Thursday, September 23, 2004
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DISAGREEMENT – ARMENIAN STYLE.
THE LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA.
FOUR RULES WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS.
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There is a type of reader who disagrees with me long before he has read the first word of the first line. Such a reader is a critic only in the sense that a cobra is a critic of a mongoose and vice versa. Some cases in point follow.
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“You don’t always mention your sources. Is it because you have none to back up your ridiculous assertions and theories?”
More often than not my sources are anonymous readers like yourself whom I sometimes identify as Jack S. Avanakian.
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“None of your explanations makes sense to me. Why do you insist on wasting your time and ours?”
Perhaps you would like to share your wisdom with us, and if you have none to spare, perhaps you would care to mention another writer we could all read with profit. I hate to think I am the only game in town. Surely, our people deserve better than that.
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To the gentle reader who tells me, “Haven’t you got anything better to do than produce a steady flow of waste matter every day?” I can only say: What’s a major intellect like you reading a minor scribbler like me?
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It has been the destiny of Armenian writers to live among foreigners who don’t give a damn about Armenian literature, and Armenians who care more about the false certainties of propaganda and less about the honest uncertainties of literature.
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Power can speak only one language, that of propaganda. This is true of political as well as religious power. And propaganda and truth are as mutually exclusive as fire and water.
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My source about the above assertion: life in three different countries – the first predominantly Orthodox (Greece); the second Catholic (Italy) and the third Protestant (Canada) all claiming to have a monopoly on truth, and when asked for proof, all pleading faith, the way cold-blooded murderers plead insanity.
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All rules have exceptions, except the following four:
Where there are laws, they will be broken.
Where there are principles, they will be corrupted.
Where there is an ideological movement, it will be confiscated by power-hungry cynical manipulators whose number one concern will be number one.
And (I owe the following to Toynbee): Where there are chosen people, they will have been chosen by no one but themselves.
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Friday, September 24, 2004
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WARNING.
ENFER DE MERDE.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY.
PUNDITS & DUPES.
ON INFALLIBILITY.
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In order not to be misunderstood, one must express the same thought in different ways, and the more ways, the narrower the gap open to misinterpretation.
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What I am about to say you may have heard or read before. Feel free not to read what follows.
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The world is an enfer de merde or a cesspool of conflicting interests and belief systems because, (one) only historians learn from history; (two) they invariably draw contradictory lessons; (three) they don’t have the power to put into practice what they have learned; and (four) if they had the power, the world would be in a worst mess.
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We are all authorities on at least one subject: what’s good for us, and more often than not, we are dead wrong.
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Where there is disagreement, either one or, more often than not, both sides are wrong, because any dupe can say, “my side is right,” and have a counterpart in the opposition who says the same thing.
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If we agree that what we don’t know far exceeds what we know, or “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates), or “we cannot answer the most important questions” (Chekhov), it follows, to assume being consistently right or infallible must be just about the surest symptom of being consistently wrong. This must be true not only of Muslims who speak in the name of Allah, but also of Catholics who speak in the name of the Pope, or partisans who speak in the name of the Party, or dupes who at one time or another spoke in the name of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam, and countless others who pretended to know better.
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If millions, perhaps even billions, have been wrong in the past, who among us will dare to pretend to be right or to know better?
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Saturday, September 25, 2004
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FROM AN AFRICAN NOVEL.
MORE ON WRITERS AND COMMISSARS.
ON ARMENIAN IDENTITY.
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
OUR PANCHOONIE RACKET.
GOD, OUR FATHER.
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From a contemporary African novel: “as ugly and dirty as a hyena’s anus.”
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No one and nothing can be as contemptible as a writer in an environment dominated by commissars of culture. Which is why I prefer to identify myself as a concerned citizen. And if, on occasion, I have committed the unforgivable blunder of calling myself a writer, it has been only in the sense of one who uses the written word as a means of communication – as in “the writer of this memo.”
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If you chart the family tree of a commissar of culture, you are sure to find at least two hangmen, three cold-blooded murderers, several career criminals, and a minimum of a dozen jailbirds.
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In a non-democratic environment one cannot speak of the voice of the people (“vox populi”) which has been identified in the past with the voice of god (“vox dei”). One can speak only of the voice of an elite or a power structure, which is more akin to the voice of the Devil. And now, consider the fact that throughout our millennial history we have at no time experienced democratic rule. Even in democratic environments like the United States, France and Canada, we are dominated by non-representative cliques that are as representative as exclusive clubs. As for the so-called democracy in Armenia today: it is as representative as a criminal gang or a mafia.
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An Armenian born and raised in the United States will share more in common with his fellow Americans than with an Armenian born and raised in the USSR. Most Armenians today might as well be foreigners to one another. But whereas the laws of the land promote solidarity in America (which is also populated by foreigners), the absence of similar laws or values in our case moves us in opposite directions, namely, mutual mistrust, alienation, and assimilation.
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The only time an Armenian will speak of brotherhood is when he goes into the business of raising funds, which I like to call our “Panchoonie racket.”
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I am willing to concede that even if god doesn’t exist, we should live as though he did, otherwise we may end up slaughtering one another. But man, it seems, is so predisposed to slaughter that he will slaughter even in the name of a merciful and compassion god.
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The aim of propaganda, it has been said, is to deceive your friends, not your enemies. Imagine, if you can, a Turk falling for our chauvinist crapola….
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After being verbally abused by our commissars and partisans (but I repeat myself) I can truly testify to the fact that an Armenian’s tongue can be “sharper than a Turk’s yataghan” (Zarian) and uglier than a hyena’s anus.
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