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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