notes / comments

[Lucin]

Re: notes / comments

I think he is permanently malcontent.

Yeah! It's like he is crying while writing.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 11, 2007
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QUESTIONS
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If Armenians change some day, it will not be because of what I or a thousand others before me have said but because reality will have eroded their lies and half-truths. Why go on writing? That’s a question I should be asking myself. Your question should be: Why go on reading? “Looking for fish, don’t climb a tree,” says a Chinese proverb. And I say, “Looking for flattery, read a brown-noser.”
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ON NATIONALISM
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The problems with nationalism is that it narrows our horizons and with them our understanding of the world. Or, as the Malaysian proverb has it: “A frog beneath a coconut shell believes there is no other world.”
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ON HUMBUG
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One reason I ignore some of my critics is that I don’t know how to argue against humbug. Does anyone? Humbug has resisted millennia of philosophy and science and it will probably outlive long after we are all dead and buried – and by we I mean Homo sapiens.
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WHAT I UNDERSTAND
ABOUT OUR COMMISSARS
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I have no illusions about my fellow men, including my fellow Armenians. If some day in the near or distant future a Stalin-like figure emerges and takes over our homeland, he will have all the support he needs from our chic neo-Bolsheviks in the Diaspora and as many commissars his dark heart desires. This may happen anywhere, of course, but not as easily in countries with democratic traditions. As for our commissars: after shooting all dissidents (assuming there will be any left by then) they will do what they did under Stalin: they will start shooting one another. Which raises the question: Why fight a system, any system, knowing that sooner or later all systems collapse?
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ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF PROVERBS
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Chinese proverb: “Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.” I experience the truth of this proverb every day.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, January 12, 2007
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A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS
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An Armenian who dehumanizes Turks, sooner or later will dehumanize his fellow Armenians. This is a rule without exceptions.
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A RULE WITH ONE EXCEPTION
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Good logic has the power to silence even a loudmouth smart-ass suffering from an advanced case of verbal diarrhea. This rule, however, has one exception: the Armenian of the species.
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MONGOLOIDS AND ARMENOIDS
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In a commentary titled “American forces in Iraq could learn from Genghis Khan,” I read: “The Mongols spared anyone with a craft such as carpentry and writing…” Henceforth whenever I use the word Mongoloid I will think Armenoid.
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GLOOM AND DOOM
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If you think what I write is gloomy because I see only the dark side of things, you couldn’t be more wrong. I become gloomy only when I think of my fellow Armenians.
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CASUALTIES OF WAR
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“I am right!” – the false assumption that is at the source of all conflicts. If all self-righteous and dogmatic people taught themselves to say, “I could be wrong,” we would have fewer casualties of war.
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ON BEING A REVOLUTIONARY
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I know too much about power and propaganda to be a partisan of any ideology or movement. I also know it is not necessary to adopt an ideology or join a movement to be a revolutionary. Be honest and the whole world will be against you.
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SHARING A SECRET
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Ever since I decided to expect nothing from my fellow men I have not experienced disappointment.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, January 13, 2007
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FEAR OF FLYING
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“The smaller the country,” I remember to have read somewhere, “the longer its national anthem.” Also, I would add, the more long-winded its sermonizers and speechifiers. As a child I was exposed to countless speeches and sermons delivered by individuals infatuated with the sound of their own voice and the platitude of their clichés. I remember only one Armenian whose speech made sense to me and he committed suicide. Some say it wasn’t suicide but a political assassination. Others are convinced it was an accident – he was drunk, lost his balance and fell from his balcony. Which sounds to me like six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. At the root of these theories is the fact that he was misunderstood (or understood too well) and rejected by his fellow Armenians. All this to explain why I write in short paragraphs, I don’t drink, and I don’t live in a high-rise.
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MORAL: If you make sense, they will hate you.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 14, 2007
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THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
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When it comes to races, nations, and tribes, there are no good guys and bad guys. There are only good and bad human beings, and more of then than not the bad are misguided dupes.
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To be human means to be prone to error, especially when one is sure to be right. “I may be right” is closer to “I may be wrong” than to “I am right!”
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It takes a lot of hatred to love one’s country – hatred of past and present enemies, hatred of those who are or have been on their side, hatred of fellow countrymen who do not share one’s love to the same degree, and hatred of those who believe in the brotherhood of all men, which also means hatred of tolerance.
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To be a good patriot also means to feel guilty by association whenever a fellow countryman is arrested and makes headlines. But guilt by association is a racist concept. Hitler was a racist. Buddha and Christ were not. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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To fall in love means to kill the rest of mankind, said Camus. If you say that’s going too far, let’s say, passionate love makes us indifferent to the fate of others. But indifference is worse than hatred. In hatred we are connected to those we hate. In indifference this connection is severed.
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Our enemies “fail to see us as what we really are – a bunch of traumatized half-hysterical refugees and survivors haunted by dreadful nightmares…” I am now quoting from HOW TO CURE A FANATIC (New York, 2006) by Amos Oz. I should like to see one of our Turcocentric pundits produce such a sentence.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, January 15, 2007
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ON BELIEF SYSTEMS
AND RELATED ATROCITIES
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It is in life as it is in lottery: for every winner there will be several million losers. An optimist hopes to win; a realist is aware of the odds and does not believe in miracles; and a pessimist knows it’s a racket.
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I believe in miracles. I believe the universe to be the greatest miracle of all beside which changing water to wine is no better than an abracadabra trick.
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Speaking of miracles and abracadabra: I don’t believe which is better or worse: believing in a past messiah or in a future one. As for prophets and belief systems: I see nothing wrong with any of them provided their followers don’t kill one another or themselves.
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I believe any belief system that legitimizes murder and suicide to be an instrument of the devil.

Not all Turks are born killers or denialists. There is no doubt about that anymore. Likewise, not all Armenians bear a racist grudge against all Turks. With one difference. No Armenian of Pamuk’s or Akjam’s stature has produced a work to point out that fact. If he did, he would be ostracized and silenced as a traitor to the Cause. In that sense, Turks are ahead of us.
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To kill and die for one’s country fighting an enemy who also kills and dies for his own: does that make any sense to you? I am against capital punishment but I would make an exception of all those guilty of legitimizing and promoting the idea of killing and dying for one’s country.
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Of the many forms of illusion – I am smarter than you, I understand more than you do, my xxxx is bigger than yours – surely the most widely entertained and dangerous must be “My god is better than yours.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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To contradict is not the same as to disagree. Some people contradict automatically, unthinkingly, instinctively – that’s their way of asserting superior wisdom. To pretend to be wiser than one is: I would call that the most universal of all temptations.
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When we think of experiencing life we may delude ourselves into thinking that a man who has climbed Everest, or amassed a vast fortune, or slept with two thousand women has experienced life. But what if in the process of doing these things he has succeeded only in diminishing his capacity to feel, to understand, to love, and ultimately, to experience.
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I once heard someone reading to an audience from one of my books. My first reaction was to beg him to stop. I have a horror of boring people. I would have given up writing years ago were it not for the fact that even people who hate me, read me – judging by the number of abuse e-mails I get.
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Elfriede Jelinek in THE PIANO TEACHER: “The opposite sex always wants the exact opposite.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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THE ART OF LIVING
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Wisdom or the art of living consists in minimizing the guesswork and replacing total ignorance with partial knowledge.
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We may learn to limit the number of our blunders but we have no control over the blunders of others. Which may explain the tragic fate of some of the wisest men that ever lived, from Socrates to Gandhi.
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And speaking of Christ: if there is a moral in the story of Christianity it is that, not even god can survive human blunders. As for the wisdom of American presidents: in his SHADOW PEOPLE: INSIDE HISTORY’S MOST NOTORIOUS SECRET SOCIETIES, John Lawrence Reynolds writes that the feud between Shiites and Sunnis began in the 7th Century, which means it has lasted for 1,400 years. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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The universe is the greatest miracle of all – no doubt about that. I may have mentioned that already. What I may have failed to mention is that the second greatest miracle from where I stand is the fact that I have survived, and I have survived not only World War II, the Greek Civil War that followed, and a number of other natural and man-made disasters, but my own blunders.
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It has been said that the only reality we can come to grips with is the future. There isn’t much we can do about the past. The present is only a fleeting moment that even as we experience it has become the past. It follows, our struggle is with something that is prey to countless factors most of which remain beyond our perception and control.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 18, 2007
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PROPAGANDA
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Propaganda says, “When we are brainwashed, we speak the truth. When our enemies are brainwashed, they lie.”
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CASE CLOSED
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When two religions or ideologies contradict one another on any point of their credo, and neither can prove the other wrong or itself right beyond a shadow of a doubt, or to the satisfaction of an impartial jury, both must be wrong.
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CREDO
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Only hoodlums believe hoodlamism to be an ideology. Likewise, only nationalists, tribalists, capitalists, communists…
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FACT AND FICTION
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Between fact and fiction, propaganda will always be a partisan of fiction.
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FANTASY AND REALITY
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When we say we are right or we are better, we engage in fantasy. When we say, like all human beings, we have our share of failings and blind spots some of which may well be beyond our awareness, we begin to come to grips with reality.
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WHAT’S WRONG WITH FANTASY?
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Nothing, provided we keep in mind that fantasies operate in a realm that is beyond common sense and logic.
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xxxISH WISDOM
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Amos Oz in HOW TO CURE A FANATIC: “The two nations will have a lot of soul searching to do, about their past and mutual stupidities.”
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MEMOIRS: FIRST PARAGRAPH
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Like most people I was born an idiot. Unlike most people, I was also raised as an idiot because I was told I was smart.
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REMEMBER
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It takes a very bad Armenian to be a good human being.
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To disagree with oneself is the beginning of all wisdom.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, January 19, 2007
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ON FANATICS
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In his book, HOW TO CURE A FANATIC, Amos Oz writes that the ultimate aim of fanatics is “to get crucified, or to crucify others, or both,” thus implying that fanaticism has a millennial history and a very respectable pedigree. But I think fanaticism goes back much further than two millennia. It began with the god of the Old Testament when he punished not only Adam and Eve for eating an apple, or from “the tree of knowledge,” (as if knowledge were a capital offense; as if ignorance were a better alternative), but also their offspring, and the offspring of their offspring to the end of time.
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On a number of occasions I have called our fanatics “inbred morons.” Oz agrees. “Very often the fanatic can only count up to one,” he writes, “two is too big a figure for him or her.”
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How to cure a fanatic? The answer is obvious: it can’t be done. Consider their role models.
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