notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

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Sunday, April 08, 2007
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EASTER SERMON
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If Socrates, Jesus, and Gandhi had enemies who hated them unto death, who are we to say we should be immune?
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One way to explain hatred is to say that we all have our limitations, prejudices, and perspectives that are not results of free choice but conditions beyond our control, such as place of birth and education, which may narrow our vision of the world and our understanding of our fellow men. There will always be something in a devout Christian that will reject all other religions; and there will always be something in a good Armenian that will not like Turks (and vice versa). Our choice is between believing those who legitimize hatred and those who promote understanding.
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There are those who allow their words and actions to be driven by a political agenda, and there are also those who place their own humanity above such agendas. The trouble with nationalism, and all other ideologies and closed systems of thought, like organized religions that claim to have a monopoly on truth, is that ultimately they dehumanized man even if their original aim was the exact opposite. Jesus tried to humanize the rituals and doctrinal paraphernalia of the Old Testament; Marx exposed the sinister power of capital to dehumanize both capitalist and worker, and ultimately society as a whole; and Gandhi attempted to end the “satanic” aspects of colonialism. What happened next we know: Christianity brought forth the Inquisition, religious wars, and the Crusades; Marxism generated Lenin, Stalin, commissars, and the Gulag; and Gandhi’s non-violent campaign against the British was replaced by internecine religious massacres during which millions perished.
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I am not suggesting here that Armenians and Turks should love one another. What I am saying is, don’t believe everything you are told by sermonizers, speechifiers, and editorializers. The chances are, anyone who has assessed himself to be la crème de la crème is more likely to be la crème de la scum.
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Generally speaking, it is safe to assume that people who are themselves in need of understanding are in no position to understand others. On the other hand – there is always another hand when it comedy to understanding and explaining – on the other hand, manure and roses are not mutually exclusive concepts, and no one (in the words of the Mahatma) is beyond redemption. Amen.
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[arabaliozian]

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Monday, April 09, 2007
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LAW AND DISORDER
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Denis Diderot: “The more reasonable a man is, the more honest he is bound to be.”
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The difference between serial killers and tyrants is that tyrants operate within the law. It follows, the law has produced more dangerous criminals than the underworld.
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Only the naïve, the uninformed, and the inexperienced with a single-digit IQ are astonished when managers mismanage, leaders mislead, liberators oppress, and pundits are hired to convince the people that the nation is in good hands and there is nothing to worry about.
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All it takes for an Armenian to be an expert on Armenian history and culture is to have heard of Saroyan, to recognize the “Saber Dance,” and to know the number of Genocide victims.
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I have yet to meet the Armenian who underestimated his intelligence or patriotism. “I know better” is the subtext of all criticism and contradiction. Socrates never said “I know better.” What he said was, “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” Philosophy is a Greek word that means love of wisdom, and love of wisdom does not mean possession of wisdom; rather, it means search for wisdom or perpetual rejection of ignorance. It follows, he who is infatuated with his own ignorance cannot be said to be a philosopher.
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I repeat myself? Only people who read me regularly would know that.
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I repeat myself? If that’s a problem, it has a very easy solution.
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[arabaliozian]

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
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LA CRÈME DE LA SCUM
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I am fully aware of the fact that I will never be able to convince anyone who thinks he knows better because he has more money or power. Power corrupts: only the powerful pretend to be unaware of this fact. Either that or they think corruption is one of the privileges of power.
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To those whose favorite sport is the blame-game, I ask: If we deceive ourselves, whom do we blame?
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Turks are not exactly a popular subject among us. If they have become so in our press it may be because they are safe to attack, and if we don’t blame all our problems on them, we may have to redirect our focus on other and more vulnerable players, such as the incompetence of our “betters,” who may well be our worst.
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[arabaliozian]

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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FROM MY DIARY
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To those who want to know how many times I have been to Armenia, I say: “Why should I travel all the way there to starve when I can just as well starve here?”
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When a charlatan calls me a charlatan, I conclude that (a) he is smart enough to know the meaning of the word, and (b) he is too dumb to know he is one.
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We think of temptation as a negative word; but it can also be used in a positive context, as when one is tempted to be honest, to speak the truth, to do the right thing if one operates within a power structure where deception is the norm.
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In the editorial of our local paper today I read: “A bush league is a minor, often second-rate sports organization that, like fungus, grows most successfully away from the biggest crowds and brightest light.” A good definition of our leadership.
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On the same page, a letter to the editor suggests the only way to end wars is to let the politicians do the fighting. You may have noticed that the most ardent patriots among us happen to be speechifiers, sermonizers, and editorializers, that is to say, charlatans whose chances of going to war are nil.
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Elsa Triolet: “Always and never – one is as long as the other.”
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Pierre Reverdy: “Barriers are the best and surest bonds between people.”
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Victor Hugo: “Half a friend is half a traitor.”
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[arabaliozian]

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Thursday, April 12, 2007
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ON TURCOCENTRISM
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Turcocentrism is a pathological condition that should be analyzed and studied like any other psychological aberration, objectively and on a tabula rasa.
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The central tenet of Turcocentrism is the proposition that Genocide recognition is the most important issue in our collective existence today. It follows, all our other problems, such as exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora (two ongoing “white massacres”), divisiveness, corruption, and incompetence within our tribal power structures, can be safely ignored or covered up on the grounds that if ignored they will go away.
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Like most primitive societies, we tend to confer on an opinion the status of a belief system, and like all belief systems, Turcocentrism has become an orthodoxy with its own heresies (about which see below).
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A Turcocentric newspaper is one in which every other headline has the word Turk in it.
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Turcocentrics believe as long as Turks refuse to recognize the Genocide, we shall have no peace, no inner balance, no closure (whatever that may mean), no other concerns, and no other initiatives.
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A Turcocentric Armenian is an “oreo” Armenian – that is, he is Armenian on the outside, Turkish on the inside. Which is why, the Armenianism of Turcocentrism is more akin to Ottomanism.
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Turcocentric Armenians divide the community by asserting, “You are either with me or against me,” and “If you are against me, you are against the Cause,” and “If you are against the Cause you are a traitor.” On more than one occasion I have myself been accused of being a foreign agent who gets his marching orders from Ankara.
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Turcocentric Armenians are more dependent on Turkish goodwill today than their forefathers in the Ottoman Empire were on the goodwill of the Sultan.
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The Turcocentric Armenian has a counterpart among Turks – the Armenocentric Turk who believes there is an Armenian assassin lurking behind every bush, Kurds are Armenians in disguise, and Ocalan is an “Ermeni pij” (an Armenian bastard).
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Like all primitive belief systems, Turcocentrism has its devils – two of them, as matter of fact: (one) denialist Turks, and (two) Armenians who dare to suggest that, very much like the kingdom of god, the kingdom of the devil is within us.
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[arabaliozian]

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Friday, April 13, 2007
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REVOLUTIONARIES, COMMISSARS,
CHIC BOLSHEVIKS & TURCOCENTRIC PUNDITS
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At the turn of the last century we had revolutionaries who thought they could do no wrong because the civilized world was on their side. During the Soviet era we had commissars in the Homeland and chic Bolsheviks in the Diaspora who believed the Soviet Union was here to stay for a thousand years and the Russians could do no wrong because they were our Big Brothers (in the non-Orwellian sense of these words). And now we have Turcocentric pundits who believe they know all there is to know about Turks. How? On what grounds? By projection, of course!
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After projecting the worst in themselves on Turks, these charlatans believe they know all there is to know about them and they thus qualify as experts on Armeno-Turkish relations. They seem to be unaware of the fact that understanding by projection is a notoriously unreliable method of perceiving not only others but also themselves, if only because by projecting the worst in themselves they may think they have also exorcised the Turk within.
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Understanding and exorcising by projection: If only life were that simple!
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There are good Armenians and there are good Turks, and if it were up to them, all our differences would have been resolved many years ago to the satisfaction of both sides. But to hope that from the confrontation of two sets of charlatans something good may emerge is to believe in miracles, and I for one am no longer big on miracles.
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A final note on our revolutionaries, commissars, chic Bolsheviks, and Jack S. Avanakians: Have you ever heard any one of them apologize for misleading the nation? Are they capable of admitting error? Last but far from least: In what way are they different from their counterparts?
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[arabaliozian]

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Saturday, April 14, 2007
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ON SCIENTISTS, THEOLOGIANS,
MEN OF FAITH, AND OTHER RASCALS
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Gods are a dime a dozen.
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Once when Einstein said something to the effect that god did not play at dice, another physicist said: “Einstein, stop telling god what to do.”
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Theologians are people who hate to say I don’t know, I don’t understand, and I don’t know what I am talking about.
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Someone once wrote a book titled GOD IS AN ENGLISHMAN, which is a big lie. Everyone knows god is an Armenian.
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I don’t know much about Islam but I know that in the eyes of the average Muslim I am no better than an infidel dog.
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I am acquainted with several Turcocentric fascists and I know that in their eyes I am worse than an infidel dog.
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Had I been Moses’ editor, the Decalogue would have only one commandment: “Thou shalt not allow yourself to be brainwashed.”
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If I were a dictator, I would order theologians to stop dealing with abstractions and start dealing with facts by counting the number of victims god has claimed on earth.
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[arabaliozian]

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Sunday, April 15, 2007
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LOGIC AND OPTIMISM
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Overheard:
“Optimism is good for the soul.”
“So is logic.”
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Whenever a policy fails, it is safe to assume it was probably formulated by optimists. Examples that come readily to mind: Vietnam, Iraq, and our “revolution” in the Ottoman Empire.
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Optimism: what is it exactly? One tentative answer would be, overestimating the positive in us and the negative in the opposition. It astonishes how often we use reason to lead us to unreason. What would be more reasonable than to think, if the great powers of the West, imperial Russia, and God Almighty Himself are on our side, there is no way we can lose. And yet, lose we did, and lose in the most tragic, catastrophic, and horrible way. And we lost not because logic was not on our side but because we underestimated the opposition. Somewhere in his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee says, one should never underestimate the will to live even of a corpse. That may not be the logic of the human brain, but it is the logic of life (or the prospect of death), which becomes visible only after the fact.
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Rules of logic: who makes them? Who else but man, and man being fallible, his rules are bound to be full of holes. What an environment dominated by optimists needs more than anything else is not more logic but pessimism. That’s because the danger in optimism is not in optimism itself but rather in the kind of optimism that is not open to dialogue. Intolerant and dogmatic optimism ceases being logical if only because it asserts infallibility. That’s when hubris (arrogance) invited nemesis (retribution).
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When you think right and reason are on your side and you have life by the short hair, that’s when you need to consider the possibility of being not just wrong, but catastrophically, tragically, horribly wrong.
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If one has been catastrophically wrong in the past, is there anything that will prevent him from being catastrophically wrong again? I will let you answer that question.
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“I know what I know and I don’t need your two cents’ worth!” The words of a loudmouth ignoramus flirting with disaster.
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In the Confucian ANALECTS we read: “Who sins against heaven has nothing to pray to.”
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According to Ezra Pound, Confucius did not say, “If you see a good man, emulate him; if you see a bad man, examine your own heart.” What he said instead was: “See solid talent and think of measuring up to it; see the un-solid and examine your own insides.”
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To my Turcocentric brothers I say: “Whenever you think of Turkish criminal conduct, examine your own insides!” – which, needless to add, cannot be an option for the gutless.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, April 16, 2007
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ON A VARIETY OF THINGS
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Fanatics take over only when moderates let them. If fanatics are guilty of actions, moderates are guilty of inaction. We are all assassins.
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Their side believes in solutions by massacre and denial, our side believes in solutions by verbiage. After writing an anti-Turkish commentary or letter to the editor, my guess is, a Turcocentric pundit thinks he has hammered still another imaginary nail on their metaphorical coffin that contains their collective metaphysical cadaver made entirely of his wishful thinking. And as Vonnegut (may he rest in peace) used to say, “And so it goes.”
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There was a time when editors rejected my things because they were too long; now because they are not long enough. Some day I hope to master the art of writing by measuring tape.
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The role of god in history? He has converted countless law-abiding citizens into lynch mobs and killing machines.
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When Confucius was asked to discipline a lazy disciple, he said: “Rotten wood cannot be carved, a wall of dung won’t hold plaster; what’s the use of reproving him?”
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[arabaliozian]

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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THE SABERS OF PARADISE
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The best way to resist temptation is to wait patiently until you are wise enough or old enough not to have them – though old age is more reliable than wisdom.
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And speaking of longevity: Could the Ottoman Empire become a success – if we measure success by might and longevity – without assimilating Greeks, Armenians, xxxs, Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs, Iranians, Albanians, Georgians, Avars, Ingushi, Chechens, and a number of other Caucasian tribes (forty-five of them, according to some estimates) that were ruthlessly exterminated and driven out of their ancestral homes by the armies of Imperial Russia during a war that lasted several decades in the 19th Century? It is reasonable to assume that it was survivors of these Muslim tribes from the Caucasus that had settled in Anatolia that played a key role in carrying out Talaat’s policy of extermination in 1915.
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And now, let’s consider Imperial Russia: to what extent was it Russian? Or rather, what were the contributions of non-Russians like Greeks, xxxs, Georgians, Armenians, Germans, Tartars, Cossacks, and Ukrainians among others? All empires are mosaics, and it is no exaggeration to say that Armenians contributed equally to both the Ottoman and Russian Empires. Next question: what was the role of Armenians in the defeat, extermination, and exodus of the above-mentioned Caucasian tribes? Quite significant, according to SABERS OF PARADISE by Lesley Blanch, who is also the author of a biography of the French Turcophile novelist, Pierre Loti. Unlike Loti, however, Lesley Blanch was not an Armenian-hater. Neither was she anti-Russian because she also wrote several favorable books on Russia. According to her, the Russo-Caucasian war was also a religious war, which may explain the ferocity with which it was executed -- which brings to mind Voltaire’s celebrated dictum: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.”
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Anyone who wants to know more about the role of Armenians in this jihad is urged to read SABERS OF PARADISE, a fascinating book that I have read three times and plan to read again.
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