Sunday, October 31, 2004
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BUGGERING ON.
FAITH, RELIGION, AND IDEOLOGY.
MASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME.
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Very early this morning I opened my eyes with the words: “Many have tried before me and failed. When they were not silenced, they gave up in despair. Why go on?”
And here I am again, “unwashed, unshaved, unshat” (Auden), “buggering on” (Churchill).
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What matters about an idea is not whether it is positive or negative, or pro-this or anti-that, but how accurately it explains a situation. Which is why, whenever we approach reality with preconceived notions and prejudices, it blows in our face. Our recent history provides us with so many instances of this occurrence that we, or rather, our political parties, have become masters of the blame game in order to avoid all responsibility for their miscalculations.
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An argument between a commissar without a license to kill and a writer without an audience is like a fight between two bald-headed men over a comb.
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The difference between faith and religion is that faith unites and religion divides. Religion divides not only in relation to other religions but also within itself – Sunni and Shi’a, Catholic and Protestant, sometimes even Catholic and Catholic, and Protestant and Protestant. The same applies to ideologies, like Marxism or Communism (Stalinist and Trotskyites) and nationalism (Tashnak and Ramgavar).
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When religions and ideologies divide, they declare their moral and political bankruptcy by ignoring the central message of their faith (love, compassion, tolerance and mercy) or the interests of the nation (strength in solidarity). Because without solidarity, a nation makes itself more vulnerable to the enemy or to social, political and economic forces “beyond its control” – or so the political leaders say in obedience to the rules of the blame game.
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Monday, November 01, 2004
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THE ALIENATED,
THE ASSIMILATED,
AND THE FORGOTTEN.
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The Armenian critic or dissident may not be the rule, but neither is he the exception we may think he is. Just because we silence critics, it does not mean they cease to exist. And just because we alienate our fellow Armenians, it does not mean they cease being Armenian.
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The alienated Armenian is not a second-class citizen. Rather, he is a reflection of our own cult of intolerance and hatred.
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An alienated Armenian means what he says and he says it with his feet. And what he says is what I have been saying: our institutions are run by charlatans who legitimize Ottomanism in the name of Armenianism.
To forget, or to ignore, or to dismiss them as defective Armenians is to compound the felony. They are as much our victims as our parents were of Turkish atrocities, and like our victims of the massacres, they number in the million.
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The alienated Armenian is our responsibility. Not to recognize this is nothing but an Armenian variation on a Turkish theme.
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Let us not emulate our leaders who have become such masters of the blame game that they see themselves as infallible role models whose every word has the authority of Holy Writ.
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Imams and bishops may pretend to speak in the name of God, but all politicians, regardless of nationality, will behave like pathological liars for the sake of expediency and whenever it is in their own interest.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
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A new idea will be a source of dread only to the man who is infatuated with his own ignorance.
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The purpose of an Armenian argument is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis (or consensus) but “You are full of s***! that’s who I am.”
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As perennial victims, our only chance to achieve top-dog status is in verbal vitriol.
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Nothing illustrates our Ottoman heritage better than an exchange of views.
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For every insecure Armenian who needs to assert superiority in argument, there will be another who has developed strategies to avoid confrontation.
When asked which church he goes to, a friend of mine is in the habit of replying: “I am with the good guys.”
Another friend has trained himself never to say, “I disagree with you.” Even when he disagrees with a fellow Armenian violently he says, “You may be right.”
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In an argument, our unstated aim in not consensus but the total destruction of the adversary.
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If our bishops, who speak in the name of the Almighty (Who knows everything) cannot agree, why should we?
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Two people disagree because neither knows the whole truth.
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When we disagree, we cling to our partial knowledge the way a drowning man is said to cling to anything, including a venomous serpent.
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To think to know everything is as bad as to know nothing.
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The only reason some people think they know everything they need to know is that their standards are mighty low and their demands minimal to the point of non-existence.
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He who cannot tell the difference between knowledge and information is a complete ignoramus even when he is well informed.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2004
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To understand another you must walk a hundred miles in his moccasins. To know him, to really know him, you must share his beliefs, superstitions, prejudices and misconceptions.
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I understand Armenians because I grew up in an Armenian ghetto; I had an Armenian education; and I have spent most of my life working for them. I could write a dictionary of Armenian fallacies, clichés, misconceptions, and prejudices, all of which have been mine at one time or another.
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When we silence dissent, we cease to have a balanced view of ourselves, and an unbalanced view of ourselves might as well be the initial stage of insanity. To those who say, individuals may go insane, but not nations, may I remind them of what happened to the Italians under Mussolini, the Germans under Hitler, and the Soviets under Stalin. (And today, I am tempted to add: the Americans under Bush.)
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What could be more ridiculous, not to say absurd, than to suggest that a nation that has endured six centuries of brutal oppression, a series of massacres, dispersion, and destitution in alien environments, can be threatened by the criticism of a single minor scribbler?
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If you take things seriously, happiness for you is taking nothing seriously, not even death.
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I love this sentence by Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”
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