notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

looks like you really really repeated yourself this time :P (I made a quick glance, maybe I'm wrong?)

"let us not be afraid of repetition," Sartre tells us.
if sermonizers and speechifiers repeat themselves,
why shouldn't counter-sermonizers and counter-speechifiers?
and if propaganda repeats itself,
why shouldn't counter-propaganda?
if i damage no one but myself,
what's the damage to anyone else?

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

I guess repetition in and of itself is a transparent action that can be coloured by our intent.

I'm curious, concerning organised religions, have you read anything from the Dalai Lama? I've been reading some, a book called, "The Transformed Mind" and it preaches of compassion towards one another, regardless of background, or mentality. It also explains that the world before us is a mere illusion and that by clinging to it, we suffer. We must find self liberation through compassion and mindfulness of the present (more than the past and the future). This is what he preaches to people of all religious and non-religious backgrounds. He also promotes religious pluralism, although he believes that at the individual level, one should ultimately settle with a single faith (and for non-believers, whatever equivalent there is). At the level of community however, one must be receptive to the ultimate messages of compassion and positive thinking from all religions. In the end, he says, all major religions have the same effect if one follows the ultimate messages. Theistic religions create discipline through fear and mindfulness of the power of God or deities and a sense of spiritual connection for all living things through a creator. Godless religions focus on the nurturing of strength and compassion from within the self that ultimately has the same end result of Theistic religions. There is no one true faith for all of mankind, but there is one true faith for each individual to be followed, as we are all different and require different spiritual paths.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, July 31, 2006
*****************************************
My intention is not to promote friendship between Turks and Armenians – I am neither a miracle worker nor a megalomaniac. My daydream, which is 99% illusion and 1% hope, is to promote friendship between Armenian and Armenian. But so far all I have succeeded in doing is provoking contempt, ridicule, sarcasm, intolerance, and insults.
*
“If you describe someone’s conduct,” Sartre tells us, “you expose him to himself – he becomes visible to himself.” Unless of course he is blind and deaf.
*
Speaking of dumb and deaf: we have been so catastrophically wrong so often that our aim should no longer be doing the right thing but avoiding apocalyptic blunders.
*
Whenever I refer to ourselves as perennial losers, I am reminded of our victory in Karabagh. Consider the Israelis who have won five wars against the Arabs, and so far all they have succeeded in doing is planting the seeds of future conflicts.
*
Since they bowed their heads and resigned to their status as underdogs for several millennia, the xxxs find it difficult to understand why Palestinians don’t follow their example. Like the xxxs, we too bowed our heads to a long line of conquerors. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the Azeris will do likewise. Now then, go ahead and brag about our victory in Karabagh.
*
Projection is a misleading tool of understanding because it fails to take into consideration the uniqueness or otherness of others.
*
Life advances on an infinite number of lines some of which are invisible to the eye of our awareness. To say “I never had it so good” is to make yourself vulnerable to the sudden and unpredictable blows of fate; or as the old saying has it: “When the house is finished, death enters.”
#
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
**************************************
It is incorrect to say that Einstein proved Newton wrong, or Jung exposed Freud’s fallacies. Newton and Freud explained one fraction of reality, Einstein and Jung another. To understand all of reality is to read the mind of god, which amount to saying to be gods. It will never happen.
*
André Gide: “If you want to understand something you must begin by loving it, after which you must distance yourself from it. This applies to countries, to people, and to oneself.” The trouble with most people is that they find it very difficult to distance themselves from what they love or from what they believe, that is to say, themselves.
*
“Some people,” writes Paul Valéry, “kill themselves because they don’t know when to let go of their umbrella.” Or, because they are too obstinate in their refusal to distance themselves from an insignificant object, they allow themselves to be run over by a bus.
*
If you believe what your government tells you, it may be because it flatters your ego even if in the process it makes of you a certified dupe.
*
The first and most important priority of all power structures is to maintain and whenever possible to increase their power. Everything they say, and even more important, everything they don’t say or everything they cover up, is adjusted to that project and nothing else. What they say may be true, but what they avoid saying may be even more true. There is only one way to avoid being a dupe, or being systematically moronized, and that is by not believing anything that someone in power tells you; and when a layman, who is not a member of an organization, tells you something, ask him where he heard it from.
*
What I said above applies not only to political but also to religious leaders. I once met a smart Armenian “khaliji” (rug merchant -- I use the Turkish word because that’s how he liked to identify himself) who dismissed the Pope as “a biscuit eater” but who was convinced that his bishop was a saint.
*
Speaking of smart khalijis and saintly bishops: according to Darwin, it is the most highly developed organisms that are least adaptable. This may explain why it is the elites of nations or our “betters” that eventually lead the nation to destruction, and they do this because they are so infatuated with their own privileges, lies and half-truths that they refuse to adapt themselves to new truths or reality. Their gods are not gods but idols; and they lead their subjects to the slaughterhouse because they refuse to let go of their umbrella.
*
And now, let us go down on our knees and pray: “Our Father Who art in Heaven, give us humility and strength – the humility to admit that as wretched human beings we cannot read Your mind, and the strength to value Your most precious gift to us, our life, above that of a lousy umbrella.”
#
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
*******************************************
Honest Armenians don’t brag. They know better. Like all human beings we no doubt have our share of good qualities; but my guess is, the negatives in us far outnumber the positives, and this is especially true of our sermonizers and speechifiers who parade as role models and leaders. The only thing these charlatans have succeeded in doing so far is to teach us to brag, and to brag even about what others have done to us, such as being the first nation to experience genocide in the 20th Century.
*
When we discuss writers like Baronian, Odian, and Massikian, we treat them as humorists and not as objective observers and competent analysts of our character and ethos. As for writers widely recognized as nationalists and patriots: it is in their correspondence with close friends and diaries, only a small of which has been published so far, that they reveal their true sentiments and thoughts about their fellow Armenians – see above all Varoujan’s correspondence and Zarian’s notebooks, both published posthumously in Yerevan.
*
The only place Armenians are portrayed as loveable characters are in Saroyan’s fiction. In biographies of Saroyan even Saroyan himself emerges as a nasty piece of business who hated his own children. As for his relatives and friends: none of them may be remotely described as Saroyanesque.
*
If you want to meet real unSaroyanized Armenians, ignore their holier-than-thou pundits, folk dances, and cuisine; visit instead any Armenian discussion forum on the Internet.
*
Balzac: “Customs and traditions are a nation’s hypocrisy.”
*
Baudelaire: “Life is a disease. This is a widely known secret.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

I guess repetition in and of itself is a transparent action that can be coloured by our intent.

I'm curious, concerning organised religions, have you read anything from the Dalai Lama? I've been reading some, a book called, "The Transformed Mind" and it preaches of compassion towards one another, regardless of background, or mentality. It also explains that the world before us is a mere illusion and that by clinging to it, we suffer. We must find self liberation through compassion and mindfulness of the present (more than the past and the future). This is what he preaches to people of all religious and non-religious backgrounds. He also promotes religious pluralism, although he believes that at the individual level, one should ultimately settle with a single faith (and for non-believers, whatever equivalent there is). At the level of community however, one must be receptive to the ultimate messages of compassion and positive thinking from all religions. In the end, he says, all major religions have the same effect if one follows the ultimate messages. Theistic religions create discipline through fear and mindfulness of the power of God or deities and a sense of spiritual connection for all living things through a creator. Godless religions focus on the nurturing of strength and compassion from within the self that ultimately has the same end result of Theistic religions. There is no one true faith for all of mankind, but there is one true faith for each individual to be followed, as we are all different and require different spiritual paths.

Buddhism is an atheist religion. which may suggest that religion and god or gods are not always synonymous. the problem with Buddhists is that they have developed all the symptoms of organized religions with rituals, superstitions, and quasi-idols -- the dalai lama -- their Pope -- being one of them.

the central message of all religions is that all men are brothers -- that's what they preach, anyway; what they practice is something else again...and we should judge a tree by its fruit.

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

yeah I suppose. It's up to us to make good use of what we read, whether it's religious or not.

I believe that no matter what religion you follow, if you do it without kneeling to rituals, superstitions and "quasi-idols" as you described and instead pay attention to the ultimate messages, you're benefiting yourself and the people around you.

Follow organized religions in a "non-organized religious" way :P

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

yeah I suppose. It's up to us to make good use of what we read, whether it's religious or not...

You actually read this stuff?

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

which stuff? Ara's thread? If that's the case, then yes.

[Otto3]

Re: notes / comments

Armenian you should read him too... no one can be %100 right about everything including you...

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

Armenian follows his own ideology that has no room for ara's notes, they're pretty muched polarized.

I don't particularily choose sides between these two, I listen to both and discuss when I can with both... that's the extent of how much I associate with them.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Armenian you should read him too... no one can be %100 right about everything including you...