notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, December 22, 2006
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PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
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We like to say that Germans are more civilized than Turks because they admitted and apologized for the Holocaust. We forget that, unlike Turks, Germans lost. Had they won, there would have been neither admission nor apology.
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Even when you do the right thing you may be penalized because of someone else’s blunders, as when you are hit by a drunk driver or massacred in time of war.
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I don’t mind testifying against myself. Some may call this low self-esteem. But what if the alternative is to sound like a self-satisfied pompous ass?
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The past is as incomprehensible as the future is unpredictable if only because once upon a time the past was also the future, and whenever in our narrative we make the past predictable, we ignore the fact that at any moment in real life things can go wrong in a million directions.
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When I think of all the wrong turns I could have taken, I feel as though I were the luckiest man on earth simply because I am alive.
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Whatever wisdom I have acquired I owe to my enemies. Ever since I have gained that realization I have been wondering why is it that we Armenians collectively have become one of the dumbest nations on earth instead of one of the wisest.
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Mistakes make us humble, unless they are of such colossal magnitude that admitting them would mean committing political suicide.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, December 23, 2006
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PAVLOV’S DOGS
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It took me many years to admit that which seems obvious to me today, namely, that I was a product of systematic indoctrination and all my convictions and actions were not mine but someone else’s. In short, the fact that I was more of a robot and less of a human being. And when faceless readers insult me anonymously on the Internet today, they do so in the name of a belief system that is not theirs but someone else’s, a belief system moreover that they will reject if and when they discover its nature and origin.
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When Saroyan said he felt sorry for the Turks he was not only rejecting our collective and instinctive hatred of them, he was also saying, to think that the only solution to a political problem is the wholesale massacre of innocent civilians is to react not as human beings but as animals, Pavlovian dogs that salivate on hearing a bell.
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It is interesting to note that the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is translated into Armenian, as “Thou shalt not behave like a dog.”
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In his sympathy for killers Saroyan was not being a good Christian by turning the other cheek; he was simply asserting his own humanity by rejecting the kind of indoctrination that legitimizes and promotes instinctive reactions, that is to say, the introduction of the law of the jungle in human affairs. He understood that the worst thing your enemy can do to you is not to kill you but to lower you to his own level. Is this not what our religion teaches us too? – not to hate our enemy but to love him, to ignore the animal in him but to recognize the fact that his convictions and actions are not his but products of an evil belief system that has been rammed down his throat at a time when he was powerless to resist it. And in that sense, is he not a brother?
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A brother: this is what Thomas Mann called Hitler (who had tried to have him assassinated). And this is how he described Hitler as speechifier: “It is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic in its effect on the masses: a weapon of definitely histrionic even hysterical power, which he thrusts into the nation’s wound and turns it round.” Isn’t this what our own Turcocentric pundits and speechifiers do too?
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Here is more of Thomas Mann on Hitler: “A brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate…” And: “Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, December 24, 2006
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PERSPECTIVES
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If you think the destiny of the planet is dependent on people like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or even the outline of Cleopatra’s nose, Mark Kurlansky’s COD: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FISH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD is bound to change your perspective. And now, imagine if you can, a book about men written by a cod.
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The best things in life are not always free. Understanding comes at a price. If you see yourself as your enemy sees you, you may not like what you see but you may enhance your understanding not only of yourself and your enemy, but also – which is more important – of the world.
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When we say, “I am sure,” are we really sure or just trying to suppress doubts?
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When both sides are guilty, they will exaggerate the guilt of the opposition and cover up their own. I don’t have any specific groups in mind, only human nature.
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Only the very insecure make periodic lists of their positives and cover up their negatives, and in fooling themselves they hope to fool others, and they resent it when others refuse to be fooled, and they refuse to be fooled not because they are smarter but because they prefer to be fooled by a propaganda line that emphasizes their positives and covers up their negatives. Present company suspected.
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Think of Internet discussion forums as therapy groups in which participants unburden themselves of complexes that masquerade as certainties, slogans, and clichés.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, December 25, 2006
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FOUR FILMS
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Four of my favorite films of all time are included in the lavishly illustrated 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, edited by Steven Jay Schneider (New York, 2003, 960 pages): George Stevens’s SHANE (1953) with Alan Ladd, Fred Zinemann’s FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) with Montgomery Clift, John Sturges’s BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) with Spencer Tracy, and John Boorman’s POINT BLANK (1967) with Lee Marvin. I note that all four central characters of these films are solitary survivors who against their will and inclination are thrust into a conflict with a formidable set of well-organized adversaries bent on their destruction. I have not seen these films recently and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are dated.
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About FEOM HERE TO ETERNITY: one reason I enjoyed the book by James Jones more than the film is that it was there that I first “met” Mahatma Gandhi, another solitary being who confronted an empire bent on his dehumanization and death.
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I remember to have read somewhere that Gandhi refused to visit America because he didn’t think he would be understood there. He saw America as a distant and alien continent that cared much more about material possessions than spiritual attainments. Gandhi was a shrewd judge of character but as a profoundly human being he could also be hugely wrong, as when he failed to foresee the genocidal slaughter of Hindus and Muslims immediately following the partition of India during which millions perished. Had he suspected the possibility of such a tragedy, I suspect he would have retired from politics permanently or committed suicide by starvation.
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As for Richard Attenborough’s GANDHI (1982), I have only one word for it: disappointing.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, December 26, 2006
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“PIGS NEVER SEE THE STARS”
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My first book about Armenians came out in 1975, which means I have been writing steadily about them for over thirty years. So I am not surprised when some of my gentle and not so gentle readers inform me that I have become predictable, boring, and repetitive. They demand variety, as if I were running an ice cream parlor or pizzeria. To them I suggest they visit the nearest public library. And to the hoodlums who tell me it is now time that I give up writing “all that crap,” I say, “Be careful, my friend, because you may tempt me to agree with you that, if writing about Armenians like you is crap, it may be because I for one refuse to speak of crap as if it were rose jam.”
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To write about Armenians also means to write about human nature, and more precisely, what happens to it after long centuries of brutal oppression. For, to be oppressed means to be offended, insulted, and dehumanized; hence, the need to retaliate. There is an Armenian proverb that says, “A coward takes revenge by slicing up a watermelon.” Insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance is, I suppose, another way of getting even. There are two other Armenian proverbs that are worth quoting at this point: “The toothless dog barks from a distance,” and “A bald man has no use for a gold comb,” – or an imbecile for understanding.
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[Gazan]

Re: notes / comments

Back in 1915 it was an arabaliozian type of a low-life that helped the turks to compile the list of our leaders which were killed on April 24.

You and your type will be destroyed together with your masters.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Back in 1915 it was an arabaliozian type of a low-life that helped the turks to compile the list of our leaders which were killed on April 24. You and your type will be destroyed together with your masters.

Bravo.

[Gazan]

Re: notes / comments

Bravo.

Likewise to the hundreds of your excellent posts, akhper.

We need more patriots like you.

Note to myself: chat to Serjik about an establishment of a cloning programme.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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PRESENT COMPANY SUSPECTED
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Human affairs have so many contexts, implications, consequences, layers of meaning, and interpretations that for every great thinker who says one thing there will be another who says the exact opposite. Is lying moral? As always, there are two schools of thought.
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There is no belief system that at one time or another I have not swallowed hook, line, and sinker, except perhaps astrology. When I speak of dupes, I speak of myself. Madame Bovary c’est moi. So is Monsieur Bovary.
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Trust someone who paints a flattering self-portrait, as you would trust the honesty of a compulsive liar or the wisdom of an ignoramus.
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As a child I identified myself with our leaders because I was told to do so. But the moment I started thinking for myself I saw them as megalomaniacal mediocrities and enemies of freedom, common sense and decency.
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Am I wrong? Probably. Unlike those who brainwashed me I have at no time asserted infallibility.
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When they cannot convince, they brainwash, and they brainwash because they need unthinking fanatics willing to die for the “Cause” – that is to say, their power and prestige.
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All children are brainwashed for their own good. And what’s even worse, they are brainwashed by individuals who were themselves brainwashed. This may explain why the world is in such a mess today.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

QUOTATIONS FROM KAREKIN NEJDEH (1886-1957)

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Selected and translated by Ara Baliozian



The morally depraved can also voice noble principles.

Life is constant and endless renewal. Only the morally irresponsible refuse to understand this.


Without renewal, a nation dies every hour, every minute. Our political parties either don't understand this or they have no
desire to understand it.



A nation that fails to do what it can and must do has no right to expect foreign assistance.



Nations that are unwilling to defend their own interests condemn themselves to death.



When dealing with foreign powers and issues, our press adopts a permissive, forgiving, and subservient tone. With our own internal problems, however, it becomes arrogant, vindictive, vicious.