notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, September 17, 2007
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ON OUR COLLECTIVE IQ
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In a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper I read the following: “…by funding more than one public system we are wasting our valuable dollars on bureaucracies.”
In another letter, a reader comments on the promises of politicians: “This is just garbage and we all know it. It is time to make politicians responsible for their words and actions.”
In still another letter a reader comments on the “shallow dogmatism and irrational rhetoric” of his fellow Canadians.
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It is not at all unusual for a fool to assess himself as smart, and the distance from smart to very smart, and from very smart to smartest might as well be invisible to the naked eye. But if I were to rate our collective political IQ, I would place it somewhere between Latvians and Albanians. Why Albanians? Because they too think they are just about the smartest people on earth. For more on this subject see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, one of the very best books ever written about countries on the Mediterranean coast. According to Theroux, Albanians think as they do because they were brainwashed by their own leadership. Does that ring a bell?
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If I write in this vein it’s not because I am anti-Armenian but because I have seen the light of objectivity and impartiality. The question we should ask but we never do is: to what extent our status as perennial victims may be said to be an extension of our collective single-digit IQ? And if you say we have been victimized because we are only sardines in a pool of sharks, I say biology may be destiny in the animal kingdom but not in Homo sapiens, and that our size and vulnerability is a direct result of our political moronism and nothing else. I could prove this with almost mathematical precision by quoting our own writers from Yeghishe (5th century) to Zarian (20th century)(*) but I won’t even try because I know an Armenian cannot convince another Armenian of anything, and if an odar were to try, he would be promptly dismissed as a Turcophile which in our lexicon means the lowest form of animal life.
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FOOTNOTE
(*)See my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS, which contains relevant passages from the two writers mentioned above as well as many other Armenian and odar observers.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 16, 2007
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UNDER FIRE
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The law of the jungle says if you are alone, you will be vulnerable to predators. There is a biological (i.e. primitive and unconscious) component in patriotism: we identify with God and Country to be less vulnerable. It follows, anyone who questions the legitimacy of our faith and patriotism (like yours truly) is an enemy that deserves to be verbally abused, chastised, and whenever possible, silenced. This type of reasoning ignores the fact that if I dissent it may be because, instead of uniting us, God and Country have done the exact opposite – they have divided us not only from the rest of mankind but also from one another. Common sense and history (i.e. reality and facts) are on my side here. A religion or ideology that preaches solidarity and brotherhood but practices division and fragmentation ends up legitimizing prejudice, hatred, war, and massacre, in other words, the law of the jungle. The only thing God and Country have done for us so far is to allow the ephemeral feeling or illusion of being less vulnerable. Now then, how fair are some of my patriotic readers when they estimate the value of my person and work somewhere below their “spittle,” “vomit,” and “sh**”? And the following in reference to my person: “This mother-f***ing Turcophile son-of-a-xxxxx should not be permitted to post his garbage on this forum and must be kicked out forthwith!” No doubt the sentiments of an ardent patriot who may inspire patriotism in others.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, September 15, 2007
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THEORIES
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A foreign traveler (I forget his name – may have been Lynch) once said that there are two distinct types of Armenians: the honest, hard-working peasant born and raised on Armenian soil, and the Levantine merchant whose number one concern is the bottom line. This traveler did not live long enough to observe the evolution of the naïve peasant into a murderous commissar infinitely more ruthless than the most cynical Oriental carpet dealer of the Diaspora.
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I had nothing to do with World War I that reduced my parents into penniless orphans and refugees. Neither did I have anything to do with World War II during which I spent my childhood in a ghetto as a “Turkish gypsy.” But after that every major source of misery has been my own doing. I say this to point out two morals: (one) no one gets away with anything, and (two) we are our own worst enemies. Consider the two first stories in Genesis: Eve tempts Adam, and Cain kills Abel.
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There are a number of theories explaining why we survived where many others perished. One of them maintains the reason we survived is that we are not biodegradable. Is that good or bad? It depends. If you ask an ecologist he will say being non-biodegradable is not good for the environment. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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[crusader1492]

Re: notes / comments

Hypothetically, if the "*" button breaks on your keybord, what would you use in place of it?

I suggest the # sign...or maybe the ^...that's good too.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, September 14, 2007
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MICE THAT ROAR
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A good example of an irrefutable argument, Armenian style: What I say is right not because it is right but because I say so, and if you dare not to take my word for it, you deserve to die.
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There is a Pope of Rome in all of us. We assume to be infallible when we argue, and we argue as if what we say not only matters but it may also change the course of history.
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I have yet to hear an Armenian say, “After reading Naregatsi, Raffi, or Zarian, I changed my mind about my fellow Armenians.” If our greatest intellects cannot change anyone’s mind, what can we hope to achieve, except perhaps to expose ourselves as pompous asses.
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There is this about a pompous ass: no need to deflate him. Leave him alone and he will inflate himself until he self-destructs.
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When Shakespeare coined the phrase “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” I have no doubt whatever he had an Armenian discussion forum in mind. How do I know this? The way you know everything: I feel it in my gut.
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My take on the human condition in general and ours in particular: crooks feel more at home in a crooked world and they will do their utmost to keep it that way.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 13, 2007
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“YOU REPEAT YOURSELF!”
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Who doesn’t?
First nation this, first nation that, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money)…At least when I repeat myself I don’t send you a bill.
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I repeat myself? When was the last time you heard one of our sermonizers or speechifiers speak in favor of sin or Turks. Why single me out? Because I refuse to flatter your ego? Is that how you classify your fellow men and their ideas? Only brown-nosers are welcome because they speak the truth? Everyone else is either an enemy or a liar?
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Our speechifiers and sermonizers never give up telling us we are right because god and truth are on our side. Isn’t that what their mullahs do too? What if both them and us are brainwashed by identical sets of charlatans who speak with a forked tongue?
I am not casting aspersions. I am only asking questions.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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PERSPECTIVES
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When I first read a thick volume on the history of Christianity in which Armenians were not even mentioned in a footnote, I began to have second thoughts about what is remembered, what is thought of as relevant, and what is worth mentioning.
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To those of my readers who take me to task for being consistently nasty and deliberately malicious, I say it is all a charade, and that in reality and deep inside somewhere I am much worse, and that even when I feel good and at peace with the world, a more accurate description of my disposition would be like that of a scorpion surrounded by a ring of fire.
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I once met an Armenian who said he loved his fellow Armenians but every other word he uttered dripped with the concentrated venom of ten Turkish vipers.
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If memory serves, it was Baronian who once declared: “I love mankind but I hate people.”
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A buried head in the sand is not a defense but an invitation.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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ON POPULARITY
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Marquis of Halifax: “Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought.”
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If those who promote hatred (sorry, I should have said justice)… if those who promote hatred are more popular than those who speak of understanding, it may be because hatred appeals to the gut, understanding to the brain, and in all primitive societies the gut rules the brain.
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Anyone who disagrees with us is either an ignoramus or a liar is an argument that succeeds only in undermining our own credibility.
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There is something Ottoman in our anti-Turkishness. Surprised? I don’t see why. It took less than sixty years for the Russians to Sovietize us and for the Yanks to Americanize us…
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More often than not the sentence “I know it for a fact” is followed by fiction.
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It is not at all unusual to deceive oneself all one’s life and remain totally unaware of the deception.
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I may be wrong on specific points but you are wrong on the most important things if you don’t allow me the freedom to be wrong on the assumption that you support a position, or an ideology, or a religion that happens to be infallible.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, September 10, 2007
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MAN THE QUADRUPED
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Ask a specialist in any field, from astronomy to zoology, and from ethics to politics, and he will tell you the average layman is a total ignoramus about his subject. What he may not volunteer to admit as readily is that he is himself a total ignoramus about countless other subjects. In that sense we are all ignoramuses at the mercy of other ignoramuses who only pretend to be infallible. Shaw was right when he said, “all professions are conspiracies against the laity.” Long before Shaw, Socrates spent a good part of his life in exposing the ignorance of charlatans whose sole expertise consisted in pretending to know better. For every political leader or pundit who says one thing, there will be another who will say the opposite. Who is right and who wrong? Marx was right when he spoke of the machinery of capitalist exploitation. But he was wrong when he failed to see that his own theories would be mercilessly manipulated, perverted, and exploited by gangs of operators even more ruthless than the most ruthless of capitalists. After a lengthy interview with Hitler in the 1930s, Toynbee declared to the press: “I am now convinced Herr Hitler wants peace.” If a power-mad loudmouth demagogue can deceive one of the greatest political pundits and historians of all time, who will protect us from deceivers? A dog, it has been said, knows his master but not his master’s master. My question is, in what way are we different from dogs?
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 09, 2007
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THE RAT AND THE PITBULL
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Once upon a time there was a pitbull, a rat, and a little mouse sharing the same backyard. These three didn’t particularly care for each other but they coexisted in relative peace for many years until the rat fell seriously ill and was diagnosed with terminal old age. Whereupon the pitbull decided to put him out of his misery by delivering the coup de grace. When the rat realized what was about to happen, he fought like a demon. It was at this point that the little mouse committed the serious strategic blunder of siding with the pitbull. And when the pitbull, for reasons of his own, left the field of honor, the badly mauled rat fell on the little mouse and tore him to shreds. Ever since then historians of this occurrence have been divided into two, the pro-mouse faction asserting the rat had behaved like a rat and in total contravention of the Marquis de Queensberry rules. It is to be noted that most of these pro-mouse historians happen to be direct descendants of the pitbull.
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