notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, February 17, 2007
*********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
To speak of Genocide recognition as frequently, obsessively, and endlessly as we do is to imply that during more than two thousand years of history our most noteworthy achievement has been allowing ourselves to be butchered like sheep.
*
Claude Bernard: “No one has contributed more to science than frogs.”
*
In biographies of writers, the sentence that sooner or later pops up is “he read everything he could get his hands on.”
*
Major decisions are based on countless little ones that make the major ones inevitable.
*
If you plan to make an omelet, break eggs not windows and heads.
*
Alain: “It is said that the next generations will be harder to govern. I certainly hope so.”
*
Mathurin Regnier: “A wealthy villain is worth more than a poor gentleman.”
*
I question the validity of all my past beliefs and no doubt in the future I will question the validity of my present beliefs of which I have none.
*
Bertolt Brecht: “I don’t trust him. We are friends.”

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Why do you sell yourself short? I am not trying to flatter you. I think there are people who view and/or participate on these forums to learn and try and understand Armenian identity. I know this applies to me. Regardless of agreement on our individual views, reading your posts has made me aware of Armenian writers and critics that I may not have otherwise discovered. Additionally, reading your posts has raised more questions for me... In pursuing answers to your questions I find myself drawn deeper into my Armenian identity and eager to seek out a path of balance.
By presenting a critics view you are helping to balance out the ultra-nationalism some of us adhere to. I cannot tell you that I have given up on nationalism, but I search for a deeper meaning in it that strives to provide a benefit to all Armenians, not just the elite.

Regards,

Garik

in the eyes of some,
especially those in power and their dupes,
we -- you and i - belong to a tiny minority of misfirts. / ara

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, February 19, 2007
*******************************************
Because I don’t particularly care for loudmouth imbeciles who pretend to be smart, they say I don’t like Armenians.
*
Good explanations are not final answers, only small steps in their general direction.
*
To be dependent on the goodwill and understanding of another is to live in oppression.
*
It is not that he has a low opinion of you; rather, he has a very high opinion of himself.
*
Man doesn’t hate the truth, only those who speak it.
*
I have yet to see a politician, even an honest one, who did not sound like a compulsive liar.
*
Amiel: “One becomes a charlatan without knowing it.”
*
Sainte-Beuve: “Celebrity might as well be synonymous with prostitution.”
*
Lamartine: “Homeland: a structure that stands on the ashes of the dead.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
****************************************
ON PROPAGANDA AND
RELATED ATROCITIES
************************************************** **
On the radio this morning: “Censorship: When the powerful tell the less powerful what to say.”
*
Where there is power, there will also be propaganda.
*
Do we practice censorship? If you ask this question to a dupe or charlatan, you will never get the right answer.
*
It is the heights of naiveté to think that only the enemy engages in propaganda.
*
Alice completely divorced herself from reality by following a rabbit into a hole. The difference between Alice and the propagandist who believes in his own propaganda is that the propagandist becomes a permanent resident of Wonderland.
*
If we are alienated, it may be because our thought processes have been contaminated by propaganda.
*
Propaganda alienates people by divorcing them from reality, which is also what happens to compulsive liars when they start believing in their own lies. This may explain the short-lived and disastrous regimes under Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. As they became more and more dependent on their own lies, they further removed themselves from reality and its inflexible laws, one of them being, you cannot fool all the people, including yourself, all the time.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
*********************************************
ON A QUINTESSENTIALLY
ARMENIAN ABERRATION
***************************************
We have all met the arrogant ignoramus who, just because he knows something about Armenians you don’t know, says with an air of self-satisfaction bordering on triumph: “And you call yourself an Armenian?” Asserting superiority even on flimsiest of grounds must be a quintessentially Armenian need. One reason why we have allowed the Genocide to become a collective addiction is that it allows us a sense of moral superiority. There is even a type of writer who, after writing about the Genocide, finds it extremely difficult to write about anything else. Writing about Turks, atrocities, and lies makes them feel morally superior, and the need to feel morally superior is especially pronounced in bastards.
#

[MrLeftyHye]

Re: notes / comments

Arabaliozian I was wondering if your a philosipher?

[gmd]

Re: notes / comments

Arabaliozian I was wondering if your a philosipher?

You did not ask him if he is left handed.

[MrLeftyHye]

Re: notes / comments

Oh your right I didint how taughtless of me well since you repled to my quote, are you left handed?

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 22, 2007
***************************************
WHITE TRASH I
**************************
In an interview published in ESQUIRE James Watson, the DNA biologist, raises the following question: “Why do we have a government that’s run by rich trash?” His answer: “Because they’ve used their money to buy the presidency.”
*
WHITE TRASH II
******************************
We share this in common with Turks: we think to apologize is for weaklings and losers. I remember, during the Soviet era, because I dared to criticize the regime, I would receive many hostile phone calls and letters questioning my patriotism. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, none of these gentlemen wrote or called to say he had been wrong. And I will never forget the letter written by one of these chic Bolsheviks, a white-haired elder statesman with a heart condition, which was so offensive that I was too stunned to reply in kind; and for a change, luck was on my side, because shortly thereafter I read his obituary. Had I retaliated, I would have felt partly responsible for his unexpected demise.
*
WHITE TRASH III
**********************************
We may have a better chance to come to terms with Turks on the day we show a willingness to listen to their side of the story. I say this in view of the fact that they have already gone as far as conceding that they will gladly plead guilty as charged provided we don’t escalate our demands. Probably a bogus condition, because they are smart enough to know that we are incapable of reaching a consensus on any issue, and they can always rely on an extremist minority to reject all preconditions.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, February 23, 2007
*****************************************
LIONS AND APES
******************************
Victor Hugo: “Imitate nothing and no one. A lion that copies another lion is an ape.”
*
All brainwashed people behave like apes.
*
I don’t mind admitting that I was brainwashed as surely and thoroughly as any Bolshevik or Nazi; and if you think you were not, it may be because they have done a better job on you. Either that or you are too infatuated with your fiction to relinquish it in exchange of something that will be less flattering to your ego or superego.
*
My motto: Suspect everything that is flattering to your vanity.
*
If you search for the negative in the positive, you will find it; and that may save you from making an ass of yourself in the future.
*
Anything that removes or distances us from the reality principle is to be discarded. To put it differently: our choice is between reality and Alice’s Wonderland. And remember: reality can be more fantastic than any fantasy. Reality turns against us only if we ignore its inflexible laws.
*
What makes us trust our political leaders is not love of truth but love of country. The degree of patriotism in a man is relative to the spread of the real estate he owns. There are entire continents today populated by rejects, heretics, exiles, and white trash. A reasonable man is one who places love of truth above love of real estate, that is to say, dirt.
*
When it comes to politics and religion, every assertion is open to contradiction. When two sets of apes or brainwashed people maintain some contradictions are capital offenses, the result will be war and massacre.
#