notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, June 06, 2007
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PAST INJUSTICES & FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
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The deepest wounds are self-inflicted.
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A man obsessed with past injustices will be blind to future opportunities.
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A less than perfect settlement, even a bad settlement, is better than no settlement.
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During the last century, we have failed to reach a consensus with the Turks. Things may change in the next century and we may do better, but hope is not a policy.
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If we have failed it may be because we have allowed the wrong people to represent us. Who should represent us? Not politicians, ideologues, or for that matter, nationalist historians, but lawyers, preferably odar lawyers, not because they are better or smarter, but rather because they care less about the truth (a metaphysical concept) and more about the evidence.
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To negotiate and compromise is better than not to negotiate, if only because to compromise for the uncompromising is a step in the right direction. If we compromise and reach a consensus with the Turks, some day we may even compromise and reach a consensus with our fellow Armenians. If that happens, future historians may open a new chapter in our history subtitled “The Birth of a Nation.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, June 07, 2007
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A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
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We are not what we think are. When we speak about ourselves most of what we say is bound to be nonsense. And when we speak of others, of whom we know even less, we are bound to discharge an even greater quantity of nonsense.
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What could be more inconsistent, not to say absurd, than to say, Armenophile historians are men of integrity but Turcophile historians are hirelings, charlatans, and pathological liars? Is our position so precarious that we need an outsider’s assessment to feel good about ourselves?
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In ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE! - THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REBEL JOURNALIST I.F. STONE by Myra MacPherson (New York, 2006) I read the following: “I think it is a basic law of human history that anybody that tries to be a good human being is going to get in trouble sooner or later with his own tribe.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, June 08, 2007
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ON NATIONALIST BIAS
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I.F. Stone: “Establishment reporters undoubtedly know a lot of things I don’t. But a lot of what they know isn’t true.”
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To prove me wrong, a Turkish friend quotes Ataturk. I resist the temptation of proving him wrong by quoting General Antranik.
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It is astonishing to the point of being unbelievable the dirty tricks nationalist bias plays on our perception of reality.
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Deceiving ourselves is easy, deceiving others…that’s different.
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Adopting an anti-Armenian or anti-Turkish stance comes naturally to some Turks and Armenians. That doesn’t make it right. Neither does it enhance our credibility in the eyes of the world.
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Judging others is easy; understanding them much more demanding, which is why it is less popular.
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Adopting a morally superior stance is not the same as being morally superior. On the contrary!
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After saying, “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark,” Hamlet died in his efforts to set it right. The fate of all reformers.
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[arabaliozian]

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Saturday, June 09, 2007
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PARANOIA, BIGOTRY, & FEAR OF NEW IDEAS
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According to I.F. Stone, American history has always “been marked by recurrent periods of paranoia, bigotry, and fear of new ideas.” I feel justified in suspecting that what has been recurrent with Americans has been a permanent condition with us.
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There are those who try to share their understanding, others their ignorance and you can recognize them by the fact that they pretend to know everything they need to know, and by the frequent use of such clichés as “I learn something every day.”
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Fools and liars spend so much time trying to deceive others into believing they are neither fools nor liars that they have very little time left for self-improvement.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, June 10, 2007
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ON A VARIETY OF THINGS
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If television is “a vast wasteland,” the Internet is a bordello without boundaries. If television is “chewing gum for the eyes,” the Internet is cholesterol for the heart and a burst vessel in the brain.
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They say misery likes company. So does idiocy. As an idiot, I had many friends. As a non-idiot, only one or two – three at most.
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We brag about being the first Christian nation, but unlike good Christians, we are neither humble nor meek.
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There is only one thing I envy the rich – their teeth. On the negative side, nothing strikes me as phonier than an old geezer or a prehistoric crone with a perfect set of shiny white choppers.
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Two of the most influential men in the history of mankind -- Buddha and Marx – were atheists; and according to Tolstoy, so was Jesus when he stated, “the Kingdom of God is within you.”
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[arabaliozian]

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Monday, June 11, 2007
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A DICTATORSHIP OF IDIOTS
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In a recent issue of NEWSWEEK magazine I read the following rhetorical question in bold letters: “Are we doomed to a democracy of idiots? Or can we expect the cream to eventually rise to the top?”
More often than not, what rises to the top is not the cream but the scum. Consider what happened to Germans under Hitler, Italians under Mussolini, Soviets under Stalin, Chinese under Mao, Americans during the McCarthy era, and so on and so forth. Even more to the point, consider what has been happening in our homeland or, for that matter, in the Diaspora. I am personally acquainted with some of these gentlemen who think of themselves as la crème de la crème but who are in fact no better than la crème de la scum.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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I.F. STONE SPEAKS
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“If you believe everything you read in the papers, lack imagination, and feel no need to think for yourself, you can be very happy.”
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OPTIMISM
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On more than one occasion I have been called a pessimist. If I go on writing it’s because I believe some day common sense and decency may prevail. If that’s not optimism I should like to know what is.
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WRITERS, READERS, & CHARLATANS
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We have more writers than readers, and more charlatans than both.
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THE EGO AND THE BRAIN
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The larger the ego, the smaller the brain.
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When the ego speaks, the brain is silenced.
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BIGOTS & BULLIES
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All bigots, like all bullies, are cowards because they are afraid of being exposed as bigots. Hence, their phobia of free speech.
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Phobia of free speech is bad; what’s infinitely worse is unawareness of it.
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The children of prejudiced parents will not think of themselves as prejudiced. The same applies to a nation led by prejudiced leaders.
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In the mind of the average brainwashed dupe, a collective phobia, like a collective prejudice, is not a liability but an asset, a virtue, and a patriotic duty.
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Thursday, June 14, 2007
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AS I SEE IT
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We have two distinctive, perhaps even contradictory, approaches in our dealings with the Turks: treating them as enemies or as potential friends. To those who say, Turks are destined to remain our enemies for the foreseeable future and nothing can change that, I reply: Allow me to rephrase my question: Will the chances of reaching a consensus with them be enhanced if we treat them as potential enemies as opposed to future friends? While you ponder that question, please remember that the present generation of Turkish diplomats are products of a culture and educational system that has consistently denied any past crimes against their minorities, and it goes without saying, they trust their culture, educational system, and leadership more than they trust our own, in the same way that we trust our own schoolteachers and bosses more than we do theirs. To those who may object and say our schoolteachers and bosses are morally superior to theirs, therefore more trustworthy, I suggest all assertions of moral or any other kind of superiority are suspect and will convince only those whose ego is flattered by such transparent flattery. On a more personal note: I have dealt with some of our bosses and educators long enough and often enough to say that I don’t even trust them as far as I can throw them, preferably in the nearest garbage dump. Or, to repeat my favorite mantra first formulated by Zarian, “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And now, imagine if you can, an educational system that bans free speech or educators who are afraid to speak of fundamental human rights.
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P.S. I read today that one of our notorious bosses, also right-hand man of a national benefactor and self-appointed pundit – we might as well refer to him as a renaissance man – has been expelled from the party on grounds of corruption. Are you surprised? I am not. And I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if some day those who expelled him are themselves exposed as both corrupt and inept.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, June 15, 2007
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TO BRAG IS TO BRAY
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Angela Carter: “I think it’s one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves.”
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Al Gore: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a diminished role in the way we make important decisions?”
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Sometimes readers verbally abuse me because I dare to expose failings that are universal in nature. Case in point: when I speak of divisions, I am reminded there are divisions everywhere, as if that were enough justification to cover up and ignore that particular failing in our collective existence. Who profits from this line of (un)reasoning? The dividers, of course. As for the nation: we have an answer for that too: we have survived where many others have perished. It follows; even the Genocide must be seen as a positive factor in our history because we survived it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Our genocide thus becomes the ultimate test of our endurance. First nation to survive genocide in the 20th century! Who could ask for more? As for the best and the brightest that did not survive because they were betrayed to Talaat’s and Stalin’s butchers: that too is good because it allows the jackasses among us to parade as leaders and pundits. And then there is the narcissistic fraud who becomes infatuated with what he writes and ends up believing what he says regardless of its transparent absurdity. As the often quoted Armenian saying goes, “Mart bidi ch’ellank” (We shall never acquire the status of human beings). Now then, go ahead and brag about that.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, June 16, 2007
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A SELF-SERVING THEORY
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The question that is consistently avoided by our Turcocentric pundits is: Where did we go wrong? We had so many warnings in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909…Why is it that we trusted the empty verbiage of the West and ignored the actions of the Turks? Was it wishful thinking? What else? Why is it that we cling to the theory that the Genocide was an inevitable fact of life? If it was so inevitable, why didn’t we see it coming? History, it has been said, is a series of occurrences that could have been avoided. Subscribing to the theory of inevitability is the phoniest of all justifications. Even more dangerous: if history is predetermined, it follows we can’t learn from past blunders; and if we can’t learn from past blunders, what’s the use of studying it?
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

INSANITY
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“You read too much and you quote too much,” one of our academics once said to me. “You should rely more on your own experiences and judgment.”
Yes, ultimately I hope to do exactly that, but in the meantime I want to shed the heavy baggage of nonsense that was foisted on me when I was too innocent and naïve to think for myself.
I have since discovered that to unlearn is much more difficult than to learn. If in your formative years someone you trust and respect tells you something, anything, no matter how absurd, you believe him. It is on this principle that all organized religions are based.
What is an organized religion if not a belief system that is force-fed on children at a time when they are not yet aware of the fact that the majority of mankind rejects it as untenable, blasphemous, and dangerous.
To accept a belief system as infallible is bad enough. What’s infinitely worse, not to say contradictory, is to be willing to hate, kill and die in its name. The average dupe – and the world is full of them – is programmed to accept as infallible a religion in which understanding and love have been replaced with intolerance and blind hatred. To know and understand this is to see the world as an insane asylum divided into different camps whose aim is the extermination of all competitors and rivals.
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