notes / comments

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

I find that many of your assertions are not to prove yourself right, but more to challenge our own assertions by making controversial ones that you don't spend too much time building up to be irrefutable in turn. Like the Mamikonian example... we've discussed this in other threads and I recommend you check them to see our discussion on the myth of their Chinese descent. You do leave references however, and that's good. I guess our homework is to check those.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 14, 2006
********************************************
The blunders of youth are the heaviest burden of old age.
*
Those who speak of “social and political conditions beyond our control,” do so to justify their past failures and present inadequacies.
*
After 600 years of life in the Ottoman Empire, subservience comes naturally to us, and subservience means loyalty to the master even if he happens to be an alien tyrant; and to be loyal to an alien master means to betray your own people. Hence Raffi’s dictum: “Treason and betrayal are in our blood.”
*
You can hide your thoughts all you like, you can even say the opposite of what you feel, but you cannot hide your body language and style. In life, as in the boxing ring, you can run away but you can’t hide.
*
I don’t trust people who make a comfortable living because they will do and say anything in defense of their comfort.
*
Leaders are the curse of mankind. This is a rule with very few exceptions.
#
Friday, September 15, 2006
**************************************************
THERE IS NO BUSINESS
LIKE SHOA BUSINESS
************************************************** *******
There are Turkish charlatans as surely as there are Armenian charlatans, and they are the ones who have reduced the Tragedy of our genocide to a game of political football, each side blaming the other and adopting a morally superior stance. “When the rich fight,” Sartre says somewhere, “it is the poor who die.” Likewise, when political wheeler-dealers argue, truth is sacrificed on the altar of propaganda. As for the cries of the victims, past, present, and future: no matter how hard I try I cannot take seriously the crocodile tears of our self-assessed dime-a-dozen pundits who blabber endlessly and ad nauseam about genocide. I grew up among survivors and I don’t remember any one of them uttering the word “tseghasbanoutiun” (genocide) or wasting a single moment trying to prove that it happened.
*
Capital, Marx said, dehumanizes not only the worker but also the capitalist, society as whole, and human relationships. Constant and endless talk of Turkish denials dehumanizes not only Turks and us, but also our relations with the rest of mankind, including our fellow Armenians. Anyone who does not share our view of Turks as bloodthirsty barbarians is labeled a denialist.
*
A victim will see the world only in terms of victims and victimizers, or those who are committed to the Cause and denialists. Because I speak of tolerance, respect for fundamental human rights, and a more objective assessment of the past, I have been called a pro-Turkish denialist. Armenian dehumanization of Armenian has already become a routine occurrence with us. I see it every day in Armenian discussion forums on the Internet, which are less discussion forums and more arenas of mutual verbal abuse.
*
There are decent Armenians as there are decent Turks, and they don’t need the arguments of propagandists to be convinced of what happened. Such arguments convince only dupes and children of all ages who have not yet acquired the ability to think for themselves.
*
I remember the late Puzant Granian (himself a survivor) saying, “At the rate we are going, we will be known to the rest of the world only as a nation that has contributed a million and a half victims to Turkish massacres. Our millennial history and countless other achievements will be ignored, forgotten, and buried.” But endless talk of genocide buries not only our other achievements but also our present problems, some of which (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland) are of genocidal dimensions. Our monomaniacal obsession with Turkish denialists has made of us denialists of two “white genocides” and all talk of “social and political conditions beyond our control” is as convincing to a decent observer as the arguments of Turkish denialist charlatans.
#
Saturday, September 16, 2006
******************************************
All slaughters begin with the slaughter of common sense and decency. Hence, the post-World War II slogan, “We are all assassins.”
*
The ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA (Chicago, 1979) on Talaat Pasha (or, as the BRITANNICA spells it, Talat Pasa): “A man of swift and penetrating intelligence and integrity…an idealist, forceful but never fanatical or vengeful.”
*
Genocides are perpetrated not by serial killers or criminals but by law-abiding, patriotic citizens with leadership qualities and superior intellects, whose sole aim in life is to defend and protect the nation and its interests against all enemies foreign and domestic.
*
Nothing comes more easily to a mediocrity, a charlatan, and a moral moron than to convince himself he is a patriot with superior brains and leadership qualities.
*
An Armenian pundit: Anyone who reads TIME or NEWSWEEK and one of our weeklies.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 17, 2006
***************************************
Whenever I am reminded by concerned friends that writing for Armenians is a waste of time (as if I didn’t know) the best explanation I can come up with is that America is a big country with big problems, and Armenia is a small country with bigger problems. Americans, moreover, believe in democracy. By contrast, our own attitude towards democracy is closer to that of Muslim fundamentalists, who will attack the Pope for quoting a medieval Byzantine emperor but will believe everything their mullahs tell them, even when they promise to be rewarded with a harem of virgins if they kill as many infidel dogs in the name of Allah as they can. Which is why the average letter to the editor by an average odar citizen in our local daily paper makes more sense to me than the long-winded and monomaniacal commentaries of our self-appointed pundits in our weeklies.
*
Being committed to democratic values means appreciating the importance free speech. One of our self-inflicted tragedies is that the overwhelming majority of our press and media in general, very much like our educational institutions, are in the hands of political parties, about which Gostan Zarian has said: “They have been of no political use to us, their greatest enemy is free speech.”
*
Where educational institutions are run by ideologues, the result will be an overabundance of dupes and a scarcity of individuals who can think for themselves. My guess is, for every thousand Armenians there may or may not be one dissident but even that one will be too many for our commissars. And if you think I am being too hard on our partisans, consider that for every ten million Soviets there was one dissident but even that one was too many for Stalinists; and for every one hundred million Muslims today there may or may not be one or more dissidents, but they are too intimidated to raise their voices and be counted.
*
Where the dominant ideas are rooted in ideology and theology, the result will be not truth but propaganda, and the dissidents will be treated not as critics with a valid perspective but heretics and blasphemers whose tongues should be cut out.
*
We prefer monologue to dialogue, speeches and sermons to an exchange of views, and propaganda to truth. The average Armenian today thinks tolerance consists in being tolerant only of people who parrot his sentiments and thoughts. As for the others, they might as well be that lowest form of animal life, pro-Turkish denialists. But free speech means to respect even the free speech of Turkish denialists. Try to explain that to our fundamentalists in whose view the Genocide is not history but theology.
#
Monday, September 18, 2006
**********************************************
CONFESSIONS OF AN INFIDEL DOG
************************************************
Once upon a time in the good old days when everything I wrote was printed in Armenian weeklies on the continent and in the Middle East, whenever I came across a positive remark about us, I would quote it in a review or an article, and needless to add, I would do the same with every negative remark about Turks. Much later I learned that this was exactly the method employed by anti-American propagandists in the USSR. If I remember correctly, it was Mike Wallace who exposed this fact during an interview with the editor who handled Pravda’s (may have been Izvestia’s) anti-American department. Asked to identify her sources, the young female editor showed him the latest issue of the NEW YORK TIMES. All she did, it became apparent, was to select and edit the negative news items -- things like murders, rapes, strikes, riots, demonstrations, homelessness, corruption in high places, and so on. Result: the average comrade in the street was convinced he lived in a Soviet paradise, while Americans were condemned to burn in their own hell, and serve those blood-sucking capitalist bastards right. Like Moliere’s bourgeois who spoke prose (as opposed to verse) and didn’t know it, I was a practicing propagandist and didn’t know it. With one difference: unlike the young Russian editor in her tiny cubicle, I wasn’t paid for my work. I did what I did because I loved Armenia and hated Turks.
*
There are many things in life about which no one tells you anything. Case in point: no one ever bothered to tell me that the secret of living a comfortable life is to be a flatterer, not a critic, and that there is more money in kissing ass than in kicking it.
*
Some years ago, after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, many publishers and bookstores around the world, including America, refused to have anything to do with his SATANIC VERSES. More recently, American newspapers were afraid to reprint the Mohammed cartoons in the name of political correctness. And the Pope of Rome, because he dared to quote the testimony of a medieval Byzantine emperor about Muslim militarism, has now been effectively neutralized and gagged. The message of jihadists is clear: “We set no value on human rights and the free speech of infidel dogs. Step out of line and we will riot, burn, and kill.” (Today’s victim: a young Catholic nun if Africa.) As for anti-jihadist moderates: I sympathize with their silence because I have learned the hard way that you cannot reason with fanatics who speak in the name of God and Country.
#
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
***************************************
To engage in dialogue means to be open to reason. To refuse to engage in dialogue means to condemn oneself to extinction. Case in point: When at the turn of the last century our revolutionaries refused to engage in dialogue with Armenians within the administration of the Ottoman Empire, they condemned the people to extinction. For more on this subject, see Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993).
*
And because Muslim fundamentalists today refuse to engage in dialogue with the West, they are moving in a direction that will make a showdown inevitable. As their genocidal threats towards Israel persist and their acts of terrorism and anti-Western riots increase in frequency and severity, the West will have no choice by to say to all Islamic states: “Recognize the universal validity of such democratic principles as freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and respect for fundamental human rights, or face annihilation.”
*
We too are moving towards a showdown and our adversary is not “social and political conditions beyond our control,” but our tribalism and contempt for democratic values and dialogue. We may pretend to be part of the Christian West, but as Nikol Aghbalian has pointed out, we are more like Kurds and Turks, thoroughly tribal. Our nationalism is a sham because tribalism means loyalty to the tribe, and the tribe is not the nation.
*
It is to be noted that Nikol Aghbalian (1873-1947) was neither a dissident nor a critic, but a political leader, an educator, and a literary scholar.
*
Aghbalian on democracy: “When man does not submit himself to the rule of law, he will have to submit himself to the rule of men, that is to say, cliques and gangs.”
*
Aghbalian on tribalism: “We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks and Kurds, and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly embedded even in our leaders and elites.”
#
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
**************************************
IF I WERE BUSH
************************
I would begin by democratizing friendly regimes, like the Saudis, even if it means twisting their arms and threatening them with annihilation; after which I would convince them to use their own money and personnel (of which they have more than enough) to democratize the rest of the Middle East. But after writing for Armenians for a good number of years, I have learned the hard way that if an idea makes sense, it will be universally rejected.
*
VOLTAIRE’S FRENCHMEN
*************************************
Voltaire used to divide his fellow countrymen into two distinct groups: “the enemies of reason and merit, the fanatics, the stupid, the intolerant, the persecutors and the calumniators,” and the others. And now, allow me to introduce that rarest of all beings, a concerned Armenian who was also a friend of reason, and as such would have enjoyed Voltaire’s full approval.
*
ARTIN DADIAN
****************************
He was a prominent Ottoman diplomat who in 1896 headed a commission appointed by the Sultan to resolve the conflict between the Empire and the Armenian revolutionaries. The following is a quotation from one of his letters to the Tashnak party: “I suggest that today we have nothing but patience and tolerance. First, Europe shows complete indifference and says there is no Armenian question as far as they are concerned. Second, the threat of complete annihilation of the Armenian nation has not yet entirely passed, and third, the people are tired of revolutionary deeds and are ready to patch up their differences with the government in order to remain safe from further terrible events such as have almost wiped out our people from the face of the earth. Fourth, various organizations are fighting different causes, each in their own way, and in the middle of all this stands one pitiful Artin Dadian, who on the one hand begs the Sultan for mercy by telling him that this would be the best thing for his empire, and on the other hand fights base individuals who in order to attain their selfish aims are even willing to sell their nation.” (See Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE [Istanbul, 1993]).
##

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

yeah, I have that book, my grandmother is a Dadian. I think I'll just go and read those passages.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 21, 2006
*******************************************
FROM MY DIARY
**************************
“Not so loud, please!” Verdi once said to an organ grinder who had planted himself beneath his window; and forever after the organ grinder sported a sign that said, “Student of Verdi.”
*
Frances Mayes dedicates her latest book, A YEAR IN THE WORLD: JOURNEYS OF A PASSIONATE TRAVELLER (New York, 2006), “To the forgotten new yellow panties and bra left drying on the rim of the hotel bathtub.”
*
A Chinese GI’s complaint to his sergeant: “Sarge, they keep calling me Sneeze but my name ain’t sneeze. My name is Hep Chou.”
*
In so far as criticism shows what can be done as opposed to what’s being done, it is always constructive.
*
Can a dupe really speak of self-interest if his views are not his but someone else’s?
*
You cannot reason with tyrants because they value their power above reason. Likewise, you cannot reason with men of faith because they value their religion above everything else, including their own survival.
*
Since most Christians are Christian because they were born in a Christian country, and most Muslims are Muslim because they were born in a Muslim country, it follows, what determines a man’s choice of religion is geography rather than the merits of their belief system. It also follows, most believers, like most patriots, are dupes of an unthinking factor, namely real estate. Which also means, to say my religion or my country is better than yours amounts to saying my mud is better than your mud.
#
Friday, September 22, 2006
**************************************
Faith and fundamentalism, fundamentalism and fanaticism, fanaticism and collective insanity: not always easy to tell where one ends and the other begins.
*
There is a beautiful English expression which is easily translated into Armenian but as far as I know it is seldom or never used by us: “Throw out the rascals!” – meaning, “Vote against the incumbents,” as if our incumbents were morally superior to American incumbents. In this connection perhaps I should add that until very recently we in the Diaspora couldn’t even identify our incumbents.
*
On the Internet it is not always easy to tell if those who attack you anonymously are children or adult retards. Perhaps I should have a warning label on everything I write that says: “What follows may not be suitable for young audiences. Parental guidance is advised.”
*
To generalize about Muslims may not be politically correct, but that should not prevent us from speaking of their mistreatment of women and their megalomaniacal imperial illusions based on the fact that, since they had an empire in the Middle Ages, they can have another in the near future, provided they follow the Guidance, which says, infidels have the same status in the eyes of Allah as dogs.
*
Speaking of collective illusions and ambitions: in what way is our claim on historic Armenia any different?
*
And speaking of generalizations: Let others think of us as a nation of cunning rug merchants. We see ourselves as heroes and martyrs; and heroes and martyrs don’t learn from their mistakes because they don’t make them.
*
My favorite epitaph: “Here lies someone who tried to screw his fellow man as little as possible” (Camilo Jose Cela).
#
Saturday, September 23, 2006
********************************************
We brag about our facility with languages; and yet, Karzai speaks better English than Kocharian; some of our ablest translators are re-translators; most Armenians born and raised in America cannot speak their mother tongue, and most of those who speak it can’t read it.
*
To love man means to hate exploiters, crooks, propagandists, dupes, charlatans, moral morons, tyrants, brown-nosers, flunkeys, hirelings, know-it-all smart-asses, liars, rapists, child molesters, thieves, killers…Perhaps to love man means to hate mankind.
*
By the time you subtract the PR, spin, doubletalk, and propaganda factors, what’s left from the palaver of a politician may very well be not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense, the kind that starts wars and massacres.
*
We may not cut out tongues and burn heretics at the stake, but that does not prevent us from making it clear that’s what we would like to do if we could get away with it.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 24, 2006
*************************************************
THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
*****************************************
An elegantly dressed, coiffed, and bexxxeled lady on Armenian TV spouting all the predictable clichés, among them:
“There is corruption in Armenia, certainly! But then there is corruption everywhere, including Canada.”
With one important difference: in Canada, when exposed, the corrupt are fired, sometimes even arrested, tried and jailed. Also, I have never heard a Canadian justify corruption by saying there is corruption everywhere.
*
“We shouldn’t judge our brothers in the Homeland. Are we better than they?”
True! We are not. We too are at the mercy of charlatans with their perennial Panchoonie punch line, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money); and because I have been saying this, I have become persona non grata, and in the eyes of our chauvinists, an enemy of the people. Besides, if we don’t judge the corrupt, in a way we judge and condemn the victims at the mercy of bloodsucking parasites.
*
“The police stop and give you a ticket for traffic violations you didn’t commit.”
This may explain why everyone wants to emigrate except the police, who, according to a recent visitor “are the fattest and ugliest men I have ever seen.”
*
“It may take two generations for our brothers in the Homeland to abandon their Soviet ways.”
Who benefits from this kind of talk? Surely not the victims. As for their victimizers: it is almost as if they were given a license to carry on with the full protection and consent of the people for another forty or fifty years – a license for which they didn’t even apply.
I have said this before and it bears repeating: our national sport is the blame-game: we blame the “red” massacres on the Turks and on the indifference of the Great Powers; the “white” massacre (exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora) on “social, economic, and political conditions beyond our control”; our tribalism on our climate and geography; and now, our corruption on the Kremlin. During the Soviet era I don’t remember any one of our chic Bolsheviks in the Diaspora complaining about Soviet corruption. On the contrary. We were told we were in the best of hands and we never had it so good.
*
“Let’s not forget that, as a state, Armenia is only a new-born child.”
And yet, when it suits us, we claim to be one of the oldest civilizations, after which we brag about the fact that at a time when most of Europe lived in huts and caves, we enjoyed a Golden Age.
*
To those who explain and justify our criminal conduct, may I remind them that evil triumphs only when the majority adopt a passive stance and they justify their cowardice, moral moronism, and absence of vision by engaging in charlatanism.
#
Monday, September 25, 2006
**********************************************
ODIAN’S ARMENIANS
**********************************
On reading Yervant Odian’s COUNCILMAN’S WIFE (first serialized at the turn of the last century, later published in book form in 1921) one thing becomes abundantly clear: the Armenian community of Istanbul consisted of morally bankrupt schemers (I am being politically correct now, because “a bunch of degenerates” would be closer to the truth) who spent their lives backbiting and plotting against one another.
What has changed? As far as I can see, only one thing: we no longer have writers like Odian willing to write about what they see and experience. What we have instead are academics and self-appointed pundits who, afraid to deal with the dark side of our collective existence (please note that I am not saying community life) feel more comfortable and safe writing about the past, and if it’s not the Middle Ages, it’s the massacres, as if we were "history"– I use the word in its colloquial meaning.
*
Julien Green (1900-1998), Francophone American writer, on death: “It is only the liberation of the spirit from the flesh.”
*
On biography: “Slices of cold mutton.”
*
On first impressions: “They are not to be resisted or ignored. One should never come to terms with vulgar people and vulgar not only in manner but also in spirit.”
*
On the self: “We are strangers to ourselves from the day we are born, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to understand and adjust ourselves to him.”
*
On life: “What happens in the world is of little interest. What happens within, that’s what really counts.”
***
Bernard-Henri Levy (contemporary French philosopher): “Only jackasses and the dead have nothing to hide.”
***
Abdelwahab Meddeb (Tunisian writer and professor of literature): “Islamism is the most absolute fascism ever conceived by man.”
#
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
*********************************************
ON CORRUPTION AND RELATED ATROCITIES
************************************************** **
If we need two generations to de-Sovietize ourselves, how many generations do we need to de-Ottomanize ourselves?
*
Corruption and cancer have this in common: unless surgically removed, they metastasize.
*
Where the corrupt are in charge, honesty will be outlawed.
Where the mediocre are in charge, excellence will be suppressed. Which is why to adopt a passive stance towards the corrupt and the mediocre is to condemn the nation to the death of a thousand cuts. As for those who like to brag about our resilience, adaptability, and instinct for survival: I suggest, to drag on a degraded existence is worse than death.
*
Do I repeat myself? Why not? How many times are our clichés and fallacies repeated? And I don’t mean harmless, infantile, and meaningless clichés, like first nation this and first nation that, but dangerous ones, like the one about two generations mentioned above….
*
Instead of meritocracy we have mediocracy, and instead of honesty we have charlatanism. A corrupt power structure conducts a genocidal policy towards all honest men as surely as Talaat did towards all innocent women and children. Now then, go ahead and parrot the two generations cliché with a clear conscience, if you can.
*
We were morally and politically right to rise against the Ottoman Empire. But we were dead wrong in our reliance on the verbal commitments of the Great Powers. Which means that even our so-called heroes behaved like dupes; even our so-called revolutionaries lacked self-reliance. And what could be more cowardly than heroes and revolutionaries who are afraid of free speech?
*
If you make a study of censorship and its victims (from Socrates to Solzhenitsyn) you may notice that its aim is to silence not charlatans and liars but men of integrity and truth. My final question is: Do you really believe some day in forty or fifty years our charlatans and parasites will see the light and usher in another Golden Age?
#
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
**********************************************
CONFESSIONS AND ADMISSIONS
********************************************
Somewhere along the line I decided that I knew not only everything I needed to know but also what others needed to know, and ever since then my life has been a concatenation of blunders, among them my decision to be not just a writer but an Armenian writer. I know now that the certainty of being right is the greatest source of error.
*
Socrates spent his entire life proving that we use words without knowing their meaning. When asked what he would do first were he called upon to rule a nation, Confucius is said to have replied, “To correct language.” In our own days, semanticists tell us we don’t even know how to use such simple and common words as “to be.” For example, one should not say “I am not good at math,” but “I didn’t receive good grades in math.”
*
What is history? What else but the clash of two sets of charlatans and their dupes?
*
Not being a historian I must rely on the testimony of historians, and when these historians contradict one another, common sense tells me to rely on historians who are in a better position to be objective and impartial. This automatically excludes all nationalist, tribal, and partisan historians.
*
In his efforts to silence me, one of our flunkeys with “leadership qualities” (if you can imagine such an absurdity), once said to me: “Do you really think you are the only writer who has been unfairly treated?” To which I replied: “Of course not. That’s why I speak with the strength of many.”
*
Since dialogue is anti-Armenian, it follows it is a waste of time to reason with a man you can silence.
#
##

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 28, 2006
****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
He who asks a rude question neither wants nor deserves an honest answer.
*
Two frequently used phrases in English that are never used in Armenian: “Speak truth to power,” and “The buck stops here.”
*
“The buck stops here,” and the blame-game are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
Sometimes the hardest word to pronounce is no.
*
Last night on CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] an interview with a Turkish novelist who was taken to court because in her latest book an Armenian character from San Francisco refers to Turks as “butchers.” The Turks, it seems, are so eager to achieve membership in the European Union that even a single word in a work of fiction bothers the hell out of them.
*
In the same way that we are brought up to believe we are a nation of heroes and martyrs, the Turks are brought up to believe they are a nation of empire builders and noble warriors, even if most of their so-called warriors were not Turks but brainwashed and castrated Christians.
*
People who give others ulcers, heart attacks, and cancer, die of natural causes.
*
I repeat myself because I consider it my duty to reassert the truth against ceaselessly repeated lies.
*
Bernard-Henri Levy (contemporary French philosopher): “Israeli writers are better politicians than Israeli politicians because imagination is a necessary ingredient of good politics. By using their imagination, writers are in a better position to understand what it means to be and feel like a Palestinian.”
#
Friday, September 29, 2006
**************************************
HOW NOT TO BE A WRITER
**********************************************
Misery likes company they say and they are right. If I encouraged anyone to adopt literature as a career, I have done so for purely selfish reasons.
*
Anyone who can write a sentence these days thinks he can also write a paragraph, a page, and a chapter. Result: an unlimited supply of trash most of which will never see the light of day. According to a recent statistic, only one in a thousand manuscripts is accepted for publication. That’s because for every honest man there are probably a thousand self-assessed geniuses, in the same way that for every authentic man of faith or servant of god there are a thousand mullahs, shamans, gurus, televangelists, fornicators, and child molesters; and for every statesman there are a thousand wheeler-dealers whose number one concern is number one.
*
It is said that writers are appreciated only after they die. What unmitigated nonsense! What unadulterated rubbish! I can name a hundred Armenian writers who are neither appreciated nor read even by the overwhelming majority of their fellow Armenians. As for courses in creative writing, how-to books, lectures, seminars, and symposia that have been mushrooming hiroshimally: the most practical advice you will get from them is of the kind that tells you to “stand still and wave a white handkerchief, this should confuse the elephant.”
*
Did anyone in Homer’s or Dostoevsky’s time even speak of such a thing as “creative writing”? My favorite advice, or rather anti-advice is: “Are you sure you are doing the wrong thing?” Because to do the right thing nowadays means to conform by saying “Yes, sir!” even when the right thing to do is to bellow “No!”
#
Saturday, September 30, 2006
**********************************************
THE MEANING OF MEANING
********************************************
James Joyce once bragged that some of his puns have as many as five meanings. It is said of Saadi (13th-century Persian poet) that each word of his has as many as seventy-two meanings. Can you guess the number of meanings in an autumn leaf, a raindrop, an atom, a massacre?
*
Julien Green (1900-1998): “The young and not so young today speak platitudes, write platitudes, think platitudes. From one end of the world to the other – music, painting, architecture – it’s the triumph of mediocrity.”
*
“Your negativity is killing us,” a reader complains. Translation: Critics, no! Brownnosers, yes!
*
The only reason I concentrate on our failings is that we are in a position to do something about them. As for the failings of the rest of the world: what's the use of xxxxxing?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, October 01, 2006
*****************************************
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
**************************************
Yervant Odian ends his novel, THE COUNCILMAN’S WIFE, abruptly in 1915 by saying most of his fictional characters, who had tried to inflict fatal damage on each other’s reputation, were arrested, jailed, and hanged. Those who survived ran away and joined the Russian army. The rest were allowed to stay in Istanbul on condition they refrain from getting involved in community affairs. One good thing about major catastrophes, Odian seems to be saying here, is that they solve all petty internecine problems.
*
Odian died in 1926 and had no way of knowing that in our Soviet phase we would behave, and to some extent we continue to behave today in both the Homeland and the Diaspora, as though we had learned nothing from our tragedy of 1915 – nothing except to xxxxx about Turks.
*
Odian had a sharp eye for Armenian doubletalk. Everyone in THE COUNCILMAN’S WIFE speaks about his honor in whose defense he is more than willing to behave in a dishonorable manner.
*
It is to be noted that the Soviets allowed the publication of Odian’s complete works, except his COMRADE PANCHOONIE, which is a savage attack on the misuse of language, political rhetoric, and Communist humbuggery. In one of his letters to the Central Committee (which ends, like all his other letters, with the words, “Send us a little money”) Panchoonie writes:

“We are all Armenians, we are brothers. Why can’t we live together? Why must we fight?” that filthy bourgeois kept repeating, not being able to comprehend that conflict is the basic condition of life, that class conflict is essential to socialist victory, and that it is impossible to do any good at all without at least a little bloodshed…. In vain did I repeat that violent class conflict must be waged between us, that they had to use against us every evil means at their command – betrayal, false accusation, force; without these it would not be possible to have a dirty bourgeois class, the existence of which was essential if we were to wage our noble revolutionary struggle against it.
#
Monday, October 02, 2006
************ ********* ********* *********
ON FREE SPEECH
************ ********* ********
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English economist
and philosopher: “We can never be sure that the
opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false
opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would
be an evil still.”
*
HOW TO JUDGE A NATION
************ ********* ********* *****
Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006), French essayist
and critic: “One can measure how civilized a
nation is by its willingness to consider itself
an object of ridicule or contempt.”
*
On Freud: “Since time immemorial all men have had
an Oedipus complex except Oedipus.”
*
On French influence: “When the sun of France was
at its zenith, I wonder why the world did not die
of sunstroke.”
*
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************ ********* ********* ********
As I grow older I become increasingly aware of my
shortcomings and the good qualities of those I
held in contempt.
*
When a man of power ceases to think of himself as
a servant of the people, he becomes a tyrant.
Where there is power there will also be abuse of
power. I never had much power to abuse but on
those extremely rare occasions when I did, the
temptation to abuse it was irresistible and I
don’t remember to have ever made any effort to
resist it.
*
As sinners we don’t mind confessing to other
sinners. What we mind is confessing to hypocrites
who pretend to be better than we are.
*
Remember me? The more correct question should be:
Do you consider me worth remembering?
*
When I was young I had a solution for every
problem. I must have been an unbearable pain in
the ass. Some of my readers are eager to inform
me that I still am. In a year or two I may agree
with them.
*
On more than one occasion I have been taken to
task for my negativity. What could be more
negative than six centuries of subservience to
Turks followed by a series of massacres? And yet,
I wasn’t even born when these things happened.
Have we fallen so low that all talk of reality
has become negative?
*
Speaking of his Nazi past, Guenter Grass said, “I
was too young to be guilty.” I have every reason
to suspect, had Germany won, he would have
bragged about his service to the nation.
#

Tuesday, October 03, 2006
*****************************************
FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY
****************************************
As a humorist, Yervant Odian (1869-1926) could be screamingly funny, but he could also be a realist in the manner of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Zola (all of whom he translated into Armenian). The intent of his two major novels, THE COUNCILMAN’S WIFE and FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY, both written shortly before the Genocide, is not to amuse or entertain but to expose the hypocrisy, arrogance, and moral bankruptcy of wealthy Armenians who parade as pillars of society and benefactors.
When an impoverished widow with a sick daughter, following the advice of friends and neighbors, applies for financial support to an Armenian benevolent institution in Istanbul, she is told she must wait two or three weeks until her case is thoroughly investigated. When she explains that she has no source of income or savings, not even enough money to buy coal with which to heat her room (it’s winter), she is told by Ghougas effendi, the central character of FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY, and one of the pillars and benefactors mentioned above: “Impossible, no way, can’t be done! We have rules and regulations here. No investigation, no money. We don’t know who you are and where you come from. You could be lying to us. We must first make sure what you are telling us is true. We are not in the habit giving away money to whoever walks in here, understand? For all we know you could be a xxxxx.”
Ghougas effendi, like most of Odian’s fictional characters, is the quintessential Ottomanized Armenian. He sprinkles his speech with Turkish words, expressions, and proverbs, among them “pij,” “pezeveng,” “khaltakh,” (freely translated: bastard, pimp, floozy).
It is to be noted that, in addition to being a great novelist, Odian was also an investigative reporter. He invented nothing. To his contemporary readers, all his fictional characters had real and recognizable counterparts.
When he is publicly exposed as a fraud, a liar, and a rapist, Ghougas effendi muses: “Let them bark all they want… After I make a few generous financial contributions to the hospital, orphanage, and to a few newspapers, I will be once more a respected pillar of society.” Which is exactly what happens.
I challenge anyone to read FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY and say he is proud to be an Armenian.
#
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
********************************************
The most effective counterargument is not questioning the common sense and decency of an adversary but mentioning a fact, no matter how marginal, that has been ignored.
*
I never say anything about my fellow men that I am not prepared to say about myself. Lying to others is bad enough. Lying to oneself is infinitely worse.
*
Suicide is a luxury the very poor can’t afford because they are too busy trying to survive.
*
In a corrupt democracy as soon as you throw one set of rascals out, another set moves in. Very often voting consists in rejecting a barrel of rotten apples for the sake of another.
*
To write means barking up the wrong tree in a desert.
*
If you think you know better, sooner or later you will run across someone who knows better.
*
Never underestimate the strength of underdogs and the weakness of top dogs.
*
The worst thing a mathematician can say about the work of another mathematician is, “That’s not math – it’s religion.”
*
Only after we reject all role models we may discover our true selves. Role models, even the very best, have the validity of hearsay evidence.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, October 05, 2006
********************************************
GET A LOAD OF THIS!
***********************************
Bosses, bishops, and benefactors are Yervant Odian’s favorite targets too, and he is much tougher on them than I am, perhaps because concentrated as they were in Istanbul, the way beasts of prey are in a zoo, they could be observed and studied closely and at leisure.
When Ghougas effendi, the main character of FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY (a wealthy merchant and one of the most repellent characters in all of Armenian literature), when Ghougas effendi dies a horribly slow death of a knife-wound sustained in a bordello scuffle, his funeral service is conducted “by the Patriarch, six bishops, fourteen vartabeds, and thirty-two kahanas.” In his eulogy, Odian writes, the Patriarch speaks of him as one “who enjoyed the affection and respect of the entire community…. His rectitude and unassuming nature were legendary and made of him an exemplary husband and father. His family was an altar whose sanctity he defended until his last breath. He dedicated his entire life to three principles – family, honor, and morality. Even in his generosity, which was boundless, he did his utmost to uphold these principles and consistently refused to help anyone who did not share his unwavering dedication to family, honor, and morality. To his friends and acquaintances he was a wise mentor, and to the perplexed, a lighthouse. Even a glancing acquaintance with him was enough to make the confused and lost to return onto the right path…” and so on and so forth. The Patriarch unload this verbal crap with the expertise of someone who has done it all his life; so much so that even those in the congregation, who know better, burst into tears. Who says you can’t fool all the people all the time?
#
Friday, October 06, 2006
********************************************
THE USES AND ABUSES OF THE PAST
************************************************** *
Guenter Grass (contemporary German author and winner of the Nobel Prize): “History is a clogged toilet. We flush and flush, but the xxxx keeps rising.” Why is it that we Armenians are incapable of producing such a sentence?
*
By ignoring the dark side of our history, we sink deeper into filth. Is it conceivable that we will wake up from this nightmare only on the day we drown?
*
To pretend that we had nothing to do in shaping our destiny as a nation and by extension our identity, or to pretend the Genocide was engineered by the doubletalk of the West and the savagery of the Turks, is to admit that adopting a passive stance has become an integral part of our identity, and so far we have done nothing to expose this scandal and to combat against it.
*
The average Armenian thinks all he has to do to discharge his patriotic duty is to make periodic contributions to our Panchoonies.
*
The average Greek today brags about Socrates but ignores the fact that it was average Greeks like him who condemned him to death. This is true not only of Greeks but also patriots of all nations. Patriotism is unthinkable without propaganda. No one who knows and understands history says, “My country, right or wrong!”
*
When Jesus said “They know not what they do,” he was talking about the average citizen who is capable of committing the most unspeakable crimes with a clear conscience on the grounds that his conduct is motivated by such selfless and noble principles as obedience to established laws and love of country. Even as he sinks deeper and deeper into filth, he pleads not guilty by reason of unawareness and ignorance.
#
Saturday, October 07, 2006
*****************************************
WHO LOVES ARMENIANS?
*************************************
Let us not speculate about others and the rest of the world, most of which may not even be aware of our existence, and if it is, may not give a damn whether we live or die. Let us begin with ourselves. Do Armenians love Armenians? Is an Armenian capable of loving himself? Gregory of Narek or Naregatsi (our Dante and Shakespeare combined) was not particularly fond of himself; and very much like Yervant Odian, most of our ablest writers had no illusions about their fellow countrymen. As for our partisans: the less said about them the better. You may now draw your own conclusions.
*
ATHEISTS
**********************
My guess is there are as many atheists and agnostics in the Muslim Middle East as there are in the Christian West. If they refuse to stand up and be counted, it may be because martyrdom is incompatible with negation. It is easier to die for something you believe in than for something you don’t believe in.
*
ON TRUST
*************************
On the day Muslims see a connection between religion and progress or capacity to inflict pain on others without committing suicide, they will be tempted to convert to Christianity because their need to live and to win must be greater than their trust in their mullahs.
*
ON FOLLOWING ORDERS
**********************************
When the Lord ordered Abraham to butcher his own son, Abraham did not object or ask any questions. Ever since then absolute and blind obedience has been the source of some of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity.
*
ON PROPAGANDA
********************************
Everybody engages in it, why shouldn’t we? One tentative answer: It hasn’t been working for us.
*
THE REALITY OF WORDS
*************************************
Truth is only a word, like god and infinity. We have no way of knowing if it exists; and if it exists, whether or not our mind can grasp it.
*
BOOMERANG
*****************************************
By making me a charlatan, my education provided me with the means to recognize charlatanism when I see it.
*
NEGATIVE ROLE MODELS
***************************************
Great men of wisdom have said many foolish things. We who are neither great nor wise must be careful to speak only words of wisdom.
*
ON HAPPINESS
************************
It is possible to experience brief intervals of happiness, or the illusion of it, provided one forgets yesterday’s blunders and to ignore tomorrow’s hardships.
*
ON STYLE
**************************
Even when one is brief, clear, and impossible to misunderstand, one will be misunderstood. It comes with the territory. You may choose your style but you cannot choose your readers.
#

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

ON HAPPINESS
************************
It is possible to experience brief intervals of happiness, or the illusion of it, provided one forgets yesterday’s blunders and to ignore tomorrow’s hardships.
*

You've spoken about Zen before, and in Zen, we can ignore such conepts as time depending on our focus on one thought or action. If you practice this daily, is it possible that these brief intervals be transformed into something more consistant?

The human's level of functioning has several layers, and among the lowest (or most basic) probably lies our automatic breathing functions and our heartbeat. The next level problably concerns intake of water and food, and the layers continue to grow in complexity as we satisfy each list of basic needs. If we focus more on the basic rather than striving for the more complex, our minds simplify and it takes less yet more fundamental things to human existance to satisfy us, and with practice, it shouldn't be difficult to tap into happy states of mind at will.

As soon as concepts of time, expectations and ideologies involving human interactions and an interest in unnecessary pleasurement comes into the picture, it is more difficult to find balance in our lifestyles and more easy to lapse into prolongued periods of dissatisfaction. This is not to say that such elements of human life are bad, with patience and practice, we can incorporate them into our lifestyles in a healthy manner too, however, if we wish to gain happiness out of variables that are completely beyond our control, needless to say, we are gambling and more often than not, losing (at least partially because most of the time, we are completely unaware of or are blinded from our alternatives).

I hope I haven't gone off a tangent... It isn't so hard to write an essay in response to one or two lines of some of your statements or assertions. I've done this before with other people's quotes as well and in criticism to myself, I have to say that I'd wish I could give the same or an even more coherent message in 1 or 2 lines.