notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, September 15, 2007
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THEORIES
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A foreign traveler (I forget his name – may have been Lynch) once said that there are two distinct types of Armenians: the honest, hard-working peasant born and raised on Armenian soil, and the Levantine merchant whose number one concern is the bottom line. This traveler did not live long enough to observe the evolution of the naïve peasant into a murderous commissar infinitely more ruthless than the most cynical Oriental carpet dealer of the Diaspora.
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I had nothing to do with World War I that reduced my parents into penniless orphans and refugees. Neither did I have anything to do with World War II during which I spent my childhood in a ghetto as a “Turkish gypsy.” But after that every major source of misery has been my own doing. I say this to point out two morals: (one) no one gets away with anything, and (two) we are our own worst enemies. Consider the two first stories in Genesis: Eve tempts Adam, and Cain kills Abel.
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There are a number of theories explaining why we survived where many others perished. One of them maintains the reason we survived is that we are not biodegradable. Is that good or bad? It depends. If you ask an ecologist he will say being non-biodegradable is not good for the environment. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 16, 2007
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UNDER FIRE
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The law of the jungle says if you are alone, you will be vulnerable to predators. There is a biological (i.e. primitive and unconscious) component in patriotism: we identify with God and Country to be less vulnerable. It follows, anyone who questions the legitimacy of our faith and patriotism (like yours truly) is an enemy that deserves to be verbally abused, chastised, and whenever possible, silenced. This type of reasoning ignores the fact that if I dissent it may be because, instead of uniting us, God and Country have done the exact opposite – they have divided us not only from the rest of mankind but also from one another. Common sense and history (i.e. reality and facts) are on my side here. A religion or ideology that preaches solidarity and brotherhood but practices division and fragmentation ends up legitimizing prejudice, hatred, war, and massacre, in other words, the law of the jungle. The only thing God and Country have done for us so far is to allow the ephemeral feeling or illusion of being less vulnerable. Now then, how fair are some of my patriotic readers when they estimate the value of my person and work somewhere below their “spittle,” “vomit,” and “sh**”? And the following in reference to my person: “This mother-f***ing Turcophile son-of-a-xxxxx should not be permitted to post his garbage on this forum and must be kicked out forthwith!” No doubt the sentiments of an ardent patriot who may inspire patriotism in others.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, September 17, 2007
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ON OUR COLLECTIVE IQ
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In a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper I read the following: “…by funding more than one public system we are wasting our valuable dollars on bureaucracies.”
In another letter, a reader comments on the promises of politicians: “This is just garbage and we all know it. It is time to make politicians responsible for their words and actions.”
In still another letter a reader comments on the “shallow dogmatism and irrational rhetoric” of his fellow Canadians.
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It is not at all unusual for a fool to assess himself as smart, and the distance from smart to very smart, and from very smart to smartest might as well be invisible to the naked eye. But if I were to rate our collective political IQ, I would place it somewhere between Latvians and Albanians. Why Albanians? Because they too think they are just about the smartest people on earth. For more on this subject see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, one of the very best books ever written about countries on the Mediterranean coast. According to Theroux, Albanians think as they do because they were brainwashed by their own leadership. Does that ring a bell?
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If I write in this vein it’s not because I am anti-Armenian but because I have seen the light of objectivity and impartiality. The question we should ask but we never do is: to what extent our status as perennial victims may be said to be an extension of our collective single-digit IQ? And if you say we have been victimized because we are only sardines in a pool of sharks, I say biology may be destiny in the animal kingdom but not in Homo sapiens, and that our size and vulnerability is a direct result of our political moronism and nothing else. I could prove this with almost mathematical precision by quoting our own writers from Yeghishe (5th century) to Zarian (20th century)(*) but I won’t even try because I know an Armenian cannot convince another Armenian of anything, and if an odar were to try, he would be promptly dismissed as a Turcophile which in our lexicon means the lowest form of animal life.
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FOOTNOTE
(*)See my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS, which contains relevant passages from the two writers mentioned above as well as many other Armenian and odar observers.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, September 18, 2007
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DARKNESS AT HIGH NOON
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Polybius: “Knowledge of the past is the readiest means men can have of correcting their conduct.”
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Knowledge of the past or understanding history does not mean who did what to whom, where, when, and number of victims – that’s journalism not history – but where did we go wrong?
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Why is it that he who has seen the light of faith becomes blind to the light of reason? Why is it that when it comes to belief systems, one man’s light is another’s darkness? If two men have seen the light and they disagree with one another, it may be because one of them or both cannot tell the difference between light and darkness.
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I write as I do because I cannot stomach the spectacle of a poltroon who, after learning one or two things, sits on his fat ass with the conviction that he knows everything he needs to know, when in fact all he knows are a handful of newspaper headlines and a couple of slogans that flatter his ego.
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On the subject of the Genocide, we speak like jihadists who have seen the light of truth, and the truth is: they are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. If it took us six hundred years to reach that “obvious” and “self-evident” truth, it may be because either they are consummate dissemblers or we are not as smart as we think we are.
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Between a lie that flatters his ego and a truth that exposes his limitations, a man will invariably choose the lie, and he will compound the felony by calling it the light of truth. I am reminded of a passage in the Bible that goes something like this (I quote from memory and I paraphrase): “If you think you are smart, be a fool so that you may be really smart.” And I say, amen to that!
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[zourna]

Re: notes / comments

"I have seen the light of objectivity and impartiality"
You've experienced autoscopy of some kind?
How can one ascertain, and lay claim to objectivity when all knowledge is acquainted and/or predisposed in our genetic factors?

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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MARK MY WORDS
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Dissent is unpatriotic only in an environment where propaganda is truth.
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Never make the mistake of thinking that your status as underdog or victim bestows on you any kind of superiority. If power corrupts, so does weakness. If money is the root of all evil, so is the lack of it.
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Where there are Armenians there will be disagreements, not the kind that are only stages in a dialogue that move towards consensus, but dead-end disagreements that are nothing but dogmatic assertions in a closed system of thought, and closed systems of thought are favored by closed minds.
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If I ever regain my childhood faith in God, one of my first prayers (repeated thereafter daily) will be: “Dear Lord, give me a critic who has not undergone a frontal lobotomy or is in no need of professional help.”
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Memo to a pompous ass:
If tomorrow we vanish from the face of the earth, my guess is we will make fewer headlines than Britney Spears’ haircut or O.J.’s most recent shenanigan.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 20, 2007
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ON WRITING AND READING
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Well-adjusted readers see humor in my writings; others see gloom and doom, even treason and betrayal. The only way to explain these contradictory reactions is to say that because I speak of reality, readers project their perception of their own reality onto me. Briefly stated, they read between the lines, which also means they don’t read me, they read themselves.
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Notwithstanding the verbal abuse leveled against my person, I intent to go on writing because it is not unreasonable to hope that just because someone speaks like a fool today, he will continue to think like a fool tomorrow. Foolishness, like youth and inexperience, are not permanent conditions but transitory stages.
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Speaking of minor local historians, the equivalent of our present-day Turcocentric pundits, Polybius comments: “We cannot obtain a comprehensive view from writers of mere episodes. For indeed some idea of a whole may be got from a part, but an accurate knowledge and clear comprehension cannot. Wherefore we must conclude that episodical history contributes exceedingly little to the knowledge and grasp of universal history.” O how I wish Armenians read more historians, real historians, as opposed to monomaniacal ghazetajis “of mere episodes.”
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A ghazetaji writes what everybody knows – that’s his way of flattering his readers into thinking they know and understand all they need to know and understand because they are just about the smartest people on earth. To a traumatized ego, flattery is manna.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, September 21, 2007
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PHENOMENA
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For 1500 years our writers failed to penetrate the thick skulls of our Neanderthal leaders and their assorted dupes, hirelings, and brown-nosers. And yet, I go on as if there were a glimmer of hope that this xxxxuation (sic) is about to change. Call me an optimist, though I have also been called a pessimist.
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I repeat myself only in the eyes of those who read me daily, faithfully, and religiously. But being of modest disposition, I operate on the assumption that most of my readers read me once or at most twice a year, and by the time they read for the second time, they have completely forgotten what they read the first time. In that sense, I do not repeat, I remind.
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An Armenian who has a score to settle with Turks, will also have a score to settle with his fellow Armenians; and if some day he succeeds in settling all his scores, he will have an unsettled score with himself. If memory serves, it was Nietzsche who said, “In time of peace the warlike man fights with himself.”
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There are so many books on how to succeed that I can see a time when being a failure will be more interesting, unusual, and fashionable.
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With every new enemy, I also acquire a new source of inspiration. In that sense I owe more to my hostile readers than to my friendly ones who seldom or never comment on my things perhaps because they no longer read me – and why should they if I express thoughts, which are also theirs?
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I have had several friends who after a minor political disagreement became enemies, and not just garden-variety enemies, but Armenian enemies, i.e. enemies unto death. Which only means that they were never friends, only potential enemies. But then that’s what an Armenian can ever be at his very best – never a friend, only a potential enemy. In defense of Armenians, may I add that, if we are to believe President Truman (“You want a friend? Get a dog!”) this is not an exclusively Armenian phenomenon.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, September 22, 2007
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CALLING A SPADE A SPADE
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That’s what I have been doing; and if you say anyone can do that, I suggest you think twice before quitting your day job. Far better men than myself have been arrested or assassinated for doing exactly that. That’s because if you call a spade a spade, the chances are sooner or later you will end insulting men with egos the size of Goliath, Godzilla, and King Kong combined.
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POLITICS AND HISTORY
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Political leaders will invariably favor a version of history in which their blunders are covered up. It follows; a historian that enjoys the support of a power structure has allowed his objectivity to be contaminated by propaganda.
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TO BRAG OR NOT TO BRAG
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Our survival is a positive if we were destined to perish. It is a negative if we were meant to be an empire or a force to be reckoned with.
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STAGES
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Life advances through many stages, and the truth of one stage becomes the lie of another. We either move forward to the next stage or come to terms with a lie, which also means silencing anyone who dares to call a spade a spade.
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ON VERBAL ABUSE
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Verbal abuse may intimidate some and stimulate others. So far it has stimulated me. As for our Goliaths, Godzillas, and King Kongs: they are only paper tigers.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007
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WHY ANGELS FLY
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G.K. Chesterton: “The reason angels fly is that they take themselves lightly.”
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WARNINGS
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Perhaps henceforth I should post the following two warnings at the head of everything I write.
TO MY FRIENDS: No need to read this. I say nothing you don’t already know.
TO MY ENEMIES: You may not enjoy what follows – I may be on target.
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THE CHEERFUL THOUGHTS OF
A BRIGHT-EYED AND BUSHY TAILED ARMENIAN
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It is the fate of some writers, very much like some composers and painters, not to be appreciated or understood by their contemporaries because they are ahead of their time. I can’t be one of them because I only recycle the LAMENTATIONS of Khorenatsi and Naregatsi – two medieval writers who wrote fifteen and ten centuries ago respectively.
Several friendly readers have told me they will love me only after I drop dead. Which raises the question: of the approximately one thousand dead Armenian writers (give and take a hundred or two) how many are loved or even read today? I remember an Armenian telling me: “If I can read first-class Greeks, Russians, and Germans, why should I waste my time with our second-raters? I challenge you to name a single Armenian who is as good as Plato, Dostoevsky, and Hesse!”
And speaking of Naregatsi: I once had a talk with Mischa Kudian (may the blessings of the Lord be upon him) -- remember Kudian? He translated Naregatsi, among many other Armenian writers. He was one of the most disappointed Armenians I have ever met. Afterwards I remember to have thought: “I will never be like that. He is too negative about his fellow Armenians. He sees only the worst in them. I will be more positive. I will be more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed…”
I am now told I am consistently negative, and I am told this by the very same Armenians whose favorite subjects are Turks, massacres, and denialists. Human beings are bundles of contradictions, we are told. Nothing new in that. Contradictions in themselves are not dangerous. Unawareness of them is. Unawareness allows a man to behave like swine and parade as a paragon of virtue. Hence the spectacle of garbage-mouth nonentities and control-freak simpletons pretending to be superpatriots with leadership qualities fully authorized to tell better men than themselves what to think.
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IT IS NOT WRITTEN!
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Jimmy Carr: “Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.” If God created us for purely experimental reasons, He also gave us a free will with which to disagree with Him.
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DEMOCRACY
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You say you are right because you have the majority on your side? How do you know? Did you take a vote? How come I wasn’t told?
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