notes / comments

[sleuth]

[QUOTE=arabaliozian]Thursday, December 02, 2004
***********************************
AUTHENTIC AND INAUTHENTIC IDEAS
*******************************************

When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.
*
The kingdom of god is within you:This is probably the most confusing statament about the kingdom of god.And I disagree with Tolstoy.
Jesus often compared the kingdom of God to seed planted to the hearts of men and women.Each of us has the seeds of kingdom within us but it will grow only when we give it proper care and feeding.
Now, I beg you to define The heart. .

[arabaliozian]

reflections

Sunday, December 05, 2004
*************************************
After Bach, the Beatles; after Socrates, Stalin; after Elgar, Elvis; after Sibelius, Sinatra; after Hegel, Hitler; after Vermeer, Warhol; after Gostan Zarian, Nairi Zarian…I could go on. The human race does not seem to be open to reason or esthetic and moral values.
*
No matter what your field, you will have competitors who will be more successful by prostituting its integrity.
*
After Jesus Christ, televangelists, who amass vast fortunes by perverting his message of love and compassion to greed, intolerance, and hatred.
*
Speaking of man's primitive faith in explanations: we are fond of saying that what made of us perennial losers is our geography, thus implying that we have been enslaved by our mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys; or we have allowed our longitudes and latitudes to be masters of our destiny. If true, emigration would mean liberation. But consider our academics in America, our crème de la crème, who are in no position to plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance or unawareness: not only are they subservient to our mini-sultans and pseudo-imams but also to their flunkies.
*
To assert their independence of mind, courage, and daring, some readers insult a defenseless and harmless scribbler anonymously and from a safe distance, all in the name of patriotism, of course, which means allegiance to the Homeland, namely Mount Ararat, Mount Aragats, Lake Sevan, Dilijan and Hraztan.
#
Monday, December 06, 2004
************************************
When Schopenhauer called Hegel an "arch-charlatan," his unspoken intent was to replace Hegel's philosophical system with his own; or, to propound an antithesis to Hegel's thesis. Which means, in his rejection of Hegel, he was being a Hegelian.
*
When your average layman calls an intellectual giant like Marx, Freud, or Sartre a charlatan without having read their works, he only succeeds in exposing his prejudice and arrogance.
*
I define an intellectual giant as one who unveils something that has been hidden from view, and having done so, he changes our understanding of reality. He may be proven wrong and corrected by future thinkers, but only in the sense that Einstein corrected Newton.
*
Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) publicly condemned communism. But when he declared in one of his encyclicals, "Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, whereas man are corrupted and degraded," he might as well have been speaking as a Marxist. And this indeed is an unmistakable mark of an intellectual giant: it becomes impossible to speak about anything that matters without in some way quoting or paraphrasing him.
*
Sartre put it best when he said: "An anti-Marxist argument is only the apparent rejuvenation of a pre-Marxist idea." Which also means, you cannot contradict a new thesis with an obsolete anti-thesis; or again, any effort to arrest the advance of human thought is destined to fail.
#
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
***********************************
ON INTERMARRIAGE
***************************
In the Armenian ghetto where I was born, raised, and brainwashed, I was led to believe intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy. I know better now because I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages, namely, racial and religious tolerance. And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals, from Abovian to Zarian, and from Arlen to Saroyan, married odars.
*
How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? -- (about 80% in the U.S., I am told). A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the two meet, everything else - moral and esthetic values, political orientation, financial status, religious and ethnic affiliation - fly out the window. What remain are a man, a woman and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.
*
ON BEST-SELLERS
***************************
In the U.S. best-selling books are as a rule either ignored or torn to shreds by critics. What makes them best sellers are average readers and word of mouth. We Armenians don't have best-selling books because we don't have average readers. Every Armenian who knows how to read considers himself not only a distinguished literary critic with impeccable esthetic criteria but also an expert on any given subject.
*
ON GENTLE READERS
************************
Whenever I am described by some of these distinguished scholars and gentlemen as a purveyor of b.s. I am reminded of a popular saying in Hollywood, which brought a smile, when I first read it: "It may be xxxx, but it has integrity."
*
I once called one of my abusive readers an "inbred moron," and ever since then he has done his utmost to prove me right.
#
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
*************************************
ON FUNDAMENTALISTS
*************************************
A fundamentalist is one who uses (make it, abuses) the scriptures to camouflage his carnivorous instincts and cannibalistic disposition.
*
"A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of national origin," Lenin said. So is a fundamentalist -- regardless of belief system.
*
Lawyers, theologians, politicians, sophists and charlatans in general have at one time or another proved that a man may behave like swine and portray himself as a noble specimen of humanity. History is very clear on this point.
*
A fundamentalist believes being virtuous, superior, or one of the "chosen," consists in basing one's conduct on the scriptures, and by cunningly isolating certain lines and completely ignoring the spirit of many other lines, he can prove to be (to his own satisfaction, at any rate) a man of compassion even as he engages in the massacre of innocent civilians.
*
Those who commit massacres don't like that word. They prefer the word war, and in war sometimes "bad things happen."
*
Fundamentalism in both the West and the Middle East might as well be reflections of one another. One reason Kerry lost is that as a moderate he could not see this, he thus underestimated the evil in both camps.
*
How can any reasonable man change a message of love and compassion to one of hatred and murder? Easy. Listen to Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him."
#

[arabaliozian]

The kingdom of god is within you:This is probably the most confusing statament about the kingdom of god.And I disagree with Tolstoy.
Jesus often compared the kingdom of God to seed planted to the hearts of men and women.Each of us has the seeds of kingdom within us but it will grow only when we give it proper care and feeding.
Now, I beg you to define The heart. .[/QUOTE]

=================
my reply:
you say you disagree with tolstoy but you paraphrase him.
as for the heart: only in the old days it was thought to be the seat of feelings. it is now thought of as only a pump.
we feel and think only with our brain or cortex. / ara

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Thursday, December 09, 2004
************************************
A DISGRACE TO THE NATION
*************************************
Because I speak of tolerance and the brotherhood of all men, some of my readers accuse me of all kinds of nefarious and un-Armenian sentiments, as if tolerance and brotherhood were incompatible with Armenianism.
*
"You are a disgrace to the Armenian nation," a gentle reader writes, as if our nation had been a role model among nations.
*
"Unlike you," writes another, "some of us refuse to forget 3000 years of history." What's 3000 years of history to millions of years of evolution? And what if our history has been a catalogue of dynastic rivalries, tribal divisions, internecine feuds, defeats, subservience to foreign tyrants, collaboration with enemies, treason, betrayal, and the persecution of our ablest men?
*
What about the voice of the people? Why is it that it has been an absent factor in our history? Why is it that the only time we hear about them is when they are victimized by the thousand and the million?
*
Who speaks for the alienated, the unemployed and the hungry who prefer to emigrate to Turkey and to engage in prostitution in foreign lands in order to make ends meet?
*
These questions must be raised because fear of confronting reality and fear of free speech are the worst kind of cowardice.
*
What about our masters of the blame game who assert all our problems must be ascribed to the bloodthirsty disposition of Asiatic barbarians, the double-talk of the so-called civilized West, our geography, and to the obvious fact that we are a peace-loving people? May I remind these holier-than-thou charlatans that during the 20th century alone we fought both for Stalin and Hitler, and some of the most warlike emperors and generals of the Byzantine Empire were Armenian.
*
Speaking of forked tongues: what if the version of history we are taught in our schools is not history but propaganda whose aim is to soothe bruised egos?
*
Where are our intellectuals? Do we have them? Are they too busy writing books about the Middle Ages and the massacres to have any time left to raise their voices against the kleptocracy in the Homeland and the tyranny of mini-sultans and pseudo-imams in the Diaspora? What happened to their kind after they were systematically exterminated by Talaat and Stalin? Did they stay exterminated or were they followed by successive generations of brown-nosers, sleazy liars, and a proliferation of phony pundits and commissars of culture?
#
Friday, December 10, 2004
**********************************
IN TODAY'S PAPER
************************************
According to an international watchdog group, political parties and the media are two of the most corrupt institutions in the world. To put it more bluntly: our "betters" are the worst scum on earth and anyone who defends them is either a brown-nosing dupe or a brainwashed pervert.
*
ON GOD
**********************
At age 81, a British philosopher and confirmed atheist by the name of Antony Flew, has seen the light and he now believes in the existence of god. But his god, he tells us, has nothing to do with the god of bishops, televangelists, and imams, who depict him as an "omnipotent Oriental despot," or a "cosmic Saddam Hussein." His proof of god's existence? The complexities of the DNA (the material in the nucleus of a living cell that determines heredity) which must be the creation of a highly developed intelligence. Flew may now believe in god, we are further informed, but "he does not believe in an afterlife."
*
ON THE DEADLY SERIOUS BUSINESS OF ARMENIAN HUMOR
************************************************** ***************
Some of my readers have a sense of humor so delicately tuned and balanced, it seems, that whenever I fail to amuse them they call me a sick racist and a disgrace to the nation.
In a movie today I heard Woody Allen deliver the following line: "My grandmother left me nothing: she was too busy being raped by Cossacks."
If an Armenian comedian were to say as much (changing Cossacks to Turks or Kurds) I suspect, he would be lynched by his audience. I have myself received death threats for far lesser transgressions.
No wonder Armenian comedians, like Armenian writers, are on the list of endangered (perhaps even extinct) species.
*
UNDERSTANDING REALITY
**********************************
Reality is not pretty; neither is it fair. Reality supports the mighty and allows the massacre of the weak. I don't support reality; but I want to understand its secret intentions. I want to know its schedule and where it will strike next. Organized religions and closed systems of thought are popular because they promise a better reality, sometimes even a utopian heaven on earth, thus legitimizing our wishful thinking. The weak shall inherit the earth, they tell us, the oppressed shall be liberated, and the lamb shall lie down with the lion. Maybe so. But for the time being, I have no desire to make friends with carnivorous beasts, unless their teeth and claws are pulled out or they are converted to vegetarianism. And if I cannot be a dragon in a world of lions, then I want to know all I can about his territory, feeding habits so that I may avoid being his lunch.
#
Saturday, December 11, 2004
*************************************
BLIND SPOTS
************************
We all have them, and they are called blind because we can't see them. The blind spot of a self-assessed genius: his mediocrity.
*
MY POLLYANNA LIST
*******************************
Captains go down with the ship,
kings and presidents are assassinated,
femmes fatales and sexy stars grow old,
New Yorkers and cab drivers are mugged,
businessmen go bankrupts,
chief executive officers go to jail,
televangelists are exposed as fornicators
and clergymen as pedophiles,
and writers are insulted by hoodlums
parading as self-assessed role models.
It all comes with the territory.
*
AS I SEE IT
******************
There are intelligent and semi-intelligent readers, but they are in the minority. There are also self-assessed geniuses and role models. After reading one of my critical comments dealing with the Homeland, one such specimen writes: "Anyone who does not love his country does not deserve to live," or words to that effect.
My questions to him: "Do you also love the charlatans, bloodsuckers and gravediggers in your country? What about the pimps and the assassins? Is it conceivable for anyone who is neither a pimp nor an assassin to be on their side?"
*
The problem with assessing oneself is that one is bound to stress the ass in assessing.
*
Traitors have also assessed themselves as patriots.
*
JULES RENARD TO ONE OF HIS CRITICS
********************************************
"Yes, yes, you may be right, but it seems to me, you are tougher on me than on yourself."
#

[Hayq]

well ill be a son of a turk, its ARABolizian. Now, what would have made me think to look in the "intelectual lounge" to find you here?

[sleuth]

The kingdom of god is within you:This is probably the most confusing statament about the kingdom of god.And I disagree with Tolstoy.
Jesus often compared the kingdom of God to seed planted to the hearts of men and women.Each of us has the seeds of kingdom within us but it will grow only when we give it proper care and feeding.
Now, I beg you to define The heart. .

=================
my reply:
you say you disagree with tolstoy but you paraphrase him.
as for the heart: only in the old days it was thought to be the seat of feelings. it is now thought of as only a pump.
we feel and think only with our brain or cortex. / ara[/QUOTE]


I did not paraphrase Talstoy.You just failed to define The heart.

[arabaliozian]

diary

Sunday, December 12, 2004
************************************
QUOTATIONS FROM RAFFI (1835-1888)
************************************************
"Self-satisfied people are, as a rule, unaware of their failings. Progressive and enlightened people are far more critical of themselves. As for us: we live in a world of lies and illusions."
*
"Our values are rotten and our traditions have been obliterated. From the West we have appropriated not the best but the worst. Our literature is less than mediocre and our people intellectually starved. We want them to read but we don't give them books. Our schools have become toys in the hands of mediocrities and pedants. Our churches have lost their ancestral integrity and have degenerated into commercial enterprises of unbelief. Its hierarchy is dominated by venal speculators. The deserving are shunned and the undeserving promoted."
*
TRANSLATIONS FROM JULES RENARD (1887-1910)
************************************************** ******
"There are friends; there are no true friends."
*
"To be clear is a writer's way of being polite."
*
"As a man, Christ is admirable. But as God, one can't help thinking that he could have done much better!"
*
"The sleep of the just? But who says the just can sleep?"
*
THREE PROVERBS
***************************
Arab proverb: "There are no faults in a thing we want badly."

Estonian proverb: "What you are afraid of overtakes you."

German proverb: "Luck sometimes visits a fool, but never sits down with him."
#
December 13, 2004
***********************************
ABOUT SOLUTIONS
************************************
One of the worst obstacles in finding a solution to our problems are people who think there exists somewhere between heaven and earth a realm that contains solutions and all we have to do is pluck the right one for us. These individuals refuse to accept the fact that you cannot change bad men to good men by means of a verbal formula.
Socrates tried to reason with them and was arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death.
Jesus tried to preach to them and he was crucified.
More recently Gandhi tried it and he was assassinated.
Closer to home, Khachatur Abovian did his utmost to enlighten them and he disappeared without a trace.
More recently, Gostan Zarian, a truly messianic figure, was silenced, ignored, and buried alive.
*
If far better men than myself have failed, what are my own chances of success?
None!
Why do I go on?
Or rather, what are my options?
To fall silent and accept defeat?
To entertain the bourgeoisie by writing fiction about "the mutual torments of love" (Sartre)?
*
Perhaps I go on writing not to change things but to make friends.
What if in the process I make enemies?
One can always hope that they will see the light on the grounds that "no man is beyond redemption" (Gandhi).
*
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
***********************************
In his Dec. 13 Insight article, "Europe divided over letting Turkey into club," H.D.S. Greenway fails to mention that one of the major obstacles for membership is Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians before, during and after World War I (1894-1922). Eminent historians and scholars like Arnold J. Toynbee and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Prize winner, have asserted the reality of the Genocide with no uncertain terms, but Turkish politicians continue to maintain it was not genocide but war and in war "bad things happen." Which is an absurd claim in view of the fact that (one) Armenians were a minority within Turkey, (two) they were not allowed to bear arms and (three) the majority of the two million victims were women, children, and old men.
#
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
***********************************
TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI
***********************************
"Vartan didn't know how to lie. He spoke the truth to everyone. He was even incapable of covering up his own blunders. Generally speaking, this type of individual is thought of as eccentric by ordinary folk, who are used to dealing with people who say one thing and mean another, and they hate anyone who insists on speaking the truth."
*
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE
******************************************
It is against the law for individuals to steal and kill. But throughout history states have behaved as though they had a license to plunder and massacre with impunity.
*
I MAY HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE
****************************************
I have never been as wrong as when the possibility of being wrong did not even enter my head, or when I trusted the judgment of others only because they were older or in a position of power.
*
Holier-than-thou is a mindset suitable only for those who have taken permanent residence in the gutter.
*
ARMENIAN HAIKU
***************************
Sacred cows
make delicious
shish kebab.
*
MY FAVORITE HOJA STORY
***********************************
It was common knowledge that in his youth Nasreddin Hoja made a comfortable living as a smuggler. So that whenever he crossed the border with his donkey (and he did so frequently) he was searched thoroughly by border guards, who found nothing. Years later, when one of these guards met the Hoja, he wanted to know what was it that he was smuggling. "Donkeys," replied the Hoja.
*
A LOSE/LOSE SITUATION
*******************************
Edward Dahlberg: "It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others - it is vile not to endeavor to do it."
#
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
************************************
UNSEEN PHOTOS AND UNWRITTEN BOOKS
*************************************************
When asked in his old age whether he had stopped taking pictures, the celebrated French photographer, Cartier Bresson, is said to have replied: "Oh no, I'm still taking them, I just don't need a camera any more."
I wouldn't be surprised if some writers do their best "writing" after they stop publishing.
*
SUBLIMATION
************************
Revenge is the only thing that will settle the score between Armenians and Turks, a reader writes. Apologies, reparations and territorial concessions will not do it. Only an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And as he waits for the showdown, this Armenian takes it out on his fellow Armenians by engaging in verbal massacre.
*
PERSEVERANCE
*********************************************
I would have given up writing long ago were it not for the fact that those of my readers who despise me are also my most faithful readers, which may suggest that I must have something going for me. What is even more curious is that even readers who complain that I bore the hell out of them keep on reading everything I write - judging by the frequency of their insults. As for those who would like to see me silenced: it is they who eventually give up and fall silent.
*
FREUD, SPENGLER, TOYNBEE
*************************************
All major thinkers have had their share of critics who have called them irrelevant pedants or even frauds and charlatans. And then there are lazy laymen who think they are justified in accepting the judgment of these critics as irrevocable verdicts. Speaking for myself and as a layman, may I confess that I have found in the works of all major thinkers many pearls of wisdom and unforgettable lines that are totally absent from the writings of their critics. Consider the following quotations as cases in point:
*
Freud: "Repression proceeds from the ego; we might say with greater precision: from the self-respect of the ego."
*
Spengler: "All genuine historical work is philosophy, unless it is mere ant-industry."
*
Toynbee: "The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis…all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves."
#

[arabaliozian]

this / that

Sunday, December 19, 2004
*********************************
TRANSLATION FROM ARPIAR ARPIARIAN
***********************************************
"We sent our representatives all the way to Berlin to liberate us from the yoke of Kurdish and Turkish bloodsuckers, as if our own bloodsuckers were not worse than any Kurd or Turk."
*
There are two things on which our turn-of-the century writers agree: the detestable nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul and the suffocating influence of the clergy in the provinces. To which I can only add: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
*
FOR OR AGAINST
**************************
Others may speak of their silent majority; we can speak only of an indifferent one.
*
Agreement and disagreement in our context might as well be meaningless. For everyone who agrees with you, there may be 2 or even 22 who may disagree, and 222 who will not give a damn one way or the other.
*
But when two schmucks agree, they assume they have achieved national consensus.
*
IMAGINARY INTERVIEW
*******************************
-Your greatest mistake?
-Being born an Armenian.
-Your second greatest mistake?
-Writing for Armenians.
-Why is that a mistake?
-It's like writing for an army of Napoleons?
-Why Napoleons?
-Make it, lunatics who think they are Napoleons.
#
Monday, December 20, 2004
************************************
The central concern of all intellectual labor is human nature. "Scientific experience," writes Spengler, "is spiritual self-knowledge."
*
By devising extensions of the human body, technology reveals the secret direction of our desires.
*
To say that psychology, historiography, mythology, philosophy, sociology and the writing of fiction share in common an interest in human nature is to say the obvious.
*
Consider the following thought by Freud as a case in point: "It is not our hatred of our enemies that harms us: it is our hatred for the people we really love that destroys us." What better key to our own history or status as perennial losers and victims!
*
The following passage by a historian (Toynbee), that explains many aspects of universal history, including - and especially - our own, could have been written by Jung or Freud: "The egocentric illusion…this most fantastic of all freaks of Maya… has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself."
*
When our own turn-of-the-century novelists like Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Nar-Dos, and Zohrab wrote about the repulsive nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul, they might as well have been echoing Spengler's sentiments in the following passage from THE DECLINE OF THE WEST: "The parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman…."
*
And speaking of religion:
All social movements are conceived by underdogs and confiscated by top dogs. Which amounts to saying, eventually, Marx will be followed by Stalin, and Christ by anti-Christ (Renaissance popes and American televangelists).
#
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
***************************************
A history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Armenian literature reads today like a work of science fiction of another nation, from a different planet, in a distant galaxy.
*
Whenever I read biographies of Abovian, Raffi, Baronian, Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Voskanian, and many, many others, I marvel at their fearless dedication and stubborn refusal to compromise or to cushion their blows. And the question I keep asking myself is: What the hell happened to our literature? The only answer I can come up with is also the most obvious: our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their parasitical panchoonies finished the job begun by Talaat and Stalin.
*
Unlike Odian's Panchoonie, today's Panchoonie is as smooth, well fed, and soft-spoken as any American Chief Executive Officer. He sports a blue suit, red tie, a laptop and a salary of over a hundred thousand dollars (according to an insider in New York, whose word I have no reason to doubt).
*
If a writer like Baronian or Odian were to appear among us today, he would be silenced and starved before anyone can say Jack S. Avanakian.
*
I don't write to change things - my megalomania has its limits. I write to remind our midgets and their dupes that once upon a time, giants walked among us - giants whose shadow would be enough to pulverize their bones.
*
What will a history of 21st Century Armenian literature written a hundred years hence read like? Imagine, if you can, the description by a blind man of a non-existent black hat in a dark room.
#
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
***************************************
IMAGINARY INTERVIEW (II)
*********************************
-What's your racket?
-I am in the business of being misunderstood.
-Any money in that?
-Only insults.
-What kind of insults?
-Being called all kinds of names.
-Such as?
-Son of a xxxxx, disgrace to the nation.
-What nation?
-Armenian.
-Romanian?
-No, Armenian.
-Aramaean?
-No, no. Armenian.
-What's the difference?
-Aramaeans are extinct.
-And Armenians aren't?
-Only the real ones.
-You mean, the phonies aren't?
-Right.
-So, why write for them?
-To defend the honor of the real ones who can no longer defend themselves.
-But since they are dead and buried, they are in no position to express their appreciation: am I summing up the situation correctly?
-I couldn't have said it better myself.
-In that case, your situation is xxxxuation.
-You took the words right out of my mouth.
-As a matter of fact I did: I read some of your things on the Internet.
-So, tell me. What do you think?
-About what?
-My things.
-You really want to know?
-I do.
-You are wasting your time.
-I agree.
-So, why go on?
-I was hoping you would tell me.
-Sorry, friend. I can't help you there. Unless, of course, you believe in an afterlife.
-I don't.
-Then I ask you again: if the living insult you and the dead will not thank you, why go on?
-How about, to balance the score.
-But who will know - if the living don't give a damn and the dead can't speak?
-I will…and now, you will too.
-Is that enough?
-No, but it may be a step in the right direction.
#

[arabaliozian]

notes / comments

Thursday, December 23, 2004
************************************
ON DOGMA
******************
Where there is a dogma there is sure to be another that will contradict it.
*
Where there are conflicting dogmas, intolerance will be legitimized.
*
Legitimizing intolerance is the first step on a road that leads to violations of human rights and, ultimately, to torture, murder, war and massacre.
*
Insecure people need dogmas the way cripples need crutches.
*
A dogma allows men to dehumanize their fellow men without any sense of responsibility and guilt.
*
QUOTATION FROM ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
************************************************
"Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that has ever lived. In this sense, human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality."
*
MASSALS
************************
Ours is a story of such labyrinthine complexities, with so many unexpected twists and turns, dark corners and underground passages, dead ends and blunders - yes, above all blunders and miscalculations, not to say treason and betrayal - that to reduce it to a narrative of 20 or 200 or even 2000 pages (less than a page for every 365 days) amounts to engaging in magic realism in the manner of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. Which is exactly where our history texts stand today. I know what I am talking about having concocted such a massal myself: my only best seller (over 10,000 copies sold so far). And now you may draw your own conclusion…
Three apples fell from heaven and all three were rotten!
#
Friday, December 24, 2004
************************************
THREE KINDS OF WRITERS
************************************
Some writers write to achieve fame and fortune; others write to achieve personal immortality; still others write to preserve the immortality of ideals and principles without which a lawless rabble cannot rise to the status of civilized society.
*
Whenever we forget or ignore the achievements of our writers who dedicated their lives to maintaining these principles and ideals, we, in a way, collaborate with the likes of Talaat and Stalin in killing and burying them for the second time; and of the two deaths, that which is inflicted by us is the more deserving of universal contempt and condemnation.
*
A nation that forgets the memory of its greatest minds might as well be brain dead.
*
TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI
**************************************
"I am against elitism. Even so, I can't help wishing that we had an elite. That's because the masses lack political awareness and they need an elite to express their discontent, especially if members of the elite are themselves oppressed and thus share their suffering."
*
TOYNBEE ON NATIONALISM
**************************************
"To believe that one's own tribe is God's Chosen People is the error of nationalism."
*
"Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as self-adjudicated reward for success, but as self-exculpating compensation for failure."
*
QUOTATION FROM HEGEL
*********************************
"Man can never overestimate the greatness and power of his spirit."
*
SUFFERING AND WISDOM
*********************************
According to Aeschylus: "The gods have so ordained it that man gains wisdom only by suffering." I see the suffering in our past, but I see very little wisdom in our conduct and character as a nation. We have historians who specialize in documenting our suffering but I see no one actively engaged in preserving the wisdom gained by our ablest thinkers, perhaps because this wisdom would expose the charlatanism of our pseudo-elite or crème de la scum.
#
Saturday, December 25, 2004
***********************************
When you try to do something that has not been done before, everyone will tell you it can't be done, until you do it, and afterwards they will pretend you have not done it.
*
The Nazis legitimized barbarism in the name of civilization and progress - their conception of civilization of progress. Likewise, organized religions legitimize intolerance in the name of a merciful God - their conception of mercy and God.
*
Ottoman anti-Armenianism, Nazi anti-Semitism, Muslim anti-Americanism: subtle minds may see differences in kind and degree here, but I don't.
*
Foreign scholars have praised our art, architecture, and music, even our mountains, rivers, and valleys. But, as far as I know, none of them has ever said anything remotely kind about our statesmanship. When Avedik Issahakian said: "We have been cursed with natural disasters, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders," he was saying something very similar.
*
I see my countrymen as a tiny fraction of mankind, and I am on the side of the exploited and oppressed. Between a hungry man and a fat-bellied slob, my sympathies will always be with the hungry even if he happens to be a Turk and the fat one an Armenian bishop. When General Antranik declared: "I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed," he meant something very similar too.
#
Sunday, December 26, 2004
****************************************
THE ARMENIAN COMPLEX
*******************************
To overestimate friends and underestimate enemies: I call this the Armenian complex. It is indicative of weakness and wishful thinking. I speak from personal experience.
*
At the turn of the last century our revolutionaries overestimated the verbal commitment of the Great Powers and underestimated Turkish savagery, and for that innocent miscalculation the people paid a disproportionately heavy price. That's what they mean when they speak of life being unfair.
*
Some get away with murder, others get killed for deviating a fraction of an inch on the highway. Moral: Always behave as though somebody up there did not much care about you.
*
To put the same thought more succinctly: There is a difference between smart and smart-ass, and smart-ass is closer to ass than to smart.
*
A self-assessed smart Armenian is sure to be a smart-ass.
*
Having said this I am reminded of Talleyrand's celebrated dictum: "It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder."
*
If we had had a Talleyrand among our revolutionaries, the following would have been his comment on the verbal commitment of the Great Powers: "Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts."
*
Talleyrand on non-intervention: "Mot metaphyisque et politique qui signifie a peu pres la meme chose qu'intervention." In other words, when politicians speak of non-intervention they mean intervention and vice versa.
*
20/20 vision or diplomatic experience (which we did not have)?
*
Another question: What if our political parties brainwash us to believe we are smart because they want to cover up their own stupidity?
*
And if you were to ask: "Why such depressing thoughts on this joyful season?" I say, what could be more thrilling than self-knowledge or (which is the same thing) understanding something about reality that you did not understand before? And what could be more depressing (with tragic consequences) than failing to learn from past experience?
#
Monday, December 27, 2004
*************************************
ON CULTURE SHOCK
************************************
A culture shock can be painful as well as degrading, and I have experienced four of them: first time when I ventured outside the Armenian ghetto in Greece; second time when I went to Italy for my secondary education; third time when we moved to Canada; and fourth time when I started writing for Armenians. I have since discovered that an Armenian from Syria and an Armenian from Italy can be as different as an Arab and an Italian.
*
In today's paper I read the following: "Motorists leaving Istanbul's Ataturk Airport encounter a billboard that says, in Turkish, 'Control the Traffic Monster Inside You.'" And I say to my Armenian readers, in English, "Control the Turkish gypsy inside you."
*
Why is it that I don't experience culture shock when I read Chekhov, Sartre, Kazantzakis, Thomas Mann, Pavese or Toynbee, and many other writers from all four corners of the world? On the contrary, what I experience is a sense of kinship and liberation. I conclude, therefore, what's shocking about the encounter of cultures has nothing to do with values and everything to do with intolerance. And sure enough, all the writers I mentioned above were torn to shreds by critics and sometimes even imprisoned, exiled and excommunicated by their own compatriots. Which may suggest that labels may change but man is the same everywhere, and it is up to each individual to choose between being on the side of the victimizer or the victim. All the rest is academic nonsense and propaganda.
#
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
***********************************
MISLEADING LABELS, BAD SEMANTICS
*************************************************
To be beyond criticism is an ambition we all share and a status we can never attain because everything that is human is also imperfect and a product of contradictions.
*
If you are an underdog you have no choice but to say "Yes, sir!" even when they kick you in the ass. But if you are a top dog you can always label the criticism as unfair, negative or destructive, and to silence the critic (if he is an underdog).
*
A negative critic is one who dares to question the qualifications or competence of those in power. A positive critic is one who says the fault lies not with the men at the top (who are beyond criticism) but some of their underlings - the lower the underlings, the more positive the criticism.
*
To identify people by their religion is at the root of all religious intolerance. The faith or religion of the overwhelming majority of people is a result not of choice but of accident - the accident of birth. In that sense, Napoleon was right when he remarked: "Geography is destiny." Most Christians are Christian because they were born in a Christian country. For such a Christian to label Muslims infidels and vice versa - for Muslims born and raised in a predominantly Muslim environment to call Christians giaours or infidels - is to legitimize intolerance and ultimately hatred, war, and the murder of the innocent.
*
A Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist share one thing in common which is much more important than their religion, namely, their claim to be God's Chosen or Favorite People. This claim of privileged status has nothing to do with compassion and mercy (the central tenets of both Islam and Christianity) but with arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity.
*
When I say God is perfect and infallible, I also imply that by believing in Him I share some of his perfection and infallibility. So that even when I victimize the innocent I do so as an instrument of God's Will. If this is not the most dangerous form of insanity, I should like to know what is.
#
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
**************************************
LIARS AND THEIR ACCOMPLICES
*********************************************
Our editors operate on the assumption that, so long as they adopt an anti-Turkish editorial policy, they are on safe ground.
One reason they are unanimous in their refusal to publish me is that, before they print anything, they ask themselves: "Will this displease in any way any one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors?"
*
In order to survive, our press has no choice but to recycle the propaganda line of our establishment and to silence our critics. To those who ask, "Do we have them?" - meaning critics, I say: Judging by our turn-of-the-century literature in Istanbul and later in Soviet Armenia, all our writers were also anti-establishment critics. If they had not been, neither Talaat nor Stalin would have adopted a policy of systematic extermination. And when I say, our writers were also critics, I don't just mean critics of Ottoman and Soviet oppression, but also and above, critics of Armenian greed and corruption in high places.
*
The Ottoman and Soviet tyrants have been swept into the dustbin of history, but Armenian greed and corruption continue to be covered up on the grounds that it is bad policy to expose our dirty linen in public.
*
But once in a while, this corruption stings a member of our establishment. Immediately lawyers are hired, appeals are sent to congressmen and ambassadors, letters to the editor, commentaries and editorials are published in our weeklies, and a great deal of dirty linen is exposed.
*
My question to our editors and self-righteous ladies and gentlemen who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers and endless litigation on several fronts is: "Is this the only time you have become aware of corruption in high places? If you were aware of what goes on but preferred to adopt no-skin-of-my-nose stance, in what way are you not as guilty as those you now accuse of deception and fraud?"
*
"The man who does not bawl out the truth when he knows the truth," writes Péguy, "becomes the accomplice of liars."
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, January 09, 2005
********************************
LITERATURE
************************
Literature as high-class entertainment? Nonsense.
Literature as biopsy. That's more like it.
*
JOURNALISM
***********************
In Armenian journalism we have no one remotely comparable to Ben Bagdikian, whose central concern as an investigative reporter has been to expose American incompetence and corruption. And what has been the central concern of our own pundits and journalists? To reform the rest of the world by exposing its shortcomings, blunders, and crimes. In other words, they have become past masters of the blame game. In their eyes, there is nothing wrong with our own leadership and our problems must be ascribed to outsiders. Which means, their main function is to enlighten and educate the world. If that's not megalomania run amok, I should like to know what is.
*
THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE
****************************************
We emphasize the positive in order to cover up the negative. We brag about our adaptability and cover up our high assimilation rate. In the ghetto near Athens, where I grew up, we (the white trash) spoke Greek with an Armenian accent, but professional Armenians (lawyers, businessmen, doctors) who lived in classier suburbs, spoke Armenian with a Greek accent. It is an undeniable historic fact that the assimilation rate among able and successful Armenians has been much higher than among lower-class Armenians. From Byzantine emperors of Armenian descent to Loris-Melikov, Mikoyan, and Deukmejian, the standard of our leadership among odars has been incomparably higher than among us. It is no exaggeration to say that, when it comes to political leadership and elites in general, ours within our own communities fully qualifies as white trash.
*
INTELLECTUALS
*************************
A final word on our intellectuals: I have every reason to suspect that a bishop today makes more money in a single year than all our intellectuals put together throughout their lives. There you have the reason why we have dozens of well-nourished bishops and not even a single lean intellectual. I have heard of many writers who were employed by bosses, bishops, and benefactors, but I have never heard of a single boss, bishop or benefactor working for an intellectual.
#
Monday, January 10, 2005
*********************************
MURDER OR SUICIDE?
****************************
In his book, COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED," Jared Diamond echoes Toynbee when he maintains, "societies aren't murdered, they commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death." He could have added: "…and whenever someone comes along and describes what's happening, they call him a pessimist, an alarmist, and their first instinct is to silence and ignore him."
*
READERS
*******************
Last week alone one reader identified me as a capitalist and another as a communist. Which may suggest that, what defines the meaning of a text is not what is stated there in black and white by the writer, but the phobias, complexes, blind spots, and limitations a reader project on what he reads.
*
REALITY AND THE MIND OF GOD
***************************************
The greatest thinkers in the world contradict one another not because some are right and others wrong but because reality is an equation with an infinite number of unknown quantities or irrational numbers, and to understand it amounts to reading the mind of god.
#
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
************************************
RECAPITULATION / PART 2
************************************
People are more or less the same everywhere. Left to their own devices they are more than willing to live in peace with one another, as they have been doing in the United States, Canada, and Australia. It is the men at the top who transform average, law-abiding citizens into killers in the name of a phony abstraction.
*
When it comes to criminal conduct, the French are fond of saying "Cherchez la femme." But when it comes to mass hysteria, war and massacre, it is "Cherchez le leadership." The people are guilty only in so far as they allow themselves to be brainwashed by a charlatan in whose eyes they are only a means to an end, the end being his power and prestige.
*
In ancient times emperors declared themselves to be gods. More recently, kings and sultans ruled with the authority invested on them by Almighty God Himself. In our own days dictators ruled as if they were gods. This may suggest that leadership and megalomania might as well be twins. And if you think we are immune to this aberration, may I remind you that we too have been at the mercy of individuals who speak in the name of god, capital, or ideology.
*
"What we need is not criticism but solutions," I am told again and again by dupes who think our writers have been no better than nightingales serenading the moon or daydreamers contemplating the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. And this misconception is widespread because our literature, as subsidized by our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, has been distorted, misrepresented, and perverted beyond recognition.
*
Anyone who has read our writers from Khorenatsi in the 5th century to our own days (Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian) knows that their central concern has been our problems and their solutions. My guess is, we have more solutions than problems, but these solutions have been buried and forgotten as effectively as our writers, most of whom were either butchered by our enemies or silenced by our own commissars of culture.
*
Censorship has been and continues to be a constant in our literature and press. We have an entire army of speechifiers and sermonizers who speak in the name of god, capital, and ideology, but we have no one who speaks in defense of human rights and free speech, because human rights and free speech are incompatible with authoritarian, that is to say, anti-democratic power structures.
#
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
***********************************
RANDOM THOUGHTS
ON NATIONALISM, RELIGION,
AND RELATED ATROCITIES
**********************************************
"LET SUDAN KNOW THAT GENOCIDE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED," reads a headline in our paper today. This means that so far genocide has been tolerated; which also means that we live in a world where pickpockets are arrested but serial killers are allowed to roam free, to rape, plunder and slaughter with the blessings of church and state.
*
No one is in a better position to appreciate the value of moderation, tolerance and doubt than one who has suffered in the hands of a fanatic.
*
One way to explain an Armenian fanatic is to say that he is what he is because he has adopted the Turk as his role model.
*
An Armenian fanatic is like a sheep that has suddenly acquired the teeth and appetite of a wolf.
*
Why is it that I feel closer to humanity when I am alone?
*
At the beginning was the word. Which means, we become what we say.
*
Have you ever tried to shake hands with someone who is kicking your ass?
*
Every ideology has its commissars and every religion its inquisitors.
*
Nice guys can be nasty, but good men, never!
*
Our religion tells us to love our enemies, and our patriotism teaches us to hate the Turk. It follows; a patriotic Armenian cannot be a good Christian and vice versa.
*
The defeated Azeri is my brother, the victorious Turks is the enemy of mankind.
*
Plato: "Only the dead have seen an end to war."
*
St. Augustine: "Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself."
*
Pablo Casals: "Love of country is a wonderful thing, but why should love stop at the border?"
#