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WOOT WOOT!! AroBOLIZINA in 'DA houSE!!!! Wassup bro, tell me whatcha kno, oh yeah.
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Thursday, August 18, 2005
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OPIUM
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You don't have to agree with Plato, Hegel or Freud to profit from their wisdom. To formulate their grand theories, these thinkers, and all thinkers in general, rely on the achievements of their predecessors. To reject them amounts to rejecting the wisdom of the West.
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Christianity and religions in general have been called the opium of the masses, and Marxism has been called the opium of the intellectuals; the implication being that opium will always be more popular than truth, perhaps because it will make fewer demands.
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In the 19th Century nationalism was our opium, in the 20th communism. Result? Massacres, dispersion, purges, and the systematic destruction of our moral fiber.
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In the diaspora today, Genocide recognition has become our opium, and those who push it to the exclusion of all other issues, would like you to believe that on the day Turks acknowledge responsibility, all our problems will come to an end.
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I have always suspected the myth of closure to be a Big Lie whose tacit aim is to distract the nation from its many other problems.
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When confronted with a difficult problem, ostriches bury their heads in the sand, or so we are told. Men are smarter: they don't bury their heads, they bury the problem…even if it means burying themselves in the process.
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Friday, August 19, 2005
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Notwithstanding the fact that I have dedicated an important fraction of my life translating and annotating Armenian writers, I am sometimes accused of being anti-Armenian by readers who know nothing and care even less about Armenian literature.
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One of my initial ambitions was to edit and translate brief introductions to fifty important Armenian writers. When I outlined this project to a number of our cultural organizations, editors, and publishers, none of them was interested, perhaps because our cultural bureaucracies are staffed by writers who believe they are the only ones who deserve to be translated and read by English-speaking readers.
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"You are a bad translator," one of my gentle readers once said. When asked if he had read any one of my translations, he replied, "I have not and I don't intend to because you are a bad writer, a worse translator, and the writers you have translated aren't worth a sh**!"
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Mischa Kudian was one of our foremost translators. When he could not find publishers for his translations, he published them himself. He could afford doing that because he was a dental surgeon by profession. I met him once. To put it as diplomatically and delicately as I can, he was not favorably disposed towards his fellow Armenians. It would be no exaggeration to say that he was one of the most disappointed and bitter men I have had the displeasure of meeting.
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A partial list of the writers I have translated into English: Gostan Zarian, Avedik Issahakian, Zabel Yessayan, Krikor Zohrab, Puzant Granian, Charents, Baruir Massikian, Raffi, and Hagop Baronian. Only four of these translated writers have so far been issued in book form.
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Some of my critics sound like disgruntled ex-wives. Only men who have been through an ugly divorce will know what I am saying.
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Most of life consists in taming the insanity within us or covering it up in order to appear harmless to others. Armenians are good at this game except when they deal with fellow Armenians anonymously and from a safe distance. That's when the fiddler on the roof turns into Hitler in the soul.
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Friends sometimes want to know why I waste my time writing about fools and dupes. My answer, because they represent a significant fraction of the nation. But this is true of all nations. Consider the number of Italians who supported Mussolini, Germans who idolized Hitler, Russians (not to say Armenians) who were taken in by Stalin, and Gringos who voted for Bush. Besides, Comrade Panchoonie is not exactly a smart Armenian, neither are Baronian's or Massikian's characters.
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Saturday, August 20, 2005
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OUR BETTERS
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Once when I published an interview with a Tashnak leader (Puzant Granian), a Ramgavar leader (Antranik Antreassian) wrote a letter to the editor (Leo Hamalian) in which he tore the interview to shreds. When the Tashnak replied, his reply was heavily edited because the publication (ARARAT Quarterly) was said to be non-partisan, which in our environment means anti-Tashnak.
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It's astonishing how many Armenians believe in labels, especially labels whose intent is to confuse and mislead the average dupe.
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I have heard it said that the AGBU (sometimes also identified as KGBU) is a non-partisan organization. I have also heard it said that it is controlled by Ramgavars, and some of these Ramgavars happen to be former Tashnaks.
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It is common knowledge that some of our key players hide their partisan affiliations and loyalties in order to enhance their credibility as non-partisan objective observers.
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For a long time my Ramgavar friends thought I was a Tashnak, and vice versa, my Tashnak friends thought I was a Ramgavar.
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Zarian published some of his greatest masterpieces in a Tashnak periodical, whose editor once wrote in a letter to a friend: "If we handle him right, he may come to our side," or words to that effect. When Zarian emigrated to Soviet Armenia, the Tashnaks accused him of being a KGB hireling.
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"An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan." (Zarian).
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Whenever a Tashnak accused a Ramgavar of wallowing in Bolshevik mud, Ramgavars dismissed him as a puppet of the CIA.
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After the collapse of the USSR, a high-ranking KGB operative published a memoir (duly translated into English) in which he said some ARF leaders were in fact KGB plants.
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One of our pundits once confided to me that some of our community leaders are not only agents of Ankara but also Turkish nationals who speak Armenian fluently. On more than one occasion, I have myself been identified as a Grey Wolf - whatever the hell that is.
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Sometimes I am also accused of washing our dirty linen in public, which raises the question: Why should our betters be thought of as "dirty linen?"
#Comment
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Sunday, August 21, 2005
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It is not anti-Armenian to suggest that if Turks are human beings they deserve our understanding.
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Because I speak for understanding, tolerance, and dialogue, I am accused of denying the Genocide. I see no connection there, but I see a connection between being perennial losers and perennial ignoramuses.
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I am against hatred not because I love murderers and rapists but because hatred limits our ability to function at our full potential.
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Freedom of speech does not mean my freedom is more important than yours is because I am right and you are wrong. It means the freedom to be wrong, that is to say, to be fallible, that is to say, to be human.
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Armenians are a misunderstood, unappreciated, and ignored people, and ignored not only by odars but also by Armenians.
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Authoritarianism, intolerance, and charlatanism: I see them as three different facets of the same aberration.
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Any idea that remotely resembles what I thought twenty years ago as a dupe is repellent to me today, as it may well be twenty years hence to our dupes today.
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As long as there are Armenians who are not Armenophiles and Turks who are not Turcophiles, we may hope for reconciliation, coexistence, and peace.
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Monday, August 22, 2005
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I am for dissent and against propaganda regardless of race, color, and creed. Between a Turkish dissident and an Armenian propagandist I will be on the side of the dissident; and I refuse to believe that agreement with a dissident Turk and disagreement with an Armenian propagandist is a capital offense.
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The sentence, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do," could also be rephrased as, "Forgive them, Father, for they have been brainwashed."
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The only way to agree with a propagandist is to allow him to brainwash you.
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Where benefactors play a central role, there will be rule by flunkies and brown-nosers parading as intellectuals and statesmen. When asked to name the greatest influences in his life, one of these so-called statesmen-intellectuals is quoted as having named one of our national benefactors.
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After subsidizing the construction of a museum dedicated to Armenian history and culture, one of our benefactors is said to have offered his old desk as an exhibit. What a book one could write on the megalomania of our benefactors!
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Until she died a couple of years ago, the wealthiest woman in Turkey is said to have been a bordello madam by the name of Manoogian. At her death even our weeklies in the diaspora published long obituaries.
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
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There are two kinds of people, those who say, "Let us reason together" and mean it, and the others. It is to the "others" that we owe all wars and massacres.
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As long as I have the agreement of moderates on both sides, why should I care about the others? To put it more bluntly: as long as I have the agreement of reasonable men, why should I give a damn about the disagreement of jackasses?
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My greatest ambition in life: to make my readers smile even when I write about sad things.
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More often than not I do nothing but paraphrase our writers (see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS). Our jackasses are not aware of this fact because they don't read Armenian writers. Their ignorance thus allows them to parade as good Armenians even as they voice views that are neither good nor Armenian.
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The Turks say, "We are not guilty of slaughtering Armenians," and our political parties say, "We are not guilty of leading the nation to the slaughterhouse." Nothing new in that. All significant historic events have their defenders and critics. Napoleon is a hero to some, a villain to many others. The American, French, and Russian Revolutions have their apologists as well as critics. Notwithstanding their countless victims, Stalin and Hitler have their defenders. Even Hiroshima has been Rashomonized.
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Like all moderates, I believe silencing or exterminating the opposition is not the only legitimate way of settling differences.
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Wednesday, August 24,2005
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Speaking as a layman, I say if our political parties and their pundits have so far failed to convince me, they have also failed to convince many others. The reason of our high alienation and assimilation rate (or "white massacre") must be sought in this failure rather than in "historic, social, cultural, and environmental factors beyond our control."
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If you are like myself a man of limited knowledge and understanding, you will have many adversaries among those who know and understand everything.
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Preaching to the converted is one of the most popular and profitable commercial enterprises in the world.
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After meeting a nice Turk and a nasty Armenian you are bound to question many other assumptions.
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Armenian writers survive only by writing for an odar audience. The culturally starved Armenian will only starve them.
#Comment
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
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One of my problems is my total inability to communicate with teenage hooligans or, for that matter, adults, or even seniors who happen to be clear-cut cases of arrested development.
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An Armenian editor from New York recently visited the editorial office of another Armenian paper in Paris and was given such an unfriendly reception that it bordered on the hostile. I know now why we have no use for critics and dissidents: we don't need them because every Armenian is another's critic and dissident. What we need now is peacemakers, negotiators, compromisers, harmonizers, and coordinators.
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We said "Yes, sir!" to sultans and Stalin for almost 700 years; and we now compensate by saying "No, sir!" - but only to our fellow Armenians.
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I once met a Turkish student who spoke Armenian fluently but identified herself as a Turk. She probably thought she would get more respect that way.
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An Armenian will criticize a writer for repeating himself and a speechifier, sermonizer, or propagandist for not repeating himself.
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There seems to be an unspoken theory among us that says, you can tell how good an Armenian is by how much he hates Turks.
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When confronted with the issue of hating Turks, an Armenian will rationalize it by saying, "I don't hate them; I just want them to acknowledge the Genocide." Which raises the following questions: What if being dependent on Turkish justice is almost like being a subject of the Ottoman Empire? What if by rationalizing our hatred of Turks we also rationalize our intolerance of fellow Armenians? What if our hatred pollutes our relations with our fellow men? What if Gandhi was right when he said, "Hatred harms the hater more than those he hates"?
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And if you were to ask me: "What about you? Don't you hate anybody?" My answer would be, "Of course I do! I was born and raised as an Armenian."
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Friday, August 26, 2005
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Armenian proverb: "Better the slave of a wise man than the master of a fool."
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Denis Donikian: "Dissent is not so much a form of political opposition as a defense of values that we all share."
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We have no use for human rights because our own rights were violated by a long line of tyrants. We have no use for civilized conduct either because we were ruled by barbarians. You may now guess the identity of our role models.
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The very same people who have made Turkish barbarism their central concern see nothing inconsistent in adopting their methods, and the only reason they don't massacre is that it is against the law. But the moment the law is relaxed in their favor, as it happened in the Soviet era, they will not hesitate to be their brothers' executioners.
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Whenever a fellow Armenian calls me a brother I start wondering who is Cain and who is Abel.
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There is a Cain and Abel in all of us, but we prefer to parade as Abels and to assign the role of Cain to anyone who dares to disagree with us. We thus view dissent and criticism as activities peculiar to the Cains of this world even as we ourselves violate their fundamental human right of free speech.
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Saturday, August 27, 2005
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"You are a dishonest man, a bad writer, and a worse Armenian," a reader, himself a poet, informs me. To which I can only say: "I am sure the nation will be eternally grateful to you if you reject me as a role model."
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xxxish saying: "Fools who hide their ignorance are wiser than the wise who parade their knowledge."
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Denis Donikian: "If you want to solve our problems, share your money not your ideas."
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Armenian proverb: "Neither candle not incense can open a path to heaven."
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All politicians are atheists, including those who believe in god.
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Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don't have to be corrected; sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense.
#Comment
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more...
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Sunday, August 28, 2005
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If you read a scholarly essay or book on human nature that begins with the words, "Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that…" you can be sure you are in good hands.
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Armenians enjoy reading about Turks because they love to hate.
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The nation that hates together stays together.
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A man is not necessarily good if he lacks the means to do evil.
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I'd rather be wrong as a human being than right as a dupe.
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Free speech does not say "Shut-up because I know better," or "because I am somebody and you are nobody!"
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There are many known cures for dandruff, the guillotine is not one of them.
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I write in the name of all those writers who were silenced or slaughtered by tyrants.
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A woman may be a mystery to men, among them Freud, but to other women she is a cliché. Which may suggest that mysteries too, like so much else in life, are in the eye of the beholder.
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"Too much reading will ruin him," a parish priest kept warning my parents, and he was right because to him success meant being a bishop.
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Freedom of the press does not mean the printing of agreeable lies but of disagreeable truths.
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Poverty, real poverty is not life in the slums and dinners of macaroni and cheese, but the degradation one must suffer in order to obtain these luxuries.
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If wisdom were a religion, fools and dupes could not be converted, which means there wouldn't be enough converts even for a single congregation.
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Monday, August 29, 2005
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All our controversies amount to bickering while the barn is burning.
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Armenians love to see their names in the paper. Which is why our weeklies drop names as profusely as a flock of pigeons on ex-lax.
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The assertion "I am better than you" convinces no one. And yet, more often than not, that's exactly what our so-called pundits do: they assert moral superiority. "Behold the Turk, the lowest scum on earth; and "Behold the Armenian, the noblest specimen of humanity!"
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Lately there has been some talk about Armenian pimps and prostitutes from the Homeland operating in foreign countries. It is true that we in the diaspora don't have that problem but not because we are morally superior but because we are not driven by unemployment, destitution, hunger, and a power structure so corrupt that it feels no responsibility towards its citizens.
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A recent best seller in the United States is titled ON BULLxxxx. (*) We learn here that most of what politicians, salesmen, advertisers, and academics say or write fully qualifies as bullxxxx. Nothing new in that. Most of Plato's dialogues say as much. If one were to write a history of bullxxxx, it would probably be the longest book in the world.
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(*) ON BULLxxxx by Harry G. Frankfurt. See also, YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US: THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLxxxx by Laura Penny; and DEEPER INTO BULLxxxx by G.A. Cohen. It is to be noted that both Frankfurt and Cohen are noted contemporary philosophers.
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Tuesday, August 30, 2005
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When I thought of myself as a good Armenian, I was no better than a bad Turk; and I know now that it was my own assessment of myself as a good Armenian that allowed me to behave like a bad Turk - minus the fez, shalvar, mustache, and yataghan.
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At all times and everywhere our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge, and we have a tendency to overestimate the value of what we know and underestimate the value of what we don't know.
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Only fools assess themselves as smart, and only swine represent themselves as noble specimens of humanity.
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All that talk about 20/20 vision is nonsense, humbug, and b.s. I don't demand infallibility from our leaders; but I have every right to expect honesty. No matter how you slice it, a military defeat is not a moral victory, and not all tragedies are acts of god.
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On a radio program on children's poetry this morning, I overheard the following quotation: "There is some xxxx / I will not eat!" That's what I call good poetry - rhythm, music, and words that once heard are never forgotten.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
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Censorship promotes mediocrity and when the mediocre are in charge, excellence becomes their greatest enemy.
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A Simenon characters remarks: "It's a tough job to be a human being." It's tougher being an Armenian, and what makes it tougher is fellow Armenians.
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When the dishonest fail to convert or brainwash the honest, they silence them.
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Denis Donikian: "There are those among us today who have only one ear that hears only one voice: their own."
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The most unbearable prospect for an Armenians is to be proven wrong, as if his infallibility were such a universally acknowledged fact that no sane person who dare to question it. And we have infallible men because we have infallible institutions.
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When two infallible men contradict each other, eiher one or both of them are bound to be wrong.
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Intolerance means violating free speech. Violating free speech means killing ideas; and where ideas are killed, people will be massacred; and there is no such thing as the massacre of only the guilty. It is not in the nature of those who commit massacres to discriminate the innocent from the guilty.
#Comment
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Thursday, September 01, 2005
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ELEGY
A sea of tears
Will not raise
A single dead
And a thousand years of hatred
Will not reform
A single Turk
And yet
We continue to lament our dead
And to hate the Turk.
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Anyone who has loved and hated knows that love and hatred are quintessentially misleading emotions.
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To be brainwashed means to be unable to move beyond propaganda.
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When we criticize another we assume we don't have his faults.
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A fanatic is one who is incapable of detecting contradictions within himself, and whenever these contradictions are pointed out to him, he becomes deaf, dumb, and blind.
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To speak from the gutter means to threaten those who dare to contradict you that they too may be dragged down there.
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GOOD OLD DAYS
When he was alive Homer was not a best seller; neither did he submit his works to an editor.
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Denis Donikian: "The most pedestrian ideas come to us under the banner of tolerance. Likewise, the most rabid intolerance is promoted in the name of love."
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Friday, September 02, 2005
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Whenever as a boy I learned to appreciate a new symphony by Beethoven I thought I had overcome another barrier separating me from civilization. Then, one day, I woke up and found myself surrounded by barbarians.
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It's not easy being right in an Armenian environment because the sources of most of our contradictions are conflicting self -interests compounded by oversized egos and undersized brains.
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If you behave in an undiplomatic manner in a diplomatic environment, you will be recalled and fired by your superiors. And if you behave like a barbarian in a civilized environment you will be ignored because some civilized people may not share your taste for the gutter. You may now be in a better position to understand why I choose to ignore some of my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement).
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It is not enough being right; one must be right in a right way.
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Where everyone claims to be right, some are bound to be wrong; and where everyone asserts infallibility, everyone is wrong.
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Saturday, September 03, 2005
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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher: "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the Revolution." This may explain why (according to Hagop Garabents) our revolutionaries were willing to shed their blood for freedom a hundred years ago but they are now afraid of free speech.
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I may know what I want today, but for the life of me I don't understand why I wanted what I wanted yesterday, and I have no idea what I will want tomorrow.
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There is an old American saying: "Every shut eye ain't asleep." Likewise, just because he ain't buried it don't mean he ain't dead.
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Anyone can forgive the forgivable. The trick is forgiving the unforgivable.
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I am willing to trust a good Armenian and a good Turk, and what I trust in them is not their Armenian or Turkish identity but their goodness, which recognizes no geographic boundaries.
#Comment
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Sunday, September 04, 2005
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Tyrants who slaughter writers, and editors who silence them, belong to the same species of swine and it makes no difference whether they are Turks, Germans, Russians, or, for that matter, Armenians.
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I am an Armenian and you are an Armenian. Now then, can you give me a single reason why I should trust you? Because, for the life of me, I can't think of a single reason why you should trust me.
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In a dishonest environment all assessments of the past will be dismissed as 20/20 vision, of the future as alarmist, and of the present as based on misinformation. Which simply means, to be pro-status quo or pro-establishment is to be infallible, and to be anti-status-quo or anti-establishment means being consistently wrong.
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During the Ottoman phase of our existence, those who predicted the massacres were dismissed as alarmist, and during the Soviet era those who said Stalin was a ruthless tyrant were labeled as unpatriotic. Which means, it would be far more accurate to say that to be pro-establishment is to be consistently wrong, perhaps because our men at the top and their hirelings happen to be moral morons, political nonentities, and intellectual midgets -- that is to say, swine.
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Monday, September 05, 2005
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Hitler was dead wrong. Amnesia does not always follow extermination. Everyone remembers the dodo bird. That of course is no consolation to the dodo, or for that matter to the dinosaurs.
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And speaking of dinosaurs: god is less of an ecologist and more of a terrorist. He has exterminated countless species and killed millions of innocent civilians by means of floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes, and miscellaneous other natural disasters and "acts of god."
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Under fascist as well as democratic regimes the masses are educated enough to be brainwashed. Hence the old adage, "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
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The authentic critic begins by thinking against himself. Those who can think only against others are not critics but propagandists, commissars, and fanatics.
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One man's sacred cow is another's shish kebab.
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005
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There are two kinds of ideas: those that bind and those that liberate. You may now guess which are more popular.
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The dupes of priests, mullahs, gurus, and witch doctors will always outnumber those who have mastered the difficult art of thinking for themselves.
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To think for oneself also means to think against oneself.
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There are those who cling to old ideas the way a drowning man is said to cling to anything, including a venomous serpent.
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My parents survived the Turks. I am now busy trying to survive my fellow Armenians.
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"You learn to grow up," I remember to have read somewhere, "on the day you have a good laugh at yourself." But to laugh at oneself is as difficult as to think against oneself.
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To understand reality begins with the realization that we are not the center of creation and that planet Earth is only a speck of dust in the universe, and man is only a speck of dust on earth. Now then, can you calculate the dimensions of your problems, the problems of your tribe, and problems of the human race?
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Religions have tried to teach love and tolerance and they have failed. But they have succeeded, and succeeded brilliantly, in teaching hatred and intolerance. Figure that one out if you can.
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Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), French poet: "Hatred and egoism have only one homeland. Brotherhood has none."
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Wednesday, September 07, 2005
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The problem with being a famous writer is that you think twice before saying anything that may detract from your popularity. But a writer who places his fame and fortune above honesty is no better than an expensive xxxxx. Which is why I feel justified in bragging about my status as a slum-dwelling failure.
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Somewhere Zarian differentiates refugees from exiles. An exile is an exile by choice, he writes. By contrast, a refugee is driven by necessity. Dante, Byron, and Thomas Mann were exiles. As the offspring of refugees from the Ottoman Empire, I fully qualify as a double refugee - compliments of our enemies and my brothers.
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An Armenian writer has as much of a future in an Armenian environment as a sardine in a pool of ravenous barracudas.
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An eye for an eye is a legal principle that can be enforced only between equals. When a tyrant deals with a dissident or a scribbler with a boss, bishops, benefactor and his flunkies, it's more like an eyebrow for both eyes, ears, limbs, lungs, liver, heart, and a few other vital organs thrown in for good measure.
#Comment
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Thursday, September 08, 2005
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"Never trust someone who goes out of his way to be nice to you - he is after something," an older friend once warned me. I dismissed his warning as that of a cynic and forgot all about it. A big mistake on my part.
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When at the turn of the last century the Great Powers expressed concern about our condition within the Empire and took our side against the oppressors, we did not question their motives. A big mistake on our part for which millions of innocent civilians paid dearly.
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When you shake hands with a brown-noser, count your fingers and immediately after wash your hands with soap and water. If his nose is brown, the rest of him can't be white.
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When in his initial phase as a writer Zarian said some very nice things about the Armenia voki [ethos], he was believed, respected, published, and achieved some degree of popularity. But when he realized he had been wrong and was not afraid to say so, he was dismissed by his contemporaries as a loudmouth egomaniac and acquired the status of a non-person.
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All religions have produced their share of prophets, martyrs, and saints - that doesn't make them the only true religion. All political leaders and parties have had their share of partisans -- that doesn't make them superior to any other political party.
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Political leaders know that all they have to do to acquire followers is to utter such clichés as "You are the brains of the people," or "You have leadership qualities," or "You belong to a superior race," or "You are the Chosen people." Of course, it takes some degree of cunning combined with some kind of ruthless stupidity to voice such nonsense and believe in it, and when it comes to stupidity, it has been said, "even the gods cannot compete with men."
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"If you want our support, you must learn to kiss ass," is the unspoken message in some of the criticism leveled against me. I was there once and I have no desire to revisit the place. All I want to do now is to echo Zarian's warning, "Danger, danger, danger!"
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Friday, September 09, 2005
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A BRIEF HISTORY
OF THE ARMENIAN NATION
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If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. If you don't live by the sword, you will die on the cross.
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Two Armenians were having a quiet conversation. It could happen.
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Advice to a young Armenian writer:
Don't write; but if you write, don't publish; but if you publish, be prepared to perish.
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Being an Armenian is hard work. I wouldn't apply for the job even if they promised a fat salary, the very best in fringe benefits, and a sky-is-the-limit expense account.
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I could have been a far better writer if I had had critics instead of riffraff hurling insults at me. But alas, it looks like I am destined to remain a minor, negligible, and forgettable scribbler.
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Self-esteem is not a reliable index of worth, in the same way that dogmatism is not an index of certainty.
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There is a natural tendency in the brainwashed to resent anyone who refuses to be brainwashed.
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Saturday, September 10, 2005
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PUNDITS
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A pundit who is very critical of Turks, xxxs, and the West in general but never of his fellow Armenians is no better than a one-eyed Jack who sees evil only in others, never in himself. When I once met one of these pundits face to face I asked him if he had any political ambitions, and he replied, yes, he thought he could be useful to the regime in Yerevan. When I dismissed our leadership as a bunch of opportunists and crooks, he said he was willing to concede that, very much like the rest of mankind, we were not perfect. But why stress the imperfections of others and cover up our own? I demanded to know. Because, he explained, at this stage in our history, we needed help and encouragement, not opposition and obstruction. Since he was not a lawyer, he did not know or pretended not to know that if you help a crook you become an accessory.
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In an encounter with another one of our pundits, I was told that our only solution was to get rid of all our politicians and to replace them with our own religious leaders. When I said that would be like trying to extinguish a fire by pouring gasoline over it, he changed the subject.
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The trouble with some of our pundits is that they seem to be totally unaware of the fact that all our major writers, from Khorenatsi in the 5th century to Massikian in our own days have been very critical of our political as well as religious leaders; and I suspect one reason they don't read our writers is that they think, as intellectual giants, they have no use for the input of midgets. I should also add that some of them might read English, French, German, Russian, and sometimes even Turkish fluently, but not Armenian.
#Comment
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
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CONTRADICTIONS
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If we are smart, why do we treat one another like idiots? On more than one occasion I have myself been treated like an idiot by idiots.
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If we are civilized, why do we behave like barbarians?
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Am I a failure if I cannot educate the uneducated, teach tolerance to fanatics, and civilize barbarians? And if I am a failure, how successful have we been collectively in civilizing the barbarians who oppressed and massacred us? What if it was the barbarians who, as our lords and masters, were more successful in recreating us in their own image? What if these so-called barbarians are now ahead of us today?
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Smartass is not smart, and smart is not intelligent; and hurling verbal abuse at Turks or at fellow Armenians (our two national sports) doesn't even qualify as smartass.
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It is a universally shared human weakness to prefer flattery to criticism, but it is a dangerous addiction to prefer lies to truth.
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Monday, September 12, 2005
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Millions of Armenians believe Turks are guilty of genocide, and millions of Turks believe Armenians are liars, traitors, and killers of innocent Turks. I am not questioning anyone's credibility here. What I am trying to do is point out the ease with which millions can be brainwashed.
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Human nature continues to elude me. No matter how hard I try I cannot understand why millions of people are fascinated by individuals who hit a ball with a modified stick.
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When I was young, ambitious, and hungry for knowledge, I wanted to master all the sciences, arts, letters and languages of the world. I know now that human knowledge is as vast as the ocean and all I can master is one drop of it.
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Every Armenian should carry a sign with the warning: "Contradict me and make an enemy for life!"
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As a child I was taught obedience but I was not warned against kissing ass.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
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The morally superior does not feel the need to assert moral superiority.
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Asserting moral superiority is the surest symptom of moral inferiority.
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What separates the civilized from the barbarian is degree of awareness. To share one's understanding means to share one's awareness.
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The barbarian is convinced he knows everything he needs to know even when the idea of civilization is beyond his compass.
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It is not easy convincing barbarians that they are barbarians.
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The barbarian does not feel the need to ask questions because he already has all the answers.
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A religious or philosophical system has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with its power to shape our perception of reality.
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Faith may also be defined as an advanced and refined form of cobra fascination in which common sense, reason, even the instinct of self-preservation are paralyzed and perverted. How else to explain the fascination of Western intellectuals with totalitarian communism and Stalin? Or terrorists who kill and commit suicide in the name of Allah?
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All men of faith will agree with me provided I agree with them that their own faith is an exception to this general rule.
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Americans are suspicious of philosophers but they are more than willing to tolerate the sophistries and perversions of lawyers and politicians. They seem to be unaware of the fact that if it's not philosophy (love of wisdom) it is bound to be philomoronism.
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BOOK REVIEW
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By Ara Baliozian
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THE FACES OF COURAGE: ARMENIAN WORLD WAR II, KOREA, AND VIETNAM HEROES. By Richard N. Demirjian. Introduction by Art Sarkisian. Illustrated. 656 pages. Ararat Heritage Publishing Company (P.O.Box 396, Moraga, CA 94556-0396). 2003. $36.95.
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This mammoth compilation based on extensive interviews may come as a surprise to readers whose image of Armenians is that of passive victims of Turkish atrocities during World War I, but not to historians like Toynbee. Speaking of Urartu (ancient Armenia) we read the following in his STUDY OF HISTORY: "Militarily, Urartu was the most effective as well as the most resolute, of all Assyria's opponents in the last millenium B.C." Further down: "The Assyrian Empire never succeeded in conquering the rival Empire of Urartu."
Armenians have played key roles in the military careers of the Byzantine, Ottoman (as Janissaries), and Soviet Empires. According to Steven Runciman, "The Armenians provided many of Byzantium's most vigorous rulers," among them Basil I, "a Napoleonic figure" (Oswald Spengler).
In the Middle Ages, the most highly paid and feared mercenaries were Armenians. In Art Sarkisian's introduction we read, "out of more than 400,000 Soviet Armenians who served during the war, 250,000 were killed, an appalling death-toll for what was then a republic of less than two million inhabitants." And, "62 Soviet Armenians were promoted and bestowed the ranks of field marshals, admirals and major generals. More than one hundred Armenians servicemen were awarded Heroes of the Soviet Union (equivalent of the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor), and two of these received the honor twice."
Very few of the names in FACES OF COURAGE will be familiar to the average reader. Of the nearly fifty names, I recognized only those of Edward Alexander (diplomat and author), Anne Avakian Bishop (journalist), Vahe "Buck" Kartalian (actor), Carl Mahakian (film and sound editor, producer, and book collector), Moorad Mooradian and Joe Vosbikian (both regular contributors to the ARMENIAN REPORTER), and Barry Zorthian (whose multi-faceted contributions and activities in politics, international affairs, and the media are too numerous to list here). They all tell their own stories, invariably absorbing, sometimes harrowing, and always admirable.
If I were to sum up this volume I would say that it is a heroic enterprise about remarkable heroes that will dispel once and for all the image of Armenians as victims.
Himself a commanding officer of the 334th Military Intelligence Detachment, Richard Demirjian is the author of several other reference works, among them ARMENIAN-AMERICAN/CANADIAN WHO'S WHO OF OUTSTANDING ATHLETES, COACHES, AND SPORTS PERSONALITIES, 1906-1989, and TRIUMPH AND GLORY - ARMENIAN WORLD WAR II HEROES.
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Thursday, September 15, 2005
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The private conversations of a former Canadian Prime Minister have been published in a book. A big scandal! Politicians, even when they happen to be megalomaniacal wheeler-dealers, must sound like elder statesmen with vision. They are not supposed to have private thoughts and feelings that may reflect badly on others and themselves. But perhaps this is true of all of us. White man must speak with a forked tongue. To say out loud what one thinks is a luxury very few people can afford. Good manners compel us to pretend, distort, and lie -- unless of course we deal with a subordinate or someone who is dependent on our goodwill.
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We spent 600 years kissing Ottoman derriere and now we compensate by hurling verbal abuse at them. And when we die our epitaphs will read: "Here lies an Armenian who hated Turks."
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In one of his books Puzant Granian writes: "Whenever Armenians are mentioned, so is the Genocide, as if our sole contribution to world civilization had been victims of Turkish massacres."
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We have become a nation with a score to settle, and we divide the world into those who are for us and against us. As for the rest (the overwhelming majority) who are not even aware of our existence, we dismiss them as ignorant rednecks.
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And I ask myself: What do I really know about other people and places? I know that there is something rotten in the State of Denmark. What else? I know that the word "bugger" has something to do with a supposed birth control method practiced by Bulgarians. I may know more about Greeks because I was born and raised there. But what do I really know about Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Patagonia. Tierra del Fuego, the Inuit, Estonians, and so on and so forth…
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We brag about the Golden Age of our literature but I wonder how many of us have read a single golden masterpiece?
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A boozed up British academic with ulterior motives and with the financial assistance of the Gulbenkian Foundation calls Armenia "the Cradle of Civilization" and we believe him. As Saroyan was fond of saying, "Ahmot!"
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Friday, September 16, 2005
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The roles we play in life are seldom ours. We adapt and we conform, which means we accept guidelines imposed on us by others. To be a good Armenian means to accept definitions and values formulated by others.
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During and after World War II Germans were divided into good and bad Germans. Thomas Mann disagreed with these distinctions. Every German, he said, carries within him qualities that were both good and bad. He went further and wrote an essay about Hitler titled "A Brother." Perhaps we will mature as a nation only on the day we call Turks "our brothers."
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Armenian role models come in all sizes and shapes. Armenians who say, "the only good Turk is a dead Turk," unwittingly echo Talaat for whom the only good Armenian was a dead Armenian.
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Sometimes I am criticized and even censored by self-assessed patriotic Armenians on the assumption that they are infallible and as if, as a human being with his share of limitations, I were not entitled to be fallible. But if I were to accept their definition of a good writer as one who is infallible, I would be no better than a self-righteous, dogmatic megalomaniac, a Stalinist without Stalin, a Nazi without Hitler, and a fascist without Mussolini. Which is why I feel justified in saying I'd rather be wrong as a human being than right as a fascist.
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Saturday, September 17, 2005
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There is a type of patriotism that gives patriotism a bad name. Example: patriotism that is an extension of one's salary. I once knew a professional propagandist who asked for a raise, was refused, and was never heard from again.
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If you are on the wrong path, sooner or later you will know about it. Even if you are the smartest man on earth, you cannot always predict reality's next move.
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Sharing one's understanding must also mean making the inaccessible accessible; otherwise it will be like serving a glass of water to someone who is not thirsty.
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You reject barbarism not by reasoning against it, but by behaving in a civilized manner. Sometimes the most effective refutation is silence.
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Even the wisest among us must teach himself to say "I don't know" and "I don't understand," because to be human means to have limitations.
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Totalitarianism in politics and dogmatism in religion recognize only one legitimate school of philosophy - deviate an inch and you are toast.
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When I think of all those writers and thinkers who were silenced and the strident voices of fools who are everywhere in our media and discussion forums, I want to hand in my resignation as a member of the human race.
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