notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF TURCOCENTRISM
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It preaches to the choir.
It reminds the victims of their past victimization thus reinforcing their status and identity as perennial victims.
It misleads them into thinking they can be victimized only by foreign powers, never their own.
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Is there a single Armenian leader today whose words can be quoted and believed?
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The bigger the ego, the more fragile its structure, and the more uncertain its future.
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It took me many years to realize that I can change nothing and no one, but I go on writing the way an atheist goes on praying only because he was taught to pray as a child.
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Irving Howe on Sholom Aleichem: “He ridiculed their pretensions, he mocked their vanity, and …the irony of their claim to being a Chosen People.”
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[arabaliozian]

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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THREE BOOKS
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The three books I am reading are EINSTEIN: HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE by Walter Isaacson (New York, 2007), PLATO’S REPUBLIC: A BIOGRAPHY by Simon Blackburn (Vancouver, 2007), and WEIMAR IN EXILE: THE ANTIFASCIST EMIGRATION IN EUROPE AND AMERICA by Jean-Michel Palmier, translated by David Fernbach (New York, 2006).
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Walter Isaacson, the latest biographer of Einstein, belongs to the André Maurois school of biography, which consists in reading everything that has been written on the subject, quoting the most important and revealing lines, and abridging and paraphrasing the rest.
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Simon Blackburn, the author of the second book on Plato, admits in his introductory notes that he does not particularly care for Plato, which is why he gives as much space to Plato’s critics (of which there are many) as to his admirers (of which there are many more). The result is a balanced and objective assessment of one of the most influential books of all time.
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When Hitler came to power, some of the greatest intellects in Germany, among them Thomas Mann, Freud, and Einstein, chose exile. The very famous, like the three mentioned above, survived the ordeal of deracination, but many others, among them Stefan Zweig and Mann’s son, Klaus Mann, committed suicide. I cannot help thinking that, had Hitler been more tolerant and democratic, very probably he would have won the war, and I would now be writing these lines in German. One could say that, long before Nazi Germany was defeated by the Allies, it committed suicide. Something similar could be said about the suicidal tendencies of all anti-democratic power structures, including our own today.
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[arabaliozian]

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Monday, May 28, 2007
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FROM PROPAGANDA TO PROPHECY
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To a man of faith who believes in his particular ideology or religion, propaganda is not propaganda but a selfless act of generosity, and more particularly, that of sharing the truth, the only source of enlightenment, and the good news. When Cardinal Aghajanian was Vatican’s propaganda minister, the word propaganda was not used. What was used was “propagation of the faith.” Not a faith, but the faith, the implication being, there is only one true belief system, one truth, one god, one messiah, and one church.
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Armenians have disagreed with one another for centuries and they will continue to disagree until the end of time -- if they survive that long. Nothing new in that. What’s new is the verbal abuse. When confronted with the option of saying, “I disagree with you,” and verbal abuse, some of my readers choose verbal abuse. That’s another symptom of our Ottomanism.
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According to Sayre’s Law (after American political scientist Wallace Sayre): “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.”
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I think it was Nietzsche who said, if you speak too much about fools you are liable to become a fool yourself. One could also say, if an Armenian speaks too much about Turks, he is liable to become a Turk himself, or rather his conception of a Turk, that is, the lowest form of animal life.
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Prophecy consists in adding two plus two and coming up with the obvious answer.
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[arabaliozian]

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Sunday, May 27, 2007
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SUNDAY MUSINGS
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Turkish and Armenian nationalists have created an environment in which half-Turks and half-Armenians, who may outnumber them, are afraid to identify themselves and be counted.
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There are good Turks as there are bad Armenians. It is up to us to identify them because they will never do so themselves.
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The quintessential dupe is he who believes in his flatterers or in his own assessment of himself.
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Religions, ideologies, cults, propaganda, public relations, advertisements: it seems most of the time the very few who believe in nothing are engaged in deceiving the many who will believe anything.
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Memo to young Armenian writers:
The inflexible law of demand and supply tells us, garbage collectors will always be in greater demand than Armenian writers.
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Einstein: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
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A man with a fragile ego may think the whole world is against him when the world is not even aware of his existence.
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Our imagination and understanding are limited, the complexities of reality limitless. We are often wrong because our actions are based not on reality but on a tiny fraction of it.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, May 26, 2007
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THE DANGERS OF SELF-ASSESSMENT
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After a lifetime spent on reading about Armenians, I have reached the obvious conclusion that non-Armenian writers tend to be more objective about Armenians – that is to say, more reliable, honest, and truthful – than Armenian writers.
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I believe an Armenian writer on Armenians as much as I believe a Turkish writer on Turks.
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We are a nation with a deep wound. We need reassurance and flattery as much as a man dying of thirst in the middle of a desert needs water. But I don’t read to be flattered. I read to enhance my understanding of reality.
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Men commit their worst blunders when the possibility of being wrong doesn’t even occur to them. Men without doubts: they are the most dangerous in the world. Think of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini. Think of our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century.
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Speaking about our revolutionaries: Why did General Antranik say they should be arrested and hanged? Were they criminals or heroes? You can be sure of one thing: if they are allowed to assess themselves, none of them will ever plead guilty to any charge.
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[arabaliozian]

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Thursday, May 24, 2007
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ON UNDERSTANDING
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In a commentary today, a Middle East pundit of the local paper concedes that he does not understand the Middle East. “If you claim to understand what’s going on in Lebanon,” he writes, “you simply reveal the depths of your ignorance.” Who cares or really understands what happened a hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire?
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Instead of saying “that’s the way it is,” we should say, “that’s how I see it.”
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What a book one could write on the eloquence of silence!
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The best way to understand the status quo is by trying to change it. The easiest thing in the world is to say, “There is something wrong here,” the hardest, to set it right. The hardest because what motivates human conduct is neither reason nor love, but greed and hatred. And to love, in a political context, means to hate the same enemy.
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When we say, “I understand,” we overestimate our powers of perception and underestimate the complexities of reality. Which is why there is some misunderstanding in all understanding.
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Reality advances on an infinite number of lines, most of which are beyond our perception. When reformers and revolutionaries undertake the difficult task of changing the status quo, more often than not they go wrong because their perception of reality is limited. If philosophers, historians, and scientists disagree, it is for the same reason.
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Dialogue is better than monologue because two eyes are better than one.
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The first and most important requirement for a thinker is humility, which means admitting our nothingness in the face of Reality, which some call God.
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Where do we go from here? Like Socrates, we teach ourselves to say, “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, May 21, 2007
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In almost every Armenian discussion forum I have been, I have run across an idiot who takes it upon himself to contradict everything I say without even making the slightest effort to understand me. If Armenians remain divided to this day it’s because of this type of individual whose primary concern is not to advance our understanding but to assert some kind of moral, intellectual or patriotic superiority, which happen to be an extension of his ego and a figment of his imagination. When Zarian said, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another,” he had this type of idiot in mind.
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Levon Shant begins one of his novels with the words: “In our literature as well as community affairs we have no one who is up to date with recent cultural developments.” Translated into dollars and cents this means: “We are at the mercy of hidebound philistines.”
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Shant again: “Very few Armenians clearly understand that their gifts and abilities are a national asset that centuries of history have bestowed on them and that it is their responsibility to use this asset to achieve greatness.” This too could be abridged and paraphrased as, “So far we have failed to grasp the meaning of our history and our role in it.”
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Shahan Shahnour: “Literature is beyond both optimism and pessimism.” It follows, to be a realist means to have two sets of adversaries.
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[arabaliozian]

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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ON REPEATING ONESELF
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Because I write about Armenians and they write about Turks, they say I repeat myself.
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There is more than one way for the victim to liberate himself from the criminal and his crime, and to seek justice in an unjust world is not one of them.
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What’s wrong with Turcocentrism is that sooner or later it degenerates to hoodlumism. To our Turcocentric pundits I say: You want to write about Turks? Go ahead. It’s you right as well as privilege. We live in a democracy where free speech is a fundamental human right. But free speech should not be confused with abuse of free speech, or free speech only for myself and those who agree with me.
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What’s wrong with hating Turks after what they have done to us? Go ahead and hate them as much as you want. But if you allow your hatred to color your views, you will do more harm than good to your cause. It may be your right to hate but it is your responsibility as a witness not to allow hatred to color your testimony.
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Hatred breeds hatred, and Armenians who hate Turks will also hate their fellow Armenians or anyone who dares to disagree with them. I speak from experience. All Armenians are not saints and some of them may indeed deserve our hatred. But the more one is driven to hate, the more one should try to be objective.
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To be objective means to think with one’s brain and not with one’s gut and ego, if only because neither the gut nor the ego is capable of reason. And if you are tempted to think, since these are the views of a minor Armenian scribbler they deserve to be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, think again. Because what I am saying is what common sense and decency dictate. And to say, “If I know I am right and I know you are wrong, why should I respect your views?” is to legitimize fascism.
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I repeat myself? Why would anyone read someone who repeats himself?
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[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, May 04, 2007
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RE-WRITING HISTORY
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Where politics enter, propaganda is sure to follow; and where propaganda enters, truth is bound to be the first casualty. Turks re-write history. So do we. So does everyone else. Imagine, if you can, a history of the United States written from the perspective of native Indians. A Mekhitarist scholar and the foremost Armenian medievalist once told me the Battle of Avarair, the most famous battle in our history, never happened. It’s not just propaganda but pure fabrication by a pro-Mamikonian chronicler. True or false? Draw your own conclusions (or confusions). Speaking of our more recent past: we have as many versions of it as we have political parties. In the eyes of Ramgavars and Bolsheviks, Archbishop Ghevont Tourian was a dedicated patriot, a martyr, and a saint. In the eyes of the opposition he was a cowardly rascal, an unprincipled opportunist, a womanizer, a Stalinist, and a traitor.
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We like to say that if and when the Ottoman archives are opened we will have access to the truth. A Turkish friend tells me the same about Tashnak archives. It seems the Tashnaks have consistently refused to open their archives to scholars. True or false? I plead ignorance. I wasn’t even aware of the existence of these archives.
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Whenever I mention Tourian’s role in Smyrna, my credibility is questioned. About twenty years ago an angry reader threatened to expose my lies by checking with Marjorie Housepian, the foremost authority on the subject. I am still waiting to hear from him. The SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA states that Tourian was active in “Istanbul, Smyrna, and Manchester,” before his transfer to the U.S. in 1931 “where he attempted to bring together the Armenian-American community under Etchmiadzin.”
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Was Ghevont Tourian Bedros Tourian’s brother? According to the ENCYCLOPEDIA their real name was not Tourian but Zembayan and they were both born in Istanbul. In saying all this I do not claim infallibility on behalf of my sources, let alone myself. I welcome facts that will contradict or question the accuracy of my sources. History is not a belief system but an investigation. If you place your belief system above facts, you contaminate both with prejudice and propaganda.
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indeed, in order for one to be a nationalist, they must take such victorious events in the past for granted as undeniably true, in order to say, look, our ancestors did it, it's possible to do it, look at the benefits it brought for our nation, we must do it too.

Of course, given the fact that Armenia has no choice but to remain wary of its enemies, perhaps it's not important whether or not these events actually happened, so long as the Armenian people continue to keep up their faith in them and their motivation to serve their ancestors dutifully.

I personally am no longer able to do this, but if other Armenians continue to do this, what can I say? They are serving a cause. Time will tell how it will play out this time, now that they've gained more support internationally since the genocide. We've seen the effects of this in Artsarkh.

Finally, historical archives must be closed to the public and highly regulated in order for such causes to function properly. Again, what can I say... I'm not living in Armenia, I don't know the conditions well, my word probably has no place in its affairs for the time being at least.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
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NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
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No one can be as megalomaniacal as an Armenian who think he can change the status quo or as phony as an Armenian in search of solutions to our problems. There are no new ideas. Everything we say is either a paraphrase or a quotation. It has been said that all philosophers have been doing is footnoting Plato, whose works are quotations or paraphrases of Socrates. And where the ideas of Socrates come from? Probably from the pre-Socratics, most of whose works have not survived. What I am saying right now has also been said. Take this as a warning. If you read me or anyone else in the hope of discovering a new or original idea, you will be disappointed. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Even more to the point, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Which means, our problems and their solutions are all in the convolutions of our brains. When a writer thinks he is expressing a new idea, it only means that he is either unaware of the very same idea expressed by someone else or he does not remember to have heard or read it.
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