notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, April 17, 2005
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Edouard Balladour (identified as an Armenian by some) in a recent interview in LE POINT (Paris: March 24, 2005) on French responsibility of the massacres in Rwanda: "It wasn't at all easy to tell Hutus from Tutsis."
In her memoirs of the Russo-Turkish war in Van, Tatyana Tolstoy says something very similar about Armenians and Turks.
One is justified therefore in wondering if Hutus looked like Tutsis, and Armenians like Turks, how many of them were victims of friendly fire?
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I am reminded of George Orwell's final words in ANIMAL FARM. The men looked so much like pigs, Orwell writes here, and the pigs so much like men that it was impossible to tell them apart.
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If we call them "Asiatic barbarians," and they retaliate by calling as "Armenian bastards" (the word "pij" in Turkish is a much more wounding insult), what can we hope to achieve? Except perhaps exposing the fact that as nations we have not yet emerged from an infantile and primitive stage of underdevelopment.
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Racism and diplomacy are mutually exclusive concepts.
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During a visit to Detroit, when he was invited to make a brief appearance at an Armenian community center, Saroyan is said to have replied with a blunt, no thanks! I did not understand this refusal then, but I do now.
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Learning from history is an art form that requires a certain talent, which consists in admitting that, (one) we did not know everything; (two) we don't understand everything; (three) we are not infallible; (four) we are not as good as we think we are, (five) our adversaries may not be as bad as we say they are, and (six) most of them may well be brainwashed dupes of nationalist propaganda.
#
Monday, April 18, 2005
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Never, never say to an Armenian writer, "It's easy for you to say." Only readers who know nothing about the history of our literature are capable of uttering such nonsense. Being a writer, being an Armenian writer, being an honest Armenian writer has never been easy. As a boy, my elders repeatedly warned me of this, but I ignored them. Which goes to show that idealism can lead one to hell as surely as a life of crime.
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The Arabs and the Azeris have oil, the Israelis and Turks have American support, and the Georgians were successful in overthrowing their rascals. What do we have on our side? - except a corrupt bureaucracy, unemployment, poverty, hostile neighbors, the possibility of another devastating earthquake, and in the words of Avedik Issahakian, "imbeciles for leaders." At this rate and if nothing changes, a hundred years from now only ants and scorpions will survive in our homeland.
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G.K. Chesterton: "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."
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I have read and reviewed enough travel books on Turkey to know that not all Turks think alike on Armenians, probably because many of them remember an Armenian grandparent or relative who was not a threat to the territorial integrity of the nation. The average Turk may even be more tolerant of Armenians than some Armenians are of their fellow Armenians.
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We grew up as racists and deep inside somewhere we continue to be racists. That does not mean we should legitimize, preach and promote racism. On the contrary, we should make an effort to move in the opposite direction if we hope the generation that follows us to be an improvement on ours. To say otherwise is to subscribe only to technological progress and to dismiss moral progress as an unattainable, unrealistic, and undesirable goal.
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Stanislaw Lec: "Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?"
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A wise man once defined progress as "the triumph of laughter over dogma."
#
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
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Who could have guessed that some day the Pope and the Vatican would attract as much U.S. media attention as Monica Lewinsky?
*
In life, the choice is not always between right and wrong, or good and evil, but between evil and a lesser evil.
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Some readers don't approve of my ideas because they have not bothered to read the ideas of my predecessors.
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When shortly before the Genocide, Krikor Zohrab warned his fellow Armenians to get out because "this time around they will exterminate us," he was dismissed as an alarmist. "Zohrab effendi is exaggerating," they said.
Hagop Oshagan, Gostan Zarian, and Zabel Yessayan got out in time and survived. A good number of ARF leaders also survived to write their copious memoirs, some of which are longer than Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE and Dostoevsky's BROTHERS KARAMAZOV combined.
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There is an old Greek saying: "He who wants too much, will lose even the little that he has."
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Perhaps we lost everything because our greed knew no bounds. We wanted the keep our ancestral homes; we demanded freedom from tyranny, we wanted independence, our historic lands, and the total disintegration of the Empire. And why not? After all, Russia and the Great Powers were on our side, also the Kurds and Greeks, not to say the Good Lord Himself, who, as every Christian knows, is on the side of Christians and against infidels. And yet…
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"And yet!" - the two saddest words in the English language, it has been said.
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When life becomes unbearable, our need for illusions becomes overwhelming.
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The trouble with our partisans is that they haven't had a new idea for a hundred years.
#
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
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Solidarity means admitting the obvious: namely, that we depend on one another. An Armenian who says, "I depend on no one," speaks as a dupe of divide-and-rule tactics devised by our gravediggers.
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It is always safe to assume that things are not always as bad as we think they are. Sometimes they are worse than we can imagine.
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Emily Lotney: "A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen."
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I have never been successful in winning an argument with a fellow Armenian without making him an enemy for life.
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The question I ask myself repeatedly is: We survived the Turks. Will we survive ourselves?
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For six centuries they were our lords and masters. No one will ever convince them they are not better than we are. In the same way that no one will ever convince even the dumbest Armenian that he is not better than they are. That's because, in the words of Gordon W. Allport: "The easiest idea to sell anyone is that he is better than someone else."
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Racism has been defined as "the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."
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The purest races now in existence, according to Bertrand Russell, are "the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines."
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, April 21, 2005
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The West sees the Middle East today as a jungle of tribal feuds with no end in sight. If we want to be perceived as a positive, civilizing force, we must rise above this malaise and work for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. No one is interested in explanations whose aim is to legitimize prejudice, hatred, and violence. If, on the other hand, we behave like another tribe with unsettled scores, we should not be surprised if the West turns its back on us.
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I once read a memoir by an Armenian survivor dedicated to the Turk who had saved his life. I should like to see more dedications like this one.
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The Ottoman Empire collapsed because it adopted hatred as a policy towards its minorities and dissenters. Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in the USSR repeated the same blunder. An ideology of hatred destroys itself.
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Marie Curie: "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
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Niels Bohr: "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question."
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It is not my intention to silence anyone. We live in a free country where free speech is a fundamental human right. I believe in free speech. I believe everyone has an inalienable right to make an ass of himself in public.
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If my readers have learned from me as much as I have learned from them, it has all been a waste of time.
*
In an Armenian discussion forum I read the following exchange recently between a Turk and an Armenian.
TURK: "The Armenian Genocide is a controversial issue that should be discussed in a civilized manner by open-minded Armenians and Turks."
ARMENIAN: "Kiss my ass!"
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Because truth is on his side, he thinks he can behave like a barbarian. I see something Ottoman in this.
#
Friday, April 22, 2005
**********************************
Edward Thorndike: "Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure."
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Life is not fair. We know that but sometimes we forget it, and by forgetting we hope against all hope that next time it will be a little less unfair.
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All the money in the world will not resurrect a single victim; and so far, millions, not to say, billions of words have failed to annex a single inch of territory to our homeland. I am not advocating resignation. Neither am I implying we should say let bygones be bygones. Hell no! What I am suggesting is that sometimes by concentrating all our energies in a single direction, we may ignore many other more promising directions.
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Turkish acknowledgment of our genocide, monetary and territorial restitution: these are worthy, even noble, goals. But so are a homeland and a diaspora whose leaders are men of integrity.
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I for one would have no use for a homeland twice or even ten times its present size that is oppressed by a corrupt regime and plagued by chronic unemployment, poverty, and forever dependent on foreign help.
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History is very clear on this point: a corrupt power structure is a millstone around the neck of the people, and it makes no difference if the millstone is Turkish, Soviet, or Armenian. An Armenian mini-sultan or crypto-commissar can be as dangerous to the survival of the nation as an Ottoman sultan or a Stalinist commissar.
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Of what possible use will be monetary restitution to us if the money will disappear in the deep pockets of a kleptocracy? Of what possible use would be ten more towns and fifty more villages if their inhabitants will emigrate to Los Angeles, Moscow, Sofia, and Istanbul?
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Thomas Mann: "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."
#
Saturday, April 23, 2005
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Howard W. Newton: "The thoughtless are seldom wordless."
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Because I wrote in praise of peace and coexistence, a reader once accused me of treason.
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I understand fanatics because I was one.
I understand fools too for the same reason.
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Some of our self-appointed genocide pundits take themselves so seriously that they think humor is pro-Turkish.
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Tone deafness and color blindness have their moral and political equivalents: individuals who cannot tell the difference between honesty and charlatanism, or democracy and fascism.
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Arguing with an Armenian is like arguing with a bishop or a commissar: afterwards you feel slightly excommunicated or executed.
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Dario Fo (winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature) writes: "People who are up to their necks in xxxx walk with their heads held high."
When, O when will we produce writers capable of writing such lines?
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, April 24, 2005
***********************************
If you want to understand the past and human conduct in general, you will be closer to reality if you assume, in time of crisis, man is motivated more by irrational drives and less by reason.
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While on every April 24 we mourn Talaat's victims, let us not ignore Stalin's victims, whose number remains unknown to most of us. But perhaps we prefer to ignore them because the executioners were not Turks but Armenians.
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In the Middle Ages Jews who copied the Holy Scriptures believed that even a single letter in the wrong place might mean the destruction of the world. How much more so the death of a single innocent human being?
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What if the world is being destroyed even as I am writing and you are reading these lines, but because the destruction is in slow motion we have the illusion of survival.
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The Genocide is a tragic episode in our history, but it is only a chapter, not the whole book. It is a factor, even if a defining factor, in shaping of our identity, but it is not the only factor.
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The Genocide is history, it is not theology, and it should not be allowed to become pathology. If we allow it to become pathology, it may paralyze our will to confront and solve our present problems of which we have more than our share.
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We speak of our writers and intellectuals who were Talaat's and Stalin's victims but even as we speak, we ignore their works. I am reminded of Antranik Zaroukian's words to the effect that even as we mourn our crucified writers, we crucify their memories by ignoring that which is best in their works, and by extension, in the Armenian psyche.
#
Monday, April 25, 2005
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G.K. Chesterton: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."
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Violate free speech and you violate freedom. Violate freedom and you legitimize slavery.
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Armenians who hate are convinced that their hatred bears God's seal of approval.
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We are better at excommunicating friends than converting enemies.
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We have more enemies than friends, and our friends are friends in name only. We cannot even rely on our fellow Armenians for friendship.
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An Ottomanized Armenian may be defined as one who believes in the power of hatred to change the world.
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Good and evil, friend and foe, love and hate: they are not permanent conditions. A friend may turn into an enemy and vice versa. Unless we make an effort to excommunicate less and convert more, we condemn ourselves to remain perennial sheep in a jungle of predators.
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When it comes to literature, we prefer writers who plagiarize patriotic clichés and recycle pro-establishment platitudes to one who speaks his mind and says what must be said. We stifle originality when it fails to flatter our collective ego or when it challenges our prejudices. How many of our contemporary writers (do we have them?) would have the integrity and courage of Raffi and say "Treason and betrayal are in our blood"? And it is worth remembering that Zarian confided his true feelings about his fellow Armenians (such as "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another") only in his notebooks, which were not meant for publication in his lifetime.
#
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
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Some of my readers, it seems, have an ego so precariously balanced on the edge of the abyss that even the shadow of an alien idea may topple them.
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I never said "our political parties have been of no political use to us: their greatest enemy is free speech." It was Gostan Zarian, universally acknowledged as one of our greatest writers.
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I see nothing wrong in disagreement. But I see something pathological in a disagreement based on the misunderstanding or the distortion of a simple sentence like the one quoted above.
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Leo Rosten: "Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them."
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I never said, "Our revolutionaries should be crucified!" It was General Antranik.
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And I never said, "Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy." It was Derenik Demirjian, another prominent author of the 20th Century.
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When a reader who disagrees with me pretends I am the only Armenian he disagrees with, I have no choice but to conclude that I must be the only Armenian he reads.
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It is an insult to all Armenians to think that they are so vulnerable and fragile that they can be ruined by an idea that does not bear a boss's, bishop's, or benefactor's seal of approval.
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God loves all men, except theologians and propagandists who parade as pundits whose convictions are dogmas.
#
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
*********************************
Elbert Hubbard: "If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost, you can still call him vile names."
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Only if we make an honest effort to view reality through Turkish eyes may we be able to enhance our credibility in the eyes of skeptics like the Americans and the Israelis.
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Reality (or god) does not see friend and foe; it sees only misguided men committing blunders.
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The Turks did not single us out for extermination. They would have exterminated all their enemies. They didn't because they (enemies) were beyond their reach. By contrast, we made an ideal target.
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It makes little sense to suggest that after 600 years of coexistence the Turks suddenly woke up on April 24, 1915 and decided to exterminate us because we aroused their cannibal instincts. No one with any degree of objectivity and common sense will ever agree with us if we say or imply in any way that we are better than Turks. All such talk is bound to smack of racism and lower our moral standing.
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The Genocide is a central issue with us. It was only a peripheral one for them. We were only a small fraction of their problems of which they had many more than they could handle in a rational way. They massacred us because they had the power and we didn't.
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We only damage our credibility if we as victims assert moral superiority or adopt a holier-than-thou stance. Because by saying Turks are evil we also imply that they are good only for extermination. But to think in terms of extermination is quintessentially Ottoman.
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Let us therefore put an end to all talk of Turks as bloodthirsty savages and Asiatic barbarians.
#

[arabaliozian]

reflections

Thursday, April 28, 2005
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Will Durant: "Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
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Michel de Montaigne: "I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."
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Once in a while one of my gentle readers takes it upon himself to inform me that the majority of my readers are against me, as if this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am wrong and they are right.
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Writing is not a popularity contest. Why should I care if the majority is against me? I am not running for office. Besides, truth has not always been on the side of big battalions; neither has God always been on the side of the majority.
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There is something sinister in the need to compel or shame a minority to conform to the majority.
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Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were a small and non-representative minority. Or, as Hagop Oshagan put it, they were "small islands in an Ottoman sea." Does that mean the Turks were right?
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Dissidents in authoritarian regimes have always been an insignificant minority; does that mean fascists under Mussolini, Nazis under Hitler, and Bolsheviks under Stalin were on the right side?
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Am I comparing Ottoman butchers and fascist killers with those who disagree with me? No. I am only suggesting that butchers and killers are not born but made, and what makes them is intolerance.
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German proverb: "An old error is always more popular than a new truth."
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Dean William R. Inge: "The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values."
#
Friday, April 29, 2005
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FOR OUR SPEECHIFIERS
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G.B. Shaw: "The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech."
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Voltaire: "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state but certainty is a ridiculous one."
*
ON A RARE COMMODITY
********************************
If you listen to Taner Akcam's interviews and read his writings carefully, you may notice that he at no time ignores the Turkish side of the story. The reason why his fellow Turks see him as a hostile witness is that he refuses to ignore the Armenian experience. You may also have noticed that we suffer from the same aberration. We see the objectivity of an honest observer as anti-Armenian, which is an insult to all Armenians.
*
A CURSE
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I can't imagine a worse curse than "May your son grow up to be an Armenian writer who sees no merit in recycling partisan propaganda and chauvinist mumbo jumbo."
*
A FAMILIAR PHENOMENON
**************************************
A routine occurrence in our environment: the Armenian who states, "I hate no one!" and uses this assertion as a license to hate not only Turks but anyone else who does not share his hatred, that is to say, most of mankind, including a fraction of his fellow Armenians.
*
IN PRAISE OF MEDIOCRITY
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Socrates was condemned to death; Christ was crucified; and Gandhi assassinated. I owe my life to my mediocrity.
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Did you know that Russians excommunicated Tolstoy and Cretans shat on Kazantzakis's grave?
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About the etymology of the word cretin: there are two schools of thought: the first says it derives from Cretan, and the second from Chrétien (Christian in French) - both date from pagan times.
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ON MORALITY
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Samuel Butler: "Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country."
#
Saturday, April 30, 2005
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Bertrand Russell: "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feelings?"
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It is an illusion to think that if you violate my fundamental human right of free speech today, no one will violate yours tomorrow because your views are invulnerable, you are infallible, and you enjoy the approval of the Good Lord and all His representatives on earth.
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I read because I neither know nor understand everything; and I write because I want to share my understanding. If you know everything you need to know, and understand everything you need to understand, why do you even bother reading a minor scribbler like myself? - unless of course you are looking for an excuse to discharge your venom.
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The challenge we confront today is to look back without turning into pillars of salt.
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Our leadership keeps reminding us to remember the Genocide as they themselves ignore and expect us to forget the two ongoing white genocides (exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora).
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G.B. Shaw: "He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career."
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H.L. Mencken: "There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries for lunch."
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, May 01, 2005
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Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), French writer: "Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has."
*
There are two kinds of Armenians, or so I am informed by some of my patriotic readers: the good and the bad. You may now guess to which category I belong.
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We are all God's children with a purpose in life. My guess is the purpose in my life as a bad Armenian is to allow good Armenians to compare themselves to me and to bask in their moral superiority.
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After World War II it was fashionable to divide Germans into good and bad Germans. But according to Thomas Mann, this division, though convenient, was not accurate. Good as well as bad Germans, he explained, were one and the same, the only difference being that the good followed their brain and the bad their gut.
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Has anyone ever defined Armenianism or a good Armenian? I once heard one of our self-appointed pundits and experts on any given subject say that a good Armenian is one who hates no one, because, you see, hatred happens to be an alien feeling to all pure-blooded and authentic Armenians. Speaking for myself, I have never met such an Armenian. And it is to be noted that this self-assessed and so-called pure-blooded authentic Armenian who put out that definition was one of the most unpleasant and obnoxious specimens of humanity I have ever met.
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Groucho Marx: "There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says 'Yes,' you know he is a crook."
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To be satisfied with one's knowledge means to be satisfied with one's ignorance.
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Propaganda is to war and massacre what the acorn is to the oak.
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Good Armenians define themselves as good only in relation to bad Armenians. So that, if it weren't for bad Armenians like myself, there wouldn't even be such a category as the good.
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Thomas Mann once wrote an essay about Hitler titled "A Brother."
#
Monday, May 02, 2005
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US AND OURSELVES
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Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592, French thinker: "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."
*
The reason I have become enemy number one to our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their dupes is that I have been calling them dividers. Themselves victims of divide-and-rule tactics by hostile empires (like the Ottoman and the Soviet), our bosses, bishops, and benefactors employ divide-and-rule tactics against us in order to safeguard their own petty little powers and privileges. Our bosses speechify in the name of a defunct 19th-century ideology (nationalism), our bishops sermonize in the name of long-forgotten medieval orthodoxies, and our benefactors, by supporting one side against the other, let capital do the speechifying and sermonizing for them.
*
To those who call me a divider even as I stress the importance of solidarity on the grounds that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," I can only say, you are barking up the wrong tree, my friends, because I am on your side and against our enemies, the most dangerous of which are our dividers. If you don't believe me, read Khorenatsi, Yeghishe, Raffi, Voskanian, Zohrab, Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian…Even better, use your eyes (if you are not blind) and ears (if you are not deaf) provided of course first you de-brainwash yourselves. Because, to the brainwashed, black is white, the negative is positive, evil is good, and foe is friend.
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Romain Rolland (1866-1944), French author: "France fell because there was corruption without indignation."
#
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
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ARMENIANISM AND OTTOMANISM
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If I knew how to pray, I would go down on my knees every day and say, "Grant me, O Lord, the tolerance never to want to silence someone simply because he disagrees with me."
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To silence a writer because he exercises his fundamental human right of free speech is fascist. To insult him for the same reason is Ottoman.
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Most of our folk songs, liturgical music, art and architecture, belong to our pre-Ottoman stage and they speak of faith, unassuming beauty, simplicity, candor, and honesty - all of which are incompatible with intolerance, which belongs to our Ottoman phase. If our historians have so far ignored this aspect of our evolution it may be because all nations, tribes, and political parties have their own version of the past. Which may suggest that more often than not men study history in order to misunderstand, misinterpret and adjust it to a specific propaganda line.
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I am not saying there was no intolerance in medieval Armenia. What I am saying is that intolerance was not a central and defining feature of our identity, as it is today in our post-Ottoman phase.
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It is a fallacy to think that if you are on the side of the king and all his men you must have right on your side. We don't have kings any more, true; but we have bosses, bishops, and benefactors who speak in the name of God, Capital, and Dogma.
*
To those who disagree with me and wish me silenced, I say no doubt you think as you do because you have a good reason, perhaps even ten good reasons. But what if someone else thinks as he does because he has twice as many better reasons?
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On the subject of Armenianism, we all do some projecting and generalizing of course. I too plead guilty to that charge; and I am willing to concede that most of my readers subscribe to a superior brand of Armenianism, which has been thoroughly cleansed of all traces of Ottomanism. To them I say, please ignore what I have written above because it does not apply to you.
#
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
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If you have the majority on your side, intolerance will be a constant temptation. The true meaning of democracy consists in the protection of the rights of minorities from the intolerance and persecution of majorities.
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We survived 600 years of brutal Ottoman oppression, granted. The question we should all ask is, "Did we survive as Armenians?"
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Albert Schweitzer: "The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."
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I have been wrong most of my life. Which is why I can assert with some degree of certainty that he who subscribes to a belief system that was mine twenty years ago cannot be right, let alone infallible.
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True patriotism does not mean love of country alone, but also love of fellow countrymen, especially that fraction of one's countrymen that may disagree with us. To love only those who agree and hate those who disagree is not patriotism but fascism.
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Confucius: "The superior man understands what is right, the inferior man understands what will sell."
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If you think I am wrong, you may be right. But if you think I am wrong because you are infallible, the chances are you are dead wrong.
*
Nothing can be as ephemeral as the support or opposition of politicians as well as fellowmen, including fellow Armenians. On the day Turks outnumber Armenians in America, I for one will not be surprised if a politician makes appearances in Turkish community centers and declares Turks to be honest witnesses and Armenians pathological liars on the subject of the Genocide. Neither would I be surprised if wealthy and middle-class Armenians vote for this type of politician if he promises not to raise their taxes.
*
I welcome the disagreement of dupes as much as I dread the agreement of fanatics.
#

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Thursday, May 05, 2005
*********************************
We flatter ourselves when we say the world, or a fraction of it, is against us. The truth is much worse, as always. The world is for itself and we may not even register on its consciousness. It would be even more accurate to say that the world cares about us as much as we care about the world.
*
Neither the Americans nor the Israelis are against us; they are for themselves. To say otherwise is to commit the same blunder as our revolutionaries who thought they couldn't go wrong because the Great Powers were on our side. Which is why, Armenians whose sympathy never goes beyond Armenian victims may end up doing more harm than good to our cause. We may have a better chance of gaining world support if we emerge from our self-absorbed tribalism and concern ourselves not only with our victims but will all victims regardless of race, color, and creed, including Turkish victims.
*
We see the Genocide as a tragedy; but it is also a defeat and a victory - a Turkish victory not only over Greeks, Kurds, and Armenians, but also Russia, the Great Powers of the West, and their Allies.
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Unlike Turks we are good at picking fights we can't win. Several of our poets have even addressed some nasty words against the Good Lord Himself. At this point I don't mind admitting that, by picking a fight against our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their hirelings, flunkies, dupes and brown-nosers, I too have picked a fight I can't win, and I have thus joined the ranks of my ancestors as a perennial loser.
*
H.G. Wells: "The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations."
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Gordon W. Allport: "Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and patriotism. Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots."
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Buddha: "When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble."
#
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
KITCHENER-WATERLOO RECORD
**************************************
Friday, May 06, 2005
***************************
According to Nicholas Rice in his letter to the editor ("Jews reach out to help," May 6, 2005), and in reference to the Armenian genocide, "Jews have regarded other genocides with heightened compassion and a need to reach out to the victims and to help."
He is right if he means Jewish scholars. He is wrong if he means the Israeli government, which has consistently sided with the perpetrators, the Turks, in denying the reality of the Armenian genocide.
#
Friday, May 06, 2005
***********************************
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher: "The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins."
*
An American academic once wrote me a letter with the following question: "Why the Armenian massacres? Was it the Armenians who committed the massacres?"
And I remember to have thought our tragedy has become someone else's Comedy of Errors.
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All it takes to pervert human understanding is a little ignorance (or is it innocence?) combined with a touch of apathy. Who among us will dare to plead not guilty to the charge of ignorance and apathy when it comes to the plight of other nations?
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It is a well-known fact that in America when the cavalry won it was a victory, but when the Indians won it was a massacre.
*
And now let us test our own commitment to truth and objectivity. Is it the Hutu or the Tutsi massacres? Does it matter? Why is it so important to a hang a label on a human tragedy that is also an international scandal, in addition to being a routine occurrence in world history?
*
A number of Hutu and Tutsi scholars will no doubt write books on the subject explaining their side of the story, and I for one will question their objectivity. And if I ever feel like reading still another book on man's inhumanity to man, I will wait until a Western historian publishes his version of it. Not that his version will come with a guarantee of objectivity; but the chances are it will be more objective than both the Tutsi and Hutu versions.
*
By the way, I have already read an article by a British journalist in which the Hutu (or Tutsi) massacres are placed in their proper historic context in such a convincing manner that they no longer appear as sudden and unpredictable eruptions of evil.
*
Perhaps what I am trying to say here is that, our version of the Genocide may arouse the sympathy of isolated individuals here and there, now and then, but not of nations. Nations may use the Genocide for their own selfish reasons if they can, but they will do so without a single particle of compassion, or, for that matter, love of justice.
#
Saturday, May 07, 2005
*********************************
It has been said that nothing divides the Arab nations more than talk of Arab unity. Something similar could be said about us. Because I have been critical of our dividers, I too have been accused of being one.
*
To speak the truth privately but not publicly is to compound the felony of perjury with cowardice.
*
The best thing philosophy can do is to make us less gullible to the sophistries of political and religious leaders and their divide-and-rule tactics.
*
I wish God existed so that He would punish all those who dared to speak in His name.
*
I believe in progress. I believe in human perfectibility. I believe in the ultimate triumph of reason. These are my three greatest illusions.
*
It is easy to guess the collective IQ of a nation by the quality of its propaganda.
*
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF GOSTAN ZARIAN
************************************************** ****
Withered souls and twisted minds are parasites that smother life. Exposing them is our sacred duty.
*
They asked Nietzsche why some of his writings are obscure and incomprehensible and he said because he didn't want swine to enter his garden. Our swine have already entered our garden, alas, xxxxxled over our beautiful plants and flowers, and reduced them to weeds.
*
To have a homeland means to be able to live in harmony in a certain environment and to feel at home in its atmosphere. With us, homeland has always been a distant mirage.
*
There are those who think membership in a party qualifies them as experts on any given subject.
*
With us, simple words become sources of endless controversy and everyone rises to the defense of his monastery, his chickens, his village, and his dialect.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, May 08, 2005
********************************
DEFINING ARMENIANISM
*********************************
If you analyze the Armenianism of our superpatriots, you may discover that most of it consists of tolerance for that tiny fraction of their fellow Armenians who are members of the same mutual-admiration society. Everyone else, including fellow Armenians (that is to say, 99% of mankind), are perceived as hostile witnesses and enemies.
*
ON GENOCIDE
***********************
Those who are on our side will be one our side for their own selfish reasons and regardless of what we or anyone else says. Those who are against us will never allow their conscience or sense of justice and fair play to shape their convictions. As for the skeptics, the ignorant, and the apathetic, the best way to enhance our credibility in their eyes is by presenting both sides of the story and allowing them to decide for themselves.
*
WORTH REMEMBERING
********************************
There is no accounting for tastes. Some scholars are Turcophiles in the same way that some women fall in love with serial killers.
*
ON CONTEMPORARY
ARMENIAN LITERATURE
******************************
The cruelest thing that has happened to Armenian writers after they were systematically and ruthlessly slaughtered by Talaat and Stalin was to become dependent on the charity of swine.
*
Millionaires don't read books; they prefer to count their money. I don't blame them. If I had any money, I too would probably trade in my typewriter for an adding machine.
*
One of our benefactors is quoted as having said to one of our writers: "I hire and fire people like you every day."
*
Stalin had his commissars of culture whose function was to silence dissent and to bury critics. Our benefactors have their hirelings whose function is to be guardians of mediocrity by supporting only brown-nosers.
*
A LOSE / LOSE SITUATION
******************************************
After calling me the "son of a Turkish xxxxx," one of my gentle readers added, "No offense!" More recently another gentle reader (I have been blessed with so many of them) after leveling a string of insults, accused me of being too sensitive. Had I ignored his insults, I would have been accused of having the skin of a crocodile.
#
Monday, May 09, 2005
*********************************
The Armenian psyche has been a central theme of our literature from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe (5th century AD) to Shahan Shahnour, Gostan Zarian, and Baruir Massikian (20th century). Everything I say about us is a paraphrase. I invent nothing, and I am original only in the etymological sense of the word - I go back to the origins…thus it was in the past, and thus it is today. Progress is our least important product, and vicious circle our favorite trajectory.
*
One way to define Armenianism is to say that it ought to be the opposite of Ottomanism. If Ottomanism is intolerant, despotic, cruel and ruthless, Armenianism ought to be tolerant, democratic, compassionate, and considerate towards underdogs and minorities.
*
If the Turks say, what really matters is only their side of the story, we should not say the same about our side of the story.
*
Perhaps the problem with Turks is that they think only with their Turkish brain. We should avoid emulating them. Instead, we should follow Woodrow Wilson's advice and "not only use the brains we have, but all that we can borrow." And we wouldn't have to borrow from foreign sources either, because everything that needs to be said has already been said by our own writers.
*
Yugoslav proverb: "Man is harder than rock and more fragile than eggs." If we view Turks as hard as rocks and ourselves as fragile as eggs it may be because, by uniting them, their leaders made them stronger; and by dividing us, our leaders made us weaker and more vulnerable. If you think I am the first to say this, read Yeghishe (410-470 AD): "If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish."
*
To ignore our prophets is bad enough; to cover up their prophecies is to pretend that history fell on us without warning, like a thief in the night.
*
Here is another quotation from Yeghishe: "Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil ones."
*
And now, compare these two quotations from the 5th century AD with two parallel quotations from Nikol Aghbalian (1873-1947), statesman, literary scholar, and educator: "When man does not submit himself to the rule of law, he will have to submit himself to the rule of men, that is to say, cliques and gangs."
And, "We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks and Kurds, and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly rooted even among our leaders and elites."
*
Thus it was in the past and thus it is today.
#
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
************************************
LATERAL THINKING
***************************
I don't write against anyone, not even Turks. I write against the Turk in me.
*
Some of my readers operate on the assumption that by insulting me they assert their superior brand of morality and patriotism, as opposed to exposing themselves as products of an inferior educational system.
*
Who will disagree with me if I say to have an Armenian friend is to harbor a potential enemy?
*
There is a difference between history in the making and history as a fait accompli. History in the making is a messier affair fraught with uncertainties, doubts, and misunderstandings. During World War I the Turks had no way of knowing they will come out of it alive, in the same way that we were sure the Christian West would not abandon us at the mercy of bloodthirsty infidels and Asiatic barbarians.
*
Because we are experiencing a slow-motion and self-inflicted white massacre, we pretend it is not taking place.
*
I neither preach nor teach. I share. There is an element of coercion in both preaching and teaching. A preacher relies on a captive audience, and a teacher on his own authority. Sharing is between equals; it does not exploit or violate anyone's freedom.
*
Martin Luther (1483-1546): "I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self."
#
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
*******************************
If members of your mutual admiration society are unanimous in agreeing with you, the chances are the rest of the world will be against you.
*
Most so-called good Armenians are good only by their own definition. I have yet to meet a good Armenian who was not bad in the eyes of other Armenians; and some of the most repellent Armenians I have met thought of themselves as standard bearers of Armenianism. And if you were to ask me if I think of myself as a good Armenian, I will say that I am so busy trying and failing to be a good human being that I no longer care if I qualify as a good Armenian by anyone's definition.
*
To assume that one is better than others may be said to be the source of all violence. What are wars and revolutions, massacres and genocides if not results of this aberration?
*
As Armenians we see ourselves as innocent victims. As Turks they see themselves as unjustly accused. When we judge others, we always judge them in relations to ourselves rather than in relation to their fellow men.
*
Erich Fromm: "Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him."
*
If you say I am making so many demands on my fellow Armenians that it amounts to victimizing the victims all over again; I will say, all I have been saying is that, only if we shed our Ottomanism may we usher in another golden age. You might even say I am the bearer of good tidings and joy.
#

[arabaliozian]

more...

Thursday, May 12, 2005
*********************************
SUMMING UP
***********************
After the Sultan, Talaat.
After Talaat, Stalin.
And after Stalin, our own semi-sultans, mini-mullahs, and crypto-commissars - and all speechifying and sermonizing about liberty, fraternity, and equality.
*
Who's next? What can we look forward to?
What else but another set of charlatans whose actions will contradict their words, as our academics go on producing scholarly works, organize symposia, grant interviews, and deliver lectures on subjects and events that have been consigned to the dustbin of history; as our elder statesmen and pundits carry on dishing out the same old platitudes about the first nation to convert to Christianity, the first nation to suffer a genocide in the 20th Century, Khachaturian, Mikoyan, Saroyan, Gulbenkian, and Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (a non-existent object on someone else's mountain); and as our charitable institutions brag about their good deeds on all continents except the Antarctica; and as our dupes brainwash themselves into believing we are in good hands and we never had it so good.
*
Am I talking about our past, present, and prospects for the future? No, of course not! I am only describing my own state of mind.
*
Even when we speak of others, we speak of ourselves.
*
Think twice before you say another word on Turks.
#
Friday, May 13, 2005
********************************
When we think of our writers, we do so with a mixture of compassion, ridicule, and contempt. Our rug merchants have more self-esteem than our poets. I once heard of a poet who became the apprentice of a shoemaker in order to enhance his image in the eyes of his fellow Armenians.
*
True knowledge contains doubts, false knowledge only certainties.
*
If as a teenager I had read someone like me, I would have hated his guts.
*
When it comes to political awareness, we are an underdeveloped people no better than Zulus and Ugandans.
*
Turks may be bad folk but for us they make good conversation pieces.
*
A bad reader can be a mean critic.
*
An Armenian agrees as an Armenian, but he disagrees as a Turk.
*
Please note that I reply to all my critics. But on rereading I delete all replies that contain four-letter words, not only because the moderator wouldn't allow profanities on his forum but because as a barbarian I like to project the image of a civilized man.
*
Once in a while I say nasty things about myself so that my enemies may have a less hostile disposition towards me.
*
Men have been talking about women since the beginning of time and they still can't figure them out. What does that tell you about the state of human knowledge and understanding?
*
If we call Turks swine we run the risk of alienating the good Turks as well as the half-Armenians within Turkey, that is to say, our most important potential allies. Think about that.
#
Saturday, May 14, 2005
********************************
If teachers in Turkey have no choice but to use textbooks approved by the state, in what way is the average Turk today guilty or evil?
*
What a book one could write on the role of misunderstanding in history!
*
When, at the turn of the last century, Turks heard Armenian Evangelicals singing "Onward Christian soldiers," they thought the giaours were planning another crusade.
*
If I took my critics seriously, I would have two instead of only one ulcer.
*
Some of my readers are disappointed in me because they think the function of a writer is to legitimize their prejudices.
*
Good men don't judge bad men, because good men (if they exist) are too busy examining their own heart.
*
It is only by confronting our dark side that we may see the light.
*
If an Armenian tells you he doesn't hate Turks, it may be because he loves to lie even more.
*
From a popular Armenian song: "An Armenian loves to eat (oudel) / and he eats to hate (adel)."
#

[arabaliozian]

more.......

Sunday, May 15, 2005
*********************************
Agreeable lies are the most popular truths.
Example: God is on our side.
*
When I think of my youth, the question that I ask myself again and again is, How did I ever manage to survive with so much ignorance?
*
Whenever I say something that makes sense, I make another enemy.
*
After every sentence I write, I would like to add: "Of course, I could be wrong."
*
If you assert infallibility, you will be wrong if not in content then in style.
*
If God loves men, He must also love, or at least enjoy, watching them hate one another.
*
If making friends means going down to their level or lobotomizing myself, I'd rather make enemies.
*
Something must change. We can't go on like this. It is high time that we move beyond the infantile stage of name-calling. We could begin by saying: "We know you suffered too. We feel as much pain for your victims as we do for ours. Let us therefore agree to lament for all victims regardless of race and religion."
#
Monday, May 16, 2005
*****************************
PROJECTIONS
********************
The most important allies of the Turks are neither the Americans nor the Israelis, but the indifference of the world, the opportunism of politicians, and our assimilation rate. It has been projected that by the year 2040 there will be 100 million Turks. How many Armenians? No one knows and no one cares, not even Armenians.
*
INDIFFERENCE
************************
Consider the case of Virginia Woolf, one of the most sensitive writers of the 20th Century. After listening to her friends talking about the massacres, she noted in her diary: "I laughed to myself over the quantities of Armenians. How can one mind whether the [victims] number 4,000 or 4,000,000?"
*
CONCLUSIONS
************************
Criticism and dissent are not pro-Ottoman.
*
To repeat what you were told is not to think.
*
Those who are on our side today will be on their side tomorrow because what rules alliances is not compassion but self-interest.
*
To be a fool or a fanatic is a necessary precondition of infallibility.
*
Censorship moronizes because it promotes uniformity of thought, and only the brain-dead think alike.
#
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
*******************************
Censorship reduces men to sheep at the mercy of wolves who pretend to be sheepdogs.
*
I wonder if I will live long enough to read an Armenian weekly in which Turks are not mentioned.
*
As a nation we tend to confuse dreams with daydreams, and mirages with visions.
*
Before you assert a certainty, question it like a devil's advocate; and if you can't shake it, question the advocate; and if you can't shake him, cross-examine the devil.
*
Some Turks are so narrow-minded and fanatical that they believe all infidels will burn in hell. They have their counterparts among Armenians.
*
I don't know what it feels like being a Turkish writer, but being an Armenian writer combines minimum wage with maximum abuse.
*
In the prose of some academics, the dictionary speaks louder than the man does.
*
Anthropologists tell us that for millions of years both god and the devil were known as a single entity, the Unknown. So that when someone spoke in the name of the Unknown, no one knew whether he meant god or the devil. It is the same today.
*
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), English historian: "I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."
#
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
***********************************
Our political parties may not have been of any political use to us (as Zarian once pointed out) but they have been useful to themselves by promoting (one) mutual admiration, and (two) reciprocal brainwashing.
*
If you ask the average Armenian what are the lessons of the Genocide, he will tell you two things: (one) Turks are barbarians, and (two) the Great Powers of the West are corrupt and untrustworthy. By holding "them" responsible, we absolve ourselves of any wrongdoing. Three apples fell from heaven…
*
There are millions of alienated and assimilated Armenians today and if you were to ask them why is it that they have distanced themselves from their fellow countrymen, they will tell you what I have been saying, namely that Armenianism has become an ideology of hatred, lamentation, intolerance, and endless mutual bickering.
*
We will never rise from the dust until we admit that we are biting it.
*
When it comes to deciphering the Writing on the Wall, we might as well be functional illiterates.
*
It has been said that sometimes it is easier to survive your enemies than your friends. We survived the Turks. Will we survive our fellow Armenians?
*
If you are nasty by temperament, have the decency not to be sincere.
*
I admire our benefactors and I appreciate their generosity, concern for the welfare of the nation, and involvement in community affairs. The only thing I have against them is their taste for flunkeys.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, May 19, 2005
********************************
Because so far I have not written an ode to the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, in the eyes of some of my readers I am probably a lesser Armenian.
*
Because I love lasagna and pizza as much as shish kebab and pilaf, I am probably a second-class citizen.
*
Because Negro spirituals touch my soul as deeply as our sharagans, my patriotism may well be suspect.
*
And since I write in English and call Canada my homeland, I may not even qualify as an Armenian in the eyes of our purists.
*
A headline in the local paper today reads: "World is ignoring war in Darfur: Media are regrettably silent about 180,000 Muslims killed and two million refugees." Why should we be surprised if the world is less than interested in refugees and massacres that happened nearly a century ago?
*
One reason the Americans have so far refused to call it Genocide is that the Turks have convinced them that if they do, the Armenians will escalate their demands, and if not met, they will engage in acts of terrorism.
*
Question: Is there a single Armenian entity today that can assert with any degree of certainty that Armenians will at no time engage in acts of terrorism even if their financial and territorial demands are not met?
*
I poison the wells only in the sense that a dash of truth can poison a well of lies.
#
Friday, May 20, 2005
**********************************
Some Armenians take it for granted that they have a license to insult a fellow Armenian and that the rules of etiquette they were taught as children do not apply to Armenians dealing with Armenians.
*
Like most Armenians, I too was brought up (make it, brainwashed) to believe we are smart. I never questioned or doubted this for many years even as an adult. I began to have second thoughts only on the day I listened to a radio interview with a Kurd speaking about Kurdish history and culture, and saying the very same things that an Armenian is brainwashed to say about Armenian history and culture.
*
It is to be noted that when the Kurd bragged about Kurdish history and culture, the Canadian interviewer never questioned any of his assertions, though he could have done so easily by saying, "If the Kurds are so smart, why is it that throughout their millennial history they have been at the mercy of lesser men?"
*
Until I started writing for Armenians, I did not know we had so many pundits (self-appointed) and experts (self-assessed) on any given subject. It is no exaggeration to say that for every writer, we have at least ten, sometimes even twenty, critics eager to demolish his ideas and tear him to shreds.
*
With so many smart Armenians, why is it that our history has been such a disaster area? The standard answer to that question is our geography, which has been on the path of bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. One would think that the smart thing to do when one finds oneself on the path of a hurricane is to get out of its way. The standard objection to that line of thinking is, "How dare you suggest we should have abandoned our ancestral homes and the land of our fathers?" But entire continents today are populated by people who said to hell with our ancestral homes; as for the land of our fathers -- our fathers can have it.
*
There is smart and there is pseudo-smart. We are not smart. We are pseudo-smart. Anything that is self-assessed is bound to be phony. I have never heard a really smart man say he is smart. That's because smart people don't brag. It is the deficient who brag and they brag to compensate their deficiency.
#
Saturday, May 21, 2005
*********************************
There are no new ideas. Whether we like it or not, all our ideas are either echoes or paraphrases of forgotten quotations. Some of us like to quote Plato, others prefer Comrade Panchoonie.
*
On the day my critics begin to agree with me, I will start wondering if I have succumbed to senility.
*
Have I said this before? No matter. If something is worth saying, it is worth repeating.
*
To be misunderstood is almost to suffer an injustice.
*
Whenever an adult delivers a cliché, I am tempted to ask: How old were you when you first heard that line, five or seven?
*
I suspect my critics will be unanimous in agreeing with me on the day I decide to be less "negative" - a rather indirect way of saying, when I adopt the role and mindset of a brown-noser.
*
During a visit to the White House, a Turkish diplomat (may have been Ozal) is quoted as having said to President Bush Senior: "Armenians are our Indians." The memory of this statement makes me furious to this day, but the more I think about it, the closer I seem to get to reality.
*
Vanity, it has been said, has a voracious appetite, which is why I dismiss as a lie any statement that flatters our collective ego.
*
Arab proverb: "The ass went seeking for horns and lost his ears."
*
It is in his efforts to appear morally superior that a man exposes his status as the scum of the earth.
*
Kurdish proverb: "Those who do not go to war roar like lions."
#