notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

more....

Sunday, November 07, 2004
************************************
We are addicted to bragging and lamenting. But whereas what we brag about (such as Dikran's ephemeral empire) is known, as a rule, only to ourselves, what we lament about (the massacres) is more widely known. Another peculiarity of ours: what we brag about we credit to ourselves, but what we lament about we debit to foreign accounts, i.e. the hypocrisy of the West and the barbarism of bloodthirsty Turkish fanatics.
*
As a child I too was brainwashed to brag until it dawned on me that most people didn't give a damn about us, or they cared about us as much as we cared about the triumphs and tragedies of countless other nations and tribes throughout history.
*
As a child I was taught about the fact that at a time when the French and the English lived in caves and forests like wild beasts, we enjoyed a Golden Age, our translation of the Bible was called "the queen of translations," and our literary works were universally acknowledge masterpieces; until I realized that the overwhelming majority of Armenians couldn't even name a single one of these so-called literary masterpieces.
*
The question that I was never taught to ask is, if we were civilized fifteen centuries ago, why is it that we have today the political awareness of children, that is to say, barbarians living in caves and forests? So much so that, the average Armenian considers anyone who fails to flatter his vanity by recycling chauvinist crapola is a hostile witness and an enemy who should be silenced.
*
To Armenians addicted to bragging, I suggest the following: Brag all you want, provided you do so in the privacy of your own homes and within the confines of your own club of mutual admiration, of which we have many more than a dog has fleas. But if you insist on bragging in public, do so in such a manner as not to be a source of embarrassment to decent Armenians.
*
I define a decent Armenian anyone who is aware of our collective failings, has acquired a more or less objective view of our past, and is thus in a position to decipher the writing on the wall. This type of Armenian may be rare, but he exists. As a matter of fact, I happen to be personally acquainted with some of them myself.
*
Finally, a warning: One of the worst mistakes an Armenian can make is to view our past through the eyes of our own historians. Imagine, if you can, a law that says, when it comes to character witnesses in a court of law, only mothers are qualified to testify for their sons.
#
Monday, November 08, 2004
***********************************
FROM A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
*****************************************
"Bush and bin Laden need each other to stay in power."
*
THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
COMPLEXITIES OF REALITY
***********************************************
Reality keeps combining factors (of which there may well be an infinite number) constantly. It is impossible to catch up with it or to guess the next permutation.
*
TWO WELL-KNOWN MYSTERIES
**************************************
Why did God, who could have created a perfect world, create an imperfect one?
*
Why do smart people submit their destiny into the hands of dumb leaders?
*
WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?
*************************************
As a rule, this question is asked by men, who neither know nor understand themselves, when they are in pursuit of women, who know and understand themselves even less.
In this context, what could be more reductionist (to the point of contradiction) than the Biblical expression "to know"?
*
WHAT ABOUT MEN?
WHAT DO THEY WANT?
************************************************** *
Writes La Bruyere: "Women have no moral sense, they depend for their behavior upon the men they love."
As for men: they lose whatever sense they may have had at the sight of a well-filled pair of nylons on high heels.
*
A BRIEF HISTORY
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
************************************
In an environment where everyone lies at the top of his lungs, those who whisper the truth will be ignored.
*
MORE ON WOMEN
***************************
According to Chamfort: "Elles son faites pour commercer avec no faiblesses, avec notre follie, mais non avec notre raison. Il existe entre elles et les hommes des sympathies d'epiderme et tres peu de sympathies d'esprit, d'ame et de character."
(They are made to deal with our weaknesses and stupidity, but not with our reason. Between them and men there exist epidermic sympathies but hardly any spiritual or intellectual interaction.)
#
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
**********************************
IN A FOOL'S PARADISE
******************************
It has been said that men of faith can reconcile themselves to life because they have chosen to live not in reality but in illusion. But illusions being ephemeral, Americans are bound to wake up and realize that they have been bamboozled, hoodwinked and flimflammed by an administration of baloney artists. That's when the excrement will hit the ventilator.
*
RUMORS
*****************
While in Armenia, writes Denis Donikian in his book of travel impressions, he heard the following rumors:
*
"In ten years Armenia lost a million Armenians."
*
The first president [Levon Der Bedrossian] built a villa near Valence, France, with stones exclusively from Armenia."
*
"The population of Armenia today is less than 1,500,000."
*
"The same president had a subterranean tunnel dug beneath his residence to serve as an escape route in case the street demonstrations against him became too hostile."
*
"The sudden death of his brother was actually an assassination."
*
"Whenever a politician is killed, the president gets the blame."
*
"The last catholicos died suddenly of cancer. He was caught trying to smuggle abroad the treasures of the Church. It was this that killed him."
*
"The present catholicos has also been diagnosed with cancer."
*
"In Karabagh, where he comes from, Kocharian was nicknamed the Cobra."
*
"The total population of Armenia today is no more than 1,200,000."
*
"Half of the casualties in Karabagh were killed by a bullet in the back."
*
LINES FROM VOZNI
*****************************
Donikian also quotes the following witticisms from the satirical magazine VOZNI:
*
"In Armenia today, 5% of the population owns everything, 95% owns the rest."
*
"The number of bureaucrats goes up as the number of people goes down."
*
"If some day you dream that you are both rich and in good health, you will better off if you don't wake up."
*
CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR
*****************************
In my old age I don't mind admitting that I have been wrong about many things most of my life. Am I right about anything today? Only one thing: even when wrong, I know better - not in relation to others but in relation to my younger self.
#
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
***********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*********************************
What we reveal when we brag about survival:
According to Emerson: "There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal." Namely, survival at all cost, even if it means practicing opportunism, hypocrisy, treason and betrayal.
*
Whenever I quote someone, I acquire a new enemy. People don't like to be quoted, only praised for their wisdom.
*
If you assess yourself as smart (hubris),
you are sure to act dumb (nemesis).
*
Denis Donikian: "The honors conferred on poets by politicians are the dishonor of poetry."
*
Here is Raymond Aron's explanation of how ideologies are implemented: "Well-supported facts are used to bolster up an ideology simply by omission of other facts, which are equally well established."
*
To have an approximate view of how far we have fallen, all you need to do is compare the writers slaughtered by Talaat and Stalin with today's faceless and nameless scribblers.
*
If you plan to go out hunting tigers, make sure your brother is not working with them.
*
The more patriotic an Armenian, the more Ottoman his vocabulary, style and conduct.
*
It is not necessary to hate your brother in order to assert your love of your homeland.
#

[arabaliozian]

from my diary

Thursday, November 11, 2004
***********************************
In whatever I write, my aim is not to assert the superiority of my ideas, but to suggest that there is nothing wrong in once in a while questioning the validity of our fundamental assumptions, in order to separate that which is ours (therefore authentic) from that which is someone else's (therefore alien).
Cases in point:
What if hating a fellow Armenian is more Ottoman and less Armenian? What if the status quo we support is more authoritarian and less democratic? - that is to say, more Ottoman and less human?
What if inflexibility is not love of principle but infatuation with the self?
And what if, since in an authoritarian environment, yes-men have a far better chance to survive and succeed than honest men, we have been educated, manipulated and brainwashed by charlatans?
*
Chinese proverb: "Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come."
*
Generosity is a virtue praised by the poor, and avarice is a vice practiced by the wealthy.
*
Longevity does not guarantee wisdom, only senility.
*
Stolen apples taste better because only the very hungry steal.
#
Friday, November 12, 2004
************************************
Our intellectuals today do not aspire to expose the charlatans and overthrow the oppressors half as much as they do to join their ranks.
*
We are all dissidents, if not against the state, then against the dissenters.
*
It is not easy writing for readers who know better. It is even more difficult writing for readers who know everything and are never wrong. Hercules had it easy: his labors were only twelve in number.
*
An old Catholic once told me: "When I go to confession, I tell the priest: 'Father, you know me, it's the usual.' And he understands because he has been my confessor for many years." Now, imagine if you can this old man to be an Armenian confessing to an Armenian priest. Not only the priest would insist on hearing every single sordid sin but also, at the end, after accusing the old man of covering up, he would refuse absolution.
*
What's the difference between an Ottomanized Armenian and a Turk? The Turk does not pretend to be the opposite of what he is.
*
When honest men keep silent, only the loudmouth charlatans are heard.
#
Saturday, November 13, 2004
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*********************************
One does not kill in the name of God but in the name of an idol. Pascal is right: "The worship of truth without charity is idolatry."
*
What would happen to him if he were to convert to Hinduism, asks Toynbee, and he answers: "In the hierarchy of castes I should rank below the sweepers."
*
In his book of travel impressions, Denis Donikian quotes a woman in Yerevan as saying: "Today no one gives a damn about the people. If they want to build a church they go right ahead and build it. Speaking for myself, I have lost all faith. Believe in what, may I ask? And what's the use of buying a newspaper? I am not illiterate. I wouldn't mind reading a newspaper. But I can't afford one."
*
Elsewhere: "Once upon a time there was a country in which everyone spoke the same language and no one understood what the other was saying."
*
When criticized, Donikian writes, our politicians have a pat answer: "Our present problems are the gradual accumulation of many past problems."
*
Why is it that the very same readers, who accuse me of dipping my pen in arsenic, dip theirs in cobra venom?
*
Knowledge advances, propaganda stays the same. If you say, "Tomorrow I will think what I thought yesterday and what I think today," the questions you should ask yourself are: "What if my thoughts are not mine but someone else's? And what if someone else's thoughts are the thoughts of an ignoramus?"
*
Trash my kind of ideas
and alienate all those who think as I do.
Alienate those who do not parrot your sentiments and thoughts
and surround yourself only with like-minded men.
In the company of exclusively like-minded men,
entertain the illusion that most people think as you do.
Live in that misconception long enough
and blur the line that separates reality from illusion.
And is not confusing illusion with reality
the first stage of insanity?
*
Like Captain Boycott and Judge Lynch, Bush has enriched the English language with a new word: Bushism, meaning any incoherent and nonsensical sentence.
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, November 14, 2004
*************************************
In Turkey, preachers are licensed and their sermons pre-approved by the state. Some would call this censorship, others, the only way to curb fanaticism, hatred, and war.
*
If, to be fallible is human, to consider oneself infallible must be inhuman. As for readers who write as if this thought has never penetrated their skulls: my only explanation is that their ego must be so swollen that it has smothered their reason and rendered it inoperative.
*
Graffiti are like postage stamps: expressive of a nation's character, style, and concerns at a given time. Some day I would like to compile a chronological anthology titled THE WIT OF A NATION. A few samples follow:
-Aunt Jemima is an Uncle Tom.
-No Easter this year, they found the body.
-Hugh Hefner is a virgin.
-If you liked Hitler, you'll love Lyndon.
-Half the way with LBJ.
-James Baldwin eats watermelon.
-Where is Oswald now that we need him?
*
A bully's unspoken motto: "There is more wisdom in my ignorance
than in your knowledge."
*
My favorite ism is skepticism because it questions the validity of all isms,
including its own.
*
Some people use the truth like a club with which to clobber their adversaries; and whenever truth is not on their side, they use lies the same way. Their primary concern is neither truth nor lies but to assert their own superiority. There it is, the root of all autocratic regimes. To speak of democracy or human rights to this species is like speaking of animal rights to wolves and hyenas.
#
Monday, November 15, 2004
************************************
SOME NOTES ON FEAR, DEATH,
AND IMMORTALITY
*******************************************
In almost every branch of knowledge or field of endeavor there will invariably be two schools of thought one of which will contradict the other. And where there are two schools of thought, the chances are, there will also be two sub-schools and so on...
*
Faced with two or more contradictory systems of thought, the layman will tend to choose that which comes easy or is not against his own interests. In that sense, all laymen are dupes of specialists, by they politicians, philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and elites in general.
*
What do we mean when we speak of immortality or resurrection? As a layman, I thought I knew, but then, when I read Karl Barth, one of the greatest Christian theologians of the 20th century, I realized that my understanding of the word had been based on a fallacy.
*
"Resurrection," writes Barth, "means not the continuation of life, but life's completion." He goes on to explain: "The Christian hope is the conquest of death, not flight into the Beyond."
*
By "conquest of death," I assume he means the fear of death. That's because one resists, defeats, and conquers only an adversary one fears.
*
"The Kingdom of God is within you," also means, all knowledge and understanding begin and end in the convolutions of our cortex.
*
Paul Valery: "Our most important thoughts are those which contradict our emotions."
*
Lichtenberg: "One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth-saying."
*
Martin Luther: "God uses fear to impel men to faith."
#
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
***********************************
ON FAIRY TALES
*****************************
In his THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, Bruno Bettelheim writes, the way a person transcends "feeling neglected, rejected, degraded" is by the "repeated hearing of a fairy story." One could say that, chauvinist propaganda, religious rituals and prayers are to adults what fairy tales are to children.
*
Fear of the unknown is the source of all faith. We use certainties or dogmas as shields with which to protect ourselves from our own doubts, uncertainties, and anxiety -- or, if you prefer, feelings of rejection and degradation.
*
It could be said of anxiety, what has been said of God: "You may let go of God but God does not let go of you." Or, we may convince ourselves that our faith will abolish anxiety of the unknown, but anxiety is destined to remain at the very roots of our being. That's because "we may believe that we believe, but we don't believe" (Sartre).
*
When the eminent Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, says our choice is between "God or radical absurdity," he, in a way, also implies that, reality is dependent on our definition or understanding of it. But since reality follows its own inflexible laws independent of man and the choices he makes, this must be a patently false assumption. And it is this very false assumption that has led (or rather misled) man (who cannot create a single worm) to create ten thousand gods. For which transgression, mankind has paid, and continues to pay, a heavy price.
*
To those who accuse me of being against religion, morality, patriotism, and the very foundations of Western civilization, I say: On the contrary. All I have been trying to do is to understand and explain why is it that man behaves like a wolf to other men in the name of a higher principle. Why is it necessary for man to kill his fellow man in order to assert the validity of his faith and the superiority of his god?
*
Arthur Koestler on Zen Buddhism:
"Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into verbal diarrhea to prove constipation."
And even more to the point:
"Zen always held a fascination for a category of people in whom brutishness combines with pseudomysticism, from Samurai to Kamikaze to Beatnik."
#
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
*****************************************
It is easy to speak in the name of God, much more difficult to act with His wisdom.
*
Fanatics in one religion or ideology will spawn counter-fanatics in another. The dominant voices in both the Middle East and America today are those of fundamentalists: imams and televangelists -- charlatans who promise salvation in the next world by making a hell of this one.
*
What is anxiety? According to Rollo May, "anxiety comes from not being able to know the world you are in, not being able to orient yourself in your own existence."
Religions and ideologies are popular because they provide us with a compass. But since the north in one compass is the south in another, the result has been not harmony and peace but more confusion, anxiety and conflict.
*
In an enlightened world what will be abolished is not religion but its dogmas.
*
Separation of church and state is a phony concept. Instead, we should speak of separation of church and its false claim of infallibility.
*
If, in five or ten years, a weapon of mass destruction kills a million Americans, and Americans retaliate by killing ten million Arabs, (assuming the weapon is traced back to them), then all past massacres will become ancient history and no one will want to read about them because everyone will live in fear of being the next victim of a holocaust.
*
What the Turks did to us at the turn of the last century should concern us. But what we have been doing to ourselves should concern us even more.
#

[arabaliozian]

reflections

Thursday, November 18, 2004
****************************************
Politicians are adept at making you think you are thinking when in fact you are parroting slogans of their own contrivance.
*
The unspoken aim of an elite is the systematic moronization of the masses.
*
We are all victims of politicians, if not the enemy's than our own. People of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your charlatans.
*
According to the Turkish version of the story, it was Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians who provoked Ottoman massacres by killing Turkish civilians. If true, the question we should ask is: "Why did law-abiding subjects of the Empire suddenly behave like bloodthirsty savages?"
It can be said of massacres, what Merleau-Ponty says of torture:
"It is said, and it is true, that torture is the answer to terrorism. This does not justify torture. We ought to have acted in such a way that terrorism would not have arisen."
*
Democracy may also be defined as fascism modified by anti-fascist checks and balances, which sometimes fail to check and balance.
*
Thomas Mann: "The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him."
#
Friday, November 19, 2004
************************************
We cannot change history, but we can try to understand it, beginning with the fact that political decisions are not acts of God (like earthquakes and volcanoes) but acts of men, with their own set of prejudices, loyalties, interests, blind spots, limitations, idiosyncrasies, fears, doubts, and anxieties. In short, politicians are people like us, totally disqualified to assert infallibility.
*
History may be summed up as a slow-motion avalanche of blunders and miscalculations by men of power whose central concern is to either maintain or increase their powers.
*
Talleyrand is right: sometimes errors of judgment can be far worse than crimes.
*
It has been said, and it is true, that we see things not as they are, but as we are. Our understanding is therefore enhanced whenever we think against ourselves, or we view reality as a succession of traps and ambushes.
*
A version of the past that supports a specific political agenda cannot be right. Also, between a version that flatters our vanity and one that does not, the chances are the unflattering version will be closer to the truth.
*
A Sudanese general on the genocide in Darfur: "It is not genocide; it is war, and in war bad things happen."
Sounds familiar?
*
We have many kinds of literary awards except a Freedom of Speech Award. Can you guess why?
*
Because I dare to question the judgment and wisdom of our political leadership, I am sometimes accused of "self-hatred." Figure that one out, if you can.
#
Saturday, November 20, 2004
*********************************
It is a mistake to identify the people with the regime, especially if the regime is non-representative, and all regimes are to some extent non-representative, including democracies. Consider the case of the Bush Administration today. Roughly speaking it represents only the interests and values of only 25% of the people, since 50% don't vote and the remaining 25% voted against him. And of the 25% that voted for him, one is justifying in wondering how many of them did so on the basis of deceptive slogans that exploited their prejudices and fears. For more on this subject, see GAG RULE: ON THE SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT AND THE STIFLING OF DEMOCRACY by Lewis H. Lapham (New York, Penguin Press, 2004).
*
Speaking of the unpopularity of democracies and the ease with which they slide into fascism, Lapham writes: "Nobody ever said that democratic government was easy, which is why, during the twenty years between the last century's two world wars, it failed and was abandoned by the people of Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, and Germany."
*
And finally, here is Spengler on the undemocratic nature of democracies: "A small number of superior heads, whose names are very likely not the best known, settle everything, while below them are the great mass of second-rate politicians selected through a provincially-conceived franchise to keep alive the illusion of popular self-determination."
#

[arabaliozian]

i have been reading

Sunday, November 21, 2004
*************************************
"He who knows does not speak"?
Some truth in that.
Socrates spoke a great deal but his central message was: "The only thing I know is that I don't know."
*
For every slogan there will be a counter-slogan, for the same reasons that the self-interest of one will conflict with the self-interest of another.
*
To approach history with a slogan or thesis or agenda and to defend it at all cost is to act like a lawyer who is hired to plead "not guilty" for a client he knows to be a serial killer. (Hence, the popular joke: "Please, don't tell my mother I am a lawyer. She thinks I am a pimp.")
*
To say that Turks are bloodthirsty savages is as racist as to imply that Armenians are compassionate because they were the first nation to convert to Christianity.
*
Perhaps what I have been trying to do is to expose the charlatanism and lies of elites or men at the top of the food chain (political and religion leaders) who pretend to know better but whose knowledge is disguised self-interest.
*
The American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, believed that sin is social, not just individual. The same could be said of prejudices, intolerance, and hatred.
*
Religion is one thing, imams and bishops another.
#
Monday, November 22, 2004
**********************************
Jean Rostand: "Language common to all men: mathematics and erotics."
*
Jean Rostand: "My Godlessness is no less mysterious than your God."
*
It is said: "Do not judge a man by his own opinion of himself," or a nation's history by its own historians.
*
The human brain is the seat of reason as well as unreason, and unreason has played a far more decisive role in human history than reason.
*
The reason why we don't understand God is that He does not want us to understand Him.
*
Polish proverb: "A guest sees more in an hour that the host in a year."
*
Alexander Chase: "Memory is the thing you forget with."
*
Latin proverb: "Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold."
*
Abbie Hoffman: "The idea that the media is there to educate us, or to inform us, is ridiculous because that's about tenth or eleventh on their list. The first purpose of the media is to sell us xxxx."
*
Shavarsh Missakian: "I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere, but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to principles and ideals."
*
Gostan Zarian: "The Armenian nation is like a family whose members devour each other because of conflicting interests."
#
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
*************************************
Burmese proverb: "Futility: playing a harp before a buffalo."
*
William Hazlitt: "Everyone in a crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination."
*
Samuel Johnson: "A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still."
*
In his book of travel impressions, UN NOTRE PAYS (TROIS VOYAGES EN TROISIEME ARMENIE), Denis Donikian quotes an old lady in Yerevan as saying: "Our political leaders are engaged in a policy of national devastation. Things are happening today that did not happen under the Soviets. Which means we are being slaughtered not with ordinary blades but with dull ones. And we are told to shut up about it."
*
Elsewhere: "I give a hundred drams to a panhandler. He says nothing - neither a thank-you nor a blessing. Nothing. Complete silence. 'Tell me, my good man, I just gave you a hundred-dram note and you said nothing, not even a simple thanks. How come?' 'What's the use of saying thank you to hundred drams? I say thank you only to those who give me a thousand or more.'"
*
To readers who complain that I repeat myself, I say: "You and I share one thing in common: a dislike of repetition. I too dream to live as an Armenian among Armenians and not to be exposed to the same old clichés ad nauseam. I too would like to read a commentary by one of our dime-a-dozen pundits that does not blame all our misfortunes on others - if not Turks then the corrupt West. I too would like to read a letter from one of our philanthropic organizations that does not end with the Panchoonie punch line: "Mi kich pogh oughargetsek" [Send us a little money], with a footnote informing me that my contribution is tax deductible. I too would like to meet an Armenian who does not just brag about Armenians being the first nation to convert to Christianity but whose words and actions are animated by love and compassion as opposed to venom and intolerance. Will I live long enough to see these dreams realized?
Did I say dreams? Make it, daydreams based on illusions, born of wishful thinking and chauvinist propaganda.
Did I say daydreams? Make it, snowballs in hell."
*
There is no God.
At last I can prove it:
Bush's reelection.
But the Devil exists.
I can prove that too:
xxxx Cheney's reelection.
*
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
*************************************
Puzant Granian is dead. I wonder how many of my readers will recognize his name. He was a teacher, a poet, and a prolific author of fiction, essays, and criticism; also a community leader and a gifted orator.
*
I reread an interview published in 1980, where he speaks of Levon Shant (his teacher), Hamo Ohanjanian ("an undeniable moral force"), Roupen Der Minassian ("a man of immense power, spiritual as well as physical"), Gostan Zarian ("a daring explorer of the Armenian psyche"), and Nikol Aghbalian ("a writer of undeniable genius" with an "intense commitment to ideals"), and what comes to mind is the prince, in Giuseppe di Lampedusa's LEOPARD, who at one point says: "We were the leopards, the lions; those who will take our place will be little jackals, hyenas."
Our situation in a nutshell.
Jackals and hyenas.
Scorpions and frogs.
*
Hindu proverb: "When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him."
Exactly! Our frogs have kicked our elephants to death.
*
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."
*
After an exchange of insults, disguised as views, with one of my gentle readers: "Now that you know me and I know you, let us do our utmost to avoid each other."
*
Between a philosopher and a slave, the state will invariably choose the slave.
#

[arabaliozian]

11/27

Thursday, November 25, 2004
*************************************
André Gluckmann is a contemporary French philosopher and the author of over twenty books, the most recent being A TREATISE ON HATRED. The following three quotations are from an interview dealing with this book.
*
"It is said that hatred is born of oppression, destitution, and humiliation, as if everyone living in deplorable conditions were ravaged by hatred. What could be more offensive to the poor and the disadvantaged of this world!"
*
"The terrorist is not a robot manipulated by material conditions. The terrorist is an assassin who takes pleasure in indiscriminate killing…."
*
"The great writer is a prophet of doom. He exposes that which has gone wrong and that which is evil."
*
Portuguese proverb: "Better a red face than a black heart."
*
Stephen Leaxxxx: "A half truth in argument, like a half brick, carries better."
*
Bulgarian proverb: "Other people's eggs have two yolks."
*
Speechifiers and sermonizers are like men who praise vegetarianism while dining on shish kebab.
*
When it comes to thinking, real thinking, asking questions and raising doubts are more important than making dogmatic assertions and relying on authority.
*
I am an Armenian, which means when I think of my fellow Armenians, I lose both sleep and appetite.
#
Friday, November 26, 2004
************************************
Whenever I question Zarian's contemporaries, I notice again and again that they refuse to discuss the work and prefer to gossip about the man, and more specifically the insults he apparently inflicted on them.
A minor novelist: "We organized a picnic in his honor and instead of thanking us he complained about the food."
A third-rate versifier who considers himself a first rate poet: "He was an arrogant name-dropper. Unamuno told me this, Verhaeren told me that, Picasso told me, me, me, me!"
An academic in Yerevan: "He was unbearably self-centered. No one liked him."
An occasional journalist: "Once, when I was a boy, I carried two of his atrociously heavy bags to the top of a mountain in Cyprus and he didn't even thank me."
*
Of Zarian we can truly say that he was too good for his people, including our so-called intellectual elite. To those who say, "But there must be some truth in all that anecdotal evidence. The man must have been inconsiderate, perhaps even rude, in his dealings with his fellow Armenians." I say, yes, certainly, I agree. Rudeness is unforgivable in any man, including writers, especially writers. But then, Charents was an attempted murderer: that doesn't seem to stop our academics from studying his works and the public from idolizing him.
*
More from André Gluckmann's interview:
"Anti-Semitism antedates any encounter or dealing with a real Jew."
*
"Hatred is directed at imaginary objects of a certain type: reflections of oneself that one refuses to recognize."
*
Simone Weil: "It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level."
*
Writes Olivier Messiaen: "Among birds most fights are settled by tournaments of song."
Imagine, if you can, American marines and Iraqi insurgents today (or, for that matter, Armenians and Turks, or even Armenians and Armenians), settling their differences by bursting into song. And to think that homo sapiens thinks he has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.
*
My favorite three funeral marches: the slow movement from Beethoven Eroica Symphony, the first movement of Mahler's 5th Symphony, and Siegfried's orchestral threnody from the final act of Wagner's GOTTERDAMMERUNG (which was also Hitler's favorite).
#
Saturday, November 27, 2004
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There are those who think by writing one or more articles in our weeklies they have made a valuable contribution to the solution of our problems. There are even those who think if they succeed in solving all our problems, the nation will be grateful to them. I thought so too when I was young, naďve and inexperienced - in short, a dumb jerk. The truth is (and historic evidence is clear on this point) no power on earth, not even a messiah, can solve the problems of a nation that does not want to solve its problems. And if you are ever successful in solving all our problems, consider yourself lucky if they let you live.

It was Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher, who said that for every wise man you meet, be prepared to deal with ten thousand fools, or words to that effect. He also said: "Astrology is a disease, not a science."
A thousand years of progress and what do we have? For every astronomer today there are probably ten thousand astrologers and a hundred thousand fools who believe in them.
*
It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken in by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and completely ignored the voices of such dissidents as Thomas Mann, Gramsci, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.
If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.
*
Denis Donikian: "Being Armenian means to have a license to exploit fellow Armenians in the name of Armenianism."
*
Russian proverb: "Dwell on the past and you will lose an eye. Ignore the past and you will lose both of them."
*
With enough checks and balances even a mediocrity may behave like a statesman. Without checks and balance even the greatest statesman may behave like a serial killer.
#

[arabaliozian]

this and that

Sunday, November 28, 2004
*****************************************
The positive or optimistic view of history emphasizes progress, the negative or pessimistic view emphasizes moral decline, and the objective view tells us it is wrong to blur the line that separates technological from moral progress.
*
Two things an Armenian will never forget: the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and the fact that Armenians are smart, and so smart that it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian. It follows, as night follows day, that as an Armenian he too qualifies. Hence the embarrassing spectacle of a loud-mouth imbecile with a negative IQ who, after assessing himself as a genius and an authority on any given subject, will accuse you of hating Armenians if you fail to look up to him, as if it were the patriotic duty of every Armenian to love and cherish white trash.
*
Anyone who considers himself infallible inhabits a realm that is not open to reason.
*
The easiest way to deal with an unpleasant truth is to call the speaker a liar.
*
Only those who think of themselves as indestructible attempt to destroy an idea and they are invariably destroyed by the idea.
*
I say what I think not because I am paid a regular salary or hope to enhance my power and prestige, but because I have had enough of lies and charlatans and I have no affection for bloodsuckers and gravediggers.
#
Monday, November 29, 2004
**********************************
About Baruch Spinoza I read the following:
"At the age of six he lost his mother. That's when he questioned the existence of God. At the age of twenty he fell in love with Clara Maria Van den Enden, his mentor's daughter. She rejected him. That's when he completely lost his belief in the existence of God. In 1656 a Jewish fanatic tried to kill him. On July 27 of the same year he was excommunicated (Spinoza was, not the fanatic) by the Synagogue of Amsterdam."
*
From an interview with the eminent contemporary French philosopher Edgar Morin:
"The principles of love and compassion within both Christianity and Islam have now been replaced with hatred… The world is cursed with an excess of love for idols and abstractions. I maintain we should love the transitory and the perishable more than the eternal. That which is more deserving of our love is also most fragile: conscience, beauty, tenderness… And by understanding I mean understanding others as well as ourselves."
*
Understanding reality means understanding our fellow men and, through them, ourselves.
*
Jules Renard: "There is no paradise; even so, one must do one's best to deserve it".
*
In a democracy, the function of an editor is to separate fact from propaganda and to print the fact.
In an authoritarian regime, the function of an editor is to separate fact from fiction and to print the fiction.
Among Armenians, the function of an editor is to print the trash.
#
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
**********************************
I have heard many Armenians say that Naregatsi is our Shakespeare. But I have heard only one Armenian quote a line from his Book of Lamentations not as proof of literary excellence but of perversity. The line in question? All about our sins, when added, exceeding in volume that of Mount Ararat.
*
Armenian identity begins with the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and ends with hatred of Turks. Any deviation from this line is seen as loss of identity, even betrayal.
*
The oppressed yearn for freedom. The oppressor demands subservience, which he calls loyalty. And when the oppressed acquire freedom, what do they do with it? They oppress -- what else? -- because like their former masters they confuse free speech with disloyalty. In the eyes of our bosses, bishops and benefactors (and their flunkies) I am an enemy because I yearn for free speech. You may now guess the identity of our role models.
*
I am tempted to introduce every sentence I write with the words: "I have said this before…" or even better, "This has been said before, but it bears repeating."
*
It is a mistake to identify a political party, an ideology, or a regime with the nation and, by extension, with patriotism. Parties, ideologies, regimes are ephemeral things, here today, gone tomorrow. But the nation endures, provided of course it values freedom above subservience.
*
It is the destiny of all oppressors to bite the dust. History is very clear on this point and it recognizes no exceptions to this rule. What remains in dispute is when. The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years, the Soviet Empire a little over 60. As for our own oppressors: judging by the rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland, the when is not sometime in the near or distant future but it might as well be, in modern parlance, "history."
#
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
**************************************
Some agree, others disagree, still others tell me it's a waste of time - writing for Armenians, that is. I am beginning to think so too, and I look forward to the day when I will grow the skin of a crocodile, say "A plague on all your houses!" give up writing, live happily ever after, and die in peace.
*
We remember our massacres and lament our victims even as we verbally massacre one another and would prefer to remember our adversaries as corpses.
*
"Being an Armenian," a friend tells me, "is enough to give an insomniac nightmares."
*
To reason, to negotiate, and to compromise is better than to fight. Good advice. It makes sense. I am all for it. But can you negotiate with an adversary who is in a position to silence you? Can a poet negotiate with a commissar? Can a rabbit reason with a wolf? Can a sardine and a shark reach a consensus?
*
What is it that has made of us perennial losers and victims? Everyone who has been brainwashed by a master of the blame game will advance his own historical, demographic, or geopolitical theory. My own explanation: We have been at the mercy of dividers who have at no time mastered the difficult art of thinking against themselves and questioning their own judgment. In other words, individuals who understand neither the world in which they live, nor the consequences of their actions and fundamental beliefs. Charlatans who operate on the assumption that the best way to deal with critics and dissenters is to starve or silence them - all in the name of patriotism, of course.
#

[angelik22]

may i ask what these notes are from? for?.. no bad intentions here- jsut curious

[arabaliozian]

i am sharing my thoughts...

[arabaliozian]

sharing more of them -- only for those who ae interested....

Thursday, December 02, 2004
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AUTHENTIC AND INAUTHENTIC IDEAS
*******************************************
How to define an authentic idea?
After you eliminate all phony or inauthentic ideas, what remains (if anything) qualifies as authentic.
*
How to identify an inauthentic idea?
Easy. Any idea that is based on hearsay, which means words uttered by sermonizers and speechifiers, or anyone in a position of power, be he pope, bishop, imam, king or president, cannot be authentic. That's because the primary concern of all power is to preserve or enhance its authority and prestige and not to advance on the endless road whose destination is truth. In that sense, power and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts.
*
An authentic idea is based on insight based on experience, provided one remembers that experiences too are necessarily partial or personal, hence limited and lacking in universal application and acceptance.
*
To be authentic an idea cannot be dogmatic or infallible. On the contrary, it must have a margin of error, doubt, and uncertainty. There is nothing new in what I am saying. Philosophers from Socrates and Plato to Hegel, Marx and Sartre believed truth (or understanding reality) is a goal that can be reached only by means of dialectic or dialogue - the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or assertion, contradiction, and compromise/consensus.
*
Truth is God's realm not man's, and no one is qualified to speak in His name, because "of the gods we know nothing" (Socrates). Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism because "only matter exists, consciousness being a manifestation of motion in brain cells" (Marx).
#
Friday, December 03, 2004
************************************
GETTING WISDOM
*************************************
Ever since I read the words "man's primitive belief in explanations" (Paul Valéry), I find most explanations suspect, especially explanations that are flattering to my ego.
*
It is not easy being objective. One way to achieve objectivity is by acquiring the difficult habit of "thinking against oneself" (Sartre), or, in Gandhi's words: "I have always held that it is only when one sees one's own mistakes with a convex lens [or with a magnifying glass], and does just the opposite in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two."
I dare anyone to play the blame game with an easy conscience after reading these lines.
*
For a long time I could not understand why our academics insist on producing books on the Genocide and the Middle Ages and totally ignoring our present situation, thus implying we are in good hands, when we are, in fact, at the mercy of charlatans whose number one concern is number one. Then I read Brecht's four-word formula, "grub first, then ethics," and saw the light.
*
Whenever I am misunderstood, I console myself by remembering Hegel's famous last words, "No one understood me, except one, and even he did not understand me." I am not implying here that my ideas are as complex as Hegel's, but I am suggesting that only readers, who are clear-cut cases of arrested development, and whose understanding of our past and present never ventures beyond partisan slogans, find my ideas easy to misunderstand.
*
Whenever one of my outraged readers engages in verbal massacre in order to assert his superior brand of Armenianism, I am reminded of Zarian's dictum, "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another."
*
Whenever one of our partisan editors rejects my commentaries, I remember Zarian's letter written in the 1930s to a fellow writer, in which the following lines occur: "Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech." And if you think, as an anti-establishment writer, Zarian's judgment cannot be trusted, consider the words of a pro-establishment writer, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian), who wrote mostly harmless fiction and was on friendly terms with all our bosses, bishops and benefactors: "Once upon a time, we fought and died for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech."
*
The words I have quoted above are to me what booze is to an alcoholic. Reading them for the first time was like acquiring a golden key to a door that until then had remained locked. I know now that understanding reality is an endless process, and one of the worst mistakes one can make is to rely on the words of sermonizers and speechifiers, whose conception of being positive or constructive is based on the false assumption that a friendly lie is better than a hostile truth.
#
Saturday, December 04, 2004
*************************************
ON GOD
**********************
Sartre was an atheist. And yet, he concludes his memoirs by saying, "I depend only on men who depend on god, and I don't believe in god. Figure that one out, if you can."
Elsewhere he describes himself as an atheist whose aim in life was to find salvation not only for himself but also for his fellow men.
*
Gandhi identified himself as a Hindu but he at no time dismissed atheists as infidels or blasphemers. On the contrary. If we define god as truth, he said, even atheists become believers because they believe in the non-existence of god.
*
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.
*
When Toynbee concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by attempting to reconcile all religions into a single universal belief system, wasn't he, in a way, expressing tacit agreement with Gandhi? Because by reconciling, say, Buddhism (an atheist religion) with Islam or Christianity, also meant reconciling a belief in the existence of god with a belief in his non-existence.
*
Like Gandhi, Toynbee clearly saw that when religion legitimizes intolerance, hatred, and violence, it becomes the instrument (and thus asserts the existence) not of god but of the devil.
*
When kings and sultans claimed to represent god on earth, did they believe it? When bishops and imams speak in the name of god, do they mean it? Italians are fond of saying that even the pope doubts his faith seven times every day. As for bureaucrats (be they secular or religious): they will say anything to maintain and enhance their powers, privileges, and prestige.
*
Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.
#