notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
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WHAT I BELIEVE
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I believe in Socrates who said, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
I believe in Tolstoy who said you don’t have to believe in god to be a good Christian.
I believe in Gandhi who said god is truth, and truth is not a commodity that can be acquired, but an endless journey fraught with doubt, uncertainty, anxiety, agony, and despair.
I believe in Karl Barth who said heaven, hell, and immortality don’t have equivalents in the real world as we perceive it with our senses but are only metaphors,(*) in the same way that when Christ said “the kingdom of god is within you,” he was saying god and his kingdom are only dimensions within our psyche.
I believe in Sartre’s dictum “We believe that we believe but we don’t believe.” Which may explain Mother Teresa’s “dark night of the soul” that was not just an isolated episode, as described by Santa Teresa of Avila in her autobiography,(**) but lasted most of her life.
*
WHAT I DON’T BELIEVE
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I don’t believe in a god that is swayed one way or another by human desires and prayers. A god, who allows a brute to rape and murder a defenseless child when he can put a stop to it, is not a god who takes sides or gets involved in human affairs. To say therefore that god is on our side is to blaspheme.
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TWO PRAYERS
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Be on my side. Teach me to think against myself.
*
Bernard Berenson: “Give us this day our daily idea and forgive us all those we thought yesterday.”
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FOOTNOTES
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(*) In Karl Barth’s own words: “Resurrection means not the continuation of life, but life’s completion. The Christian hope is the conquest of death, not flight into the Beyond.”
(**)For more details, see “A Glimpse of the Underworld,” in THE BOOK OF MY LIFE by Teresa of Avila, translated by Mirabai Starr (Boston, 2007, page 251).
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[arabaliozian]

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Wednesday, October 03, 2007
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ON PATRIOTISM AND RELATED
ABERRATIONS AND ATROCITIES
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Patriots of all nations share three things in common:
(one) hatred of the enemy; (two) intolerance of dissent; and (three) a genetic predisposition to confuse indoctrination with education.
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When ideology enters a controversy, reason flies out the window.
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Patriots are the ideal dupes of tyrants.
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Whenever I step out of the box, I am called an enemy.
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In a patriotic environment anyone who refuses to be brainwashed is called a traitor.
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You know all you need to know? What if your need of flattery exceeds your desire for knowledge?
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There is collective wisdom and there is collective stupidity. You may now guess which is more popular.
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I should like to see our patriotic speechifiers discharge their empty verbiage on an odar audience instead of preaching to the choir.
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All ideologies generate their own jihadists.
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Never call a moron an imbecile; he may take it as a compliment and spend the rest of his life trying to live up to it. I have seen it happen.
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If straight talk offends you, blame your ego, not me.
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Our enemies speak in the name of the devil even when they speak in the name of god.
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A headline in today’s paper reads: “Study says half of fraud victims relied on trusting relationship.”
*
Delivering patriotic speeches is like offering free drinks to alcoholics.
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[arabaliozian]

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Thursday, October 04, 2007
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MORE ON PATRIOTISM
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Our problem, which is also the world’s problem, is not the underworld but the overworld, i.e. the men at the top. When the underworld stages a massacre, like Al’s St. Valentine’s Day, its victims may or may not number a dozen. But when states commit massacres, its victims may number in the millions.
“What we need is solutions,” the average dupe is brought up to say, thus implying these solutions don’t yet exist, and they need to be discovered by a visionary, another messiah, who will appear among us out of nowhere and be our savior. This, needless to add, is a rumor created and publicized by our propagandists who are so used to playing the blame-game that it doesn’t even occur to them that they are our problem and the only solution is getting rid of them. Either that or to convince them to get out of their box by learning to think not as leaders of men (or mini-sultans and neo-commissars) but as servants of the people.
What do the people want? This is a question they don’t even bother asking perhaps because they already know the answer, which is strength through consensus, and peace and prosperity.
People who preach patriotism pretend to be ignorant of misguided patriotism, the kind that dehumanizes the enemy and ultimately legitimizes hatred and serial killers on a massive scale.
Some philosophers and creators of closed systems of thought like Saint Thomas Aquinas and Karl Marx may speak of just and unjust wars and revolutions. But as Toynbee points out somewhere in his monumental STUDY OF HISTORY, just wars have a way of becoming indistinguishable from their counterparts, because once put into motion they create their own rules and forget those formulated by the likes of Aquinas. As for revolutions, they succeed only in replacing one set of rascals with another.
Patriotism and wars may save the hide of a tyrant or increase the size of his dominions, but they are not the solution; and if they are, they have not solved any one of our problems.
This much said let me add that there is nothing wrong with patriotism in itself as long as it is a sentiment between you and your homeland. But when it is politicized and organized, it is invariably coupled with militarism, and the ultimate aim of all militarism is slaughter. And slaughter is slaughter. To say if my enemy slaughters my family it’s bad, but if I slaughter his it’s good, is the kind of moronic primitivism that rightfully belongs to the jungle.
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[arabaliozian]

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Friday, October 05, 2007
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WHERE THERE IS NO VISION
THE PEOPLE PERISH
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Verbal abuse in the name of Armenianism is not patriotism but hooliganism. I am not casting aspersions. I am only confessing past sins. But if the shoe fits, you are more than welcome to it.
*
When I was young I thought the aim of an argument was to win it by silencing the opposition, and the surest way of achieving that goal was by raising my voice and escalating the personal attacks. Another tactic was assuming superior airs, making dogmatic assertions whose clear implication was that only an idiot would dare to contradict them. As for dialogue and consensus: I considered both to be anti-Armenian activities. It never even occurred to me to suspect that my way of winning an argument may result in alienating a fellow Armenian. And I know something I didn’t know then. To alienate an Armenian is to carry on Talaat’s policy of extermination by other means. To silence a fellow Armenian by means of verbal abuse or censorship is also an unconscious admission of the fact that we don’t deserve to live.
*
We lie when we blame others for all our problems. We deceive ourselves when we brag we survived where many others perished, when our survival is nothing but a slow-motion death of a thousand cuts, most of them self-inflicted. We flatter ourselves when we say we are smart. Some of us may indeed be smart, but collectively and politically we are no better than perennial dupes of foreign and domestic manipulators. Consider the evidence of history: at the turn of the last century we were taken in by the empty verbiage of the Great Powers and the Young Turks. Even our ablest statesman, Krikor Zohrab, not only trusted Talaat but also risked his own life to save his from the secret police of the Sultan. In the Soviet Union we were taken in by Stalin’s b.s. In the Diaspora we fought for Hitler. That’s right: Armenians fought for both Hitler and Stalin and their only tangible achievement was killing one another. And today we believe in our own propaganda, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to a nation: to believe in the flattery of their baloney artists whose favorite line is the one immortalized a century ago by Yervant Odian: “Send us a little money.”
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Nothing I have said so far is new or original. My line is neither novelty nor originality. I have only been paraphrasing and repeating what has already been said by far better men than myself. What I have said above may be said to be a variation in a minor key of Zarian’s dictum: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
*
If you think I am being negative, consider my two main sources so far: the Bible and our literature. After writing these lines I came across the following passages in Santa Teresa of Avila’s BOOK OF MY LIFE, in a chapter subtitled “Advice to World Leaders” (page 150): “There is so much deception and duplicity here on earth. A certain person persuades you that he is your friend, and then you find out that it was all a lie. Who can live in a world so rife with deceit and betrayal?” And, “No one believed those who expressed themselves better than I have.”
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[arabaliozian]

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Saturday, October 06, 2007
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SITUATION / xxxxUATION
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A Kurd was being interviewed on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and I was immediately struck by the way he was bragging about Kurdish history and culture. Was it possible that all oppressed and divided people were indoctrinated to think, feel, and speak the same way? And even more to the point: have they ever been successful in fooling anyone but themselves? The suspicion that we may be no better than Kurds became a certainty when I undertook the task of translating three books by Zarian – actually, four (the fourth, like so much else, remains unpublished and very probably will never see the light of day). That’s when I started writing critical commentaries. At first no one objected. Partisan as well as non-partisan papers printed everything I wrote, probably thinking my critical barbs were aimed not at them but at the opposition. Only when it became clear that I was targeting all sides indiscriminately did they pull the plug. To those who say they did the right thing because I am a bad influence, I say: Relax, no harm done. No respectable young lady ever lost her virginity to an obscene book; far better men than myself have failed to breach the stone walls of our collective consciousness; and for every dissident, we have a chorus of pro-establishment pundits, brown-nosers, and ghazetajis who sing our praises during the day and dig our graves at night.
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The question all patriots should ask themselves is: Why is my patriotism right and my enemy’s patriotism wrong if both spring from the same source and aim at the same goal, which is slaughter of the enemy?
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And here is an example of speaking with a forked tongue: We like to identify ourselves as a peace-loving civilized nation and not as ruthless bloodthirsty imperialist barbarians, and yet we brag about our Dikran the Great and his ephemeral little empire.
*
Richard Millet (French writer and critic, b. 1953): “I thought literature was immortal. I thought the French language and France were immortal. I know now that not only are they mortal but moribund.”
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[arabaliozian]

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Sunday, October 07, 2007
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ARROGANCE AND DISSENT
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What is censorship if not another form of dissent by those in power against the defenseless. Assassination, it has been said, is still another form of dissent.
*
Arrogance can be lethal to the best among us, how much more so to a nonentity. If you want to understand why we have been perennial underdogs and victims, have a talk with one of our smartass, know-it-all, holier-than-thou nonentities who will tell you what brought us to this pass is our geography, our religion, our neighborhood…and a thousand other reasons, never their own kind of dogmatism, intolerance, and contempt for what others think.
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A man of average intelligence will assess himself as above average. That’s more or less normal. It happens all the time. What is not normal but a constant in politics, including our own, is for a nonentity to assess himself as a genius, a man of vision, and a leader of men. Speaking of one such leader (Hamo Ohandjanian) Granian once told me, “He was credulous to the point of being naïve. During World War II, in the middle of an argument, I heard him say, ‘Churchill does not lie!’”*
*
And speaking of arrogance and Churchill: when Michael Arlen (real name Dikran Kouyoumdjian) once challenged Churchill to admit that his tanks were no match for Hitler’s, Churchill didn’t even bother to lie; he just let him know – and this in the presence of distinguished guests -- what he thought of him: “You are a foreigner, an intruder, an Armenian who dares to come to this country and write books purporting to be about the manners and behavior of its aristocracy. You do not belong and never will belong to the classes in this country, which you are so profitably describing. You have, in point of fact, no right to be sitting at this table.”**
*
Today’s quotation in our local paper is by Havelock Ellis and it reads: “What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.” Armenian translation: “What we call leadership is the succession of one arrogant nonentity with another.”
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FOOTNOTES
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*See my VIEWS / REVIEWS / INTERVIEWS (Los Angeles, 1982)
**See Harry Keyishian, MICHAEL ARLEN (Boston, 1975).
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[arabaliozian]

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Monday, October 08, 2007
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ON FRACTIONS AND WHOLES
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Human understanding deals with fractions. Only god’s understanding deals with wholes. When a man says his understanding extends from alpha to omega, you can be sure of one thing: he doesn’t even understand a fraction of alpha. If a man says he has all the answers, he has only one answer and that answer is wrong.
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If we agree that the international community is moved only by self-interest, the question we should ask is, do we have anything to offer? If the answer is we have nothing, then obviously we have been wasting our time.
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In what way are we different from the rest of mankind? Is not self-interest what motivates us too? If the answer is no, that may indeed be our problem. If the answer is yes, then we have no right to portray ourselves as morally superior.
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The greatest obstacle to understanding is understanding itself, or to think that, just because we have understood one fraction, we understand the whole.
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Historians disagree because they focus on different aspects of reality. Philosophers disagree because they deal with different aspects of understanding. Both reality and understanding are complex concepts with many facets and layers.
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Knowledge and understanding advance through many stages. To say I know and understand all I need to know and understanding is to confuse the first step of the journey with the last.
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[arabaliozian]

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Tuesday, October 09, 2007
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SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION
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When I was young I believed everything I read in our history books. I was shocked when I heard a Mekhitarist scholar say that there is more fiction than fact in the works of our historians. I know now there is some nationalist, religious, ideological or philosophical bias in all historians.
“The Soviet period of Armenian history is highly controversial,” writes Manuel Sarkisyanz in the preface to his MODERN HISTORY OF TRANSCAUCASIAN ARMENIA (Leiden, 1975). What makes the Soviet period controversial is ideology, of course, and where ideology enters, propaganda and bias are sure to follow. Elsewhere, on page 209, we read: “British propaganda in the United States was publicizing the Martyrdom of the Armenians to enflame American conscience – which, in 1917, contributed to American willingness to enter the war against Germany. For this purpose an enormous amount of information on the Armenian massacres and the alleged German responsibility for them was published in the interest of the Entente. As it was meant to serve the Allied war effort, much of it contains anti-Turkish and anti-German bias.” It is this very bias that is at the source of Turkish denialism and American reluctance to call a spade a spade.
Speaking of ideology and bias, here is another passage, on page 323, that may not be flattering to our collective ego: “The War [World War II] also caused an improvement in the position of the Armenian Church in the Soviet Union. The Communist regime needed the Churches to endorse its war effort.”
Further down, on page 326, Sarkisyanz tells us, the regime’s influence reached far beyond the borders of the USSR: “The pro-Soviet Archbishop Tiran Nersoyan was, in 1944, appointed from Etchmiadzin to be Prelate of the Armenian Church of North America. He endorsed Communism as ‘leading to a Christian ideal’ and had written that ‘what the clergy is…on the spiritual level, the Communist Party is on the worldly level of politics and economics.’” You may, if you wish, call this bias fueled by ideology. But I would agree with my Mekhitarist teacher in calling it fiction bordering on fantasy.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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PARAGONS OF VIRTUE
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Armenians divided?
Not so! We are just about the most united people on planet earth.
Armenians intolerant?
Wrong! As the first nation to embrace Christianity, we are the most compassionate, tolerant, understanding people in the world and anyone who says otherwise is a lying Turcophile moron and very probably a paid agent of Ankara.
Armenians dupes?
It’s common knowledge that we are the smartest people on the face of the earth and it takes seven xxxs to fool an Armenian. I dare you to name another nation that can boast of a Mikoyan, a Gulbenkian, a Kirkorian, not to mention our Jack S. Avanakians, Khartakhians, Khembelians, Kheyarians, Abdalians, Avazakians…
Armenians corruptible?
We may have our share of rotten apples, like you, but on the whole, when it comes to standards of honesty and personal integrity, we are the envy of the world.
Armenians have a highly developed spirit of contradiction?
If that means we don’t take no sh** from nobody, especially Turcophile bastards like you, then yes, certainly, why not? I consider that an asset, not a liability.
Armenia a mafia democracy?
You are alive, aren’t you?
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, October 11, 2007
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RECAPITULATING
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German democracy works because Germany was denazified – a long, painful, expensive process carried out by the Allies. Something similar could be said of Japanese democracy. If Armenian democracy has been a failure so far it may be because no one bothered to de-Ottomanize and de-Stalinize us. As a result, we continue to be at the mercy of wheeler-dealers whose conception of leadership is similar to that of sultans and commissars – not as servants of the people but as their masters.
*
Because the writing on the wall is in invisible ink, we pretend not to see it. And whenever someone says, “I can see it and I will read it for you,” our first instinct is to shut him up.
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We in the Diaspora are so absorbed in past massacres that we are blind to the two “white” massacres that are taking place today – namely, assimilation in the Diaspora, exodus in the Homeland.”
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Speaking of our wheeler-dealers and their dupes who parade as superpatriots and accuse anyone who refuses to parrot their propaganda line of treason: consider the following passage in Polybius written more than two thousand years ago. The Greeks were divided, Polybius explains, because all men with genuine leadership qualities had been “systematically thrust into the background and hampered. When at length they did obtain leaders of sufficient ability, their power quickly manifested itself by the accomplishment of that most glorious achievement, the union of the Peloponnesus.”
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Moral I: we may be unique (who isn’t?) but our problems are not.
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Moral II: Wheeler-dealers are not in the business of solving problems but in perpetuating them.
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Moral III: Where wheeler-leaders are the dominant minority, charlatans will flourish, and the agenda of charlatans is not exposing problems but covering them up. After all, who would want to send money to individuals who are better at creating problems than in solving them?
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