Re: notes / comments
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.
#
Monday, May 28, 2007
************************************************
FROM PROPAGANDA TO PROPHECY
*************************************************
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.
*
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.
*
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.”
*
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.
*
Prophecy consists in adding two plus two and coming up with the obvious answer.
#
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