dupes of state propaganda. Some of their most progressive intellectuals and historians are now willing to concede that if Turkey wants to take a step in the right direction towards civilization and democracy and away from Asiatic despotism, it has no choice but to accept Germany as its role model, which means coming to terms with its dark past by admitting its crimes against humanity.
#
Friday, March 11, 2005
********************************
OF LAMBS AND WOLVES,
FROGS, ELEPHANTS, AND TIGERS
*****************************************
When Zarian said "An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan," and "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another," I have every reason to suspect he had Ottomanized Armenians in mind.
*
Aldous Huxley's definition of civilization: "A systematic withholding from individuals of certain occasions for barbarous behavior."
*
Some of my readers resent the fact that I dare to speak of our problems. If we are to believe them, all nations have problems, except us. And if we have problems it's because the world outside (the savage Turks and the deceitful West) has foisted them on us. It follows, I should concentrate on exposing and solving the world's problems and leave ours alone. Disagreement with this mindset is perceived as treason, betrayal, and collaboration with the enemy.
*
We are told we were massacred because we were like lambs at the mercy of wolves. And the irony here is that, to prove this point, our lambs turn into a pack of wolves.
*
I once heard one of our Ramgavar elder statesmen (in his eighties, bald, mustache, fluent in Russian) say: "We were like frogs trying to rape an elephant."
*
On another occasion, I heard an old lady, a survivor of the massacres, say: "The Turks are nice people if you don't step on their tail."
*
William Saroyan: "Turks are like any other people, as good or as bad as Greeks, Jews, Russians, and Germans."
*
Zabel Yessayan: "Not all Turks are bad."
*
And I reflect that if they were wolves, they must have been vegetarian wolves because they did not devour us for 600 years.
*
When I am told that we had no hand in shaping our destiny as a nation, that our conduct throughout the centuries and millennia has been beyond reproach, and our character as a nation is beyond criticism, I feel justified in wondering if I am dealing with reasonable men or inmates of an asylum for the incurably insane.
*
And now, allow me to ask some rhetorical questions:
*
When was the last time we had a leadership that was accountable to the people?
*
Why is it that some of our ablest writers - from Raffi, Baronian, and Odian to Shahnour, Zarian, Avedik Issahakian, and Baruir Massikian, among many others, were critical of our political and religious leadership?
*
Why is it that Naregatsi, our most revered writer who has been called "our Shakespeare," is willing to identify himself as one of the vilest creatures on earth? - "a wicked and slothful servant; an abusive contradicter; an ass's foal, intractable, wild, and uncouth; the broken lock on a door; the useless coin buried beneath the soil; ever active in satanic inventions; slow in mine observance of promises; diligent in malignant acts of ribaldry…" and so on and so forth.
*
A suggestion: If you decide to contradict what I have said above, take care to do so more like a lamb and less like a wolf. Behave more like your definition of an Armenian and less like your idea of a carnivorous Turk.
*
I am reminded of Anton Chekhov, who, when asked what was his message, replied: "Gentlemen, let's behave more like gentlemen!"
#
Saturday, March 12, 2005
***********************************
Being an adult means assuming responsibility for one's thoughts and actions; which also means questioning all received ideas, especially ideas dealing with God and Country. This is not as easy as it sounds. Billions of adults today profess belief systems simply because when they were children and unable to think for themselves, they trusted the judgment of an authority figure.
*
I don't trust everything Armenian propaganda tells me. That does not mean I will be taken in by Turkish propaganda. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary!
*
If we agree that not all Turks are bad, it follows, we should speak about them in such a manner as not to alienate the good, who may well be on our side.
*
The quintessential dupe is he who will believe anything that flatters his vanity.
*
When a sermonizer or speechifier tries to convince you that your God is the only true God and your country is better than any other country, you can be sure of one thing: he is either a dupe or a liar.
*
Some readers complain that they find my ideas depressing. But I see myself as a bearer of good tidings. If I were to sum up my message, it would be: We are now free citizens in a free world. Both the Sultan and Stalin and their empires have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Armenians of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your Ottoman and Bolshevik chains.
*
To readers who try to re-create me in their own image, I say: It is a writer's function to say what must be said, a reader's right to ignore him, and a moderator's or editor's privilege to silence him. Meddlers, kibitzers, and commissars have no place in this equation.
*
I suspect there are more frustrated commissars or control freaks in a democracy than real commissars in a totalitarian regime.
#