Sunday, September 25, 2005
*********************************
SEMANTIC PERVERSIONS
*******************************
If you call a crook an honest man, he will be flattered. He will thank you and after congratulating himself he will think: “I am good. I must be doing something right.” When he says “good” he means bad; and when he says “right” he means wrong.
*
An honest man doesn’t care to be called honest. He is too busy trying to survive in a dishonest environment to have any use for flattery.
*
A really smart man doesn’t identify himself as smart. He doesn’t even talk smart. I have myself dealt with smart men who pretended to be idiots because they knew from experience the best way to take advantage of another is to let him think he is the smart one and no idiot like himself could ever hope to deceive him.
*
When odars call us smart, we are flattered. We welcome flattery no matter how false. And when others fail to flatter us, we flatter ourselves.
*
We identify ourselves as the first nation to convert to Christianity, but we avoid asking ourselves: How genuine is our faith? Do we love one another? Are we even tolerant of one another? As for loving our enemies…don’t make me laugh.
*
We have become beggars for flattery and masters of self-deception. We call our military defeats moral victories thus asserting our moral superiority even as our own ablest writers tell us treason and betrayal are in our blood (Raffi) and we survive by cannibalizing one another (Zarian).
*
Our leaders tell us we are in good hands even as they depopulate the Homeland and alienate the majority in the Diaspora.
*
A handful of young hotheads, after taking over the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, negotiate a safe passage abroad for themselves. That same day, in retaliation, several thousand innocent Armenians are slaughtered by a mob of enraged Turks, and to this day this fiasco is described as a heroic episode that made headlines around the world. Nobody wants to know if these headlines saved a single life or were of any practical value to anyone. The heroes are exalted and enshrined in the annals of our glorious past and the anonymous victims are reduced to the status of a statistical footnote and forgotten.
#
Monday, September 26, 2005
************************************
To understand reality also means to want to change it, but whereas fools aim to change others, never themselves, the wise concentrates on themselves. The wise have a better chance to succeed.
*
Schopenhauer observes somewhere that women have been carefully designed so that men may make asses of themselves. That is something worth thinking about.
*
If you are going to pretend to know better, first make sure how much the other knows.
*
A rule without exceptions: Those who think they sit at the right hand of god, sit at the left hand of the devil.
*
According to Nejdeh, “Hye lineluts araj, petk a mard linel!” Roughly translated: “If you want to be an Armenian start by being a human being.” And according to a frequently quoted Armenian motto: “Mard bidi ch’ellank!” Roughly translated: “We will never qualify as human beings.” Figure that one out if you can.
*
If some of my readers don’t like what I say it may be because “the torch of truth burns many asses.”
*
You become a success when you no longer care if others see you as a failure.
*
Before you decide to assess yourself as smart, make sure you know the difference between smart and smartass.
#
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
****************************************
Changing the world has never been my ambition, only sharing my understanding with my fellow Armenians. I now suspect I bet on the wrong horse. I had a better chance to succeed if I had aimed at changing the world.
*
When two brainwashed dupes contradict each other, it is not themselves that do the contradicting but their respective propaganda lines.
*
Gresham’s Law, named after the 16th-century English merchant Sir Thomas Gresham, states, “Bad money drive out good money,” meaning: adulterated gold drives out pure gold, for the simple reason that it is cheaper. By extension, opportunists drive out men of principle, and mediocrities drive out those who seek to achieve excellence.
*
An extension of Grisham’s Law: “Evil knows how to organize itself because it appeals to the selfish instincts of the majority.”
*
Likewise, recycled crap drives out objective judgment, and hoodlums and their verbal abuse drive out dialogue.
*
There is more to Armenian history than the massacres. To focus on the massacres and to ignore centuries of subservience, divisiveness, intolerance, dogmatism, betrayal, abuse of power, incompetence, and anti-intellectualism is to misrepresent and misunderstand the historic significance of the massacres.
*
One reason our dime-a-dozen pundits concentrate on the Red Massacre is to cover up and ignore its White variant. But I have said that before…
*
What’s done is done and not even God can change the past. We are in a far better position to change the present. If we prefer to lament, adopt a passive stance, and deceive ourselves into thinking we are in good hands, it may be because after centuries of subservience to foreign tyrants, subservience to our own mini-sultans, neo-commissars, and pseudo-ayatollahs comes naturally to us.
*
If I repeat myself it may be because our blunders keep repeating themselves and not repeating myself would amount to either giving up or covering up.
#
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
*************************************
CONFESSIONS OF A FAILURE
************************************
If I repeat myself it may be because I have run out of ideas. Which may explain why I am a slum-dwelling failure. Which may also explain why any writer who decides to write for Armenians is destined to be a failure, Saroyan being the sole exception that confirms this rule. But many literary critics see even Saroyan as a failure. If he continues to be admired by Armenians it may be because Armenians have been successful in ignoring and silencing their critics. They don’t mind tolerating brown-nosers, but critics they treat the way Turks treated Armenians at the turn of the last century. If I have said this before, I apologize. Henceforth I promise to do my utmost to say something different, such as, Armenians welcome criticism because, as the first nation to convert to Christianity, they are a tolerant and compassionate folk not only towards their fellow Armenians but also towards their enemies. And Armenians are tolerant and compassionate because as the first nation to suffer genocide in the 20th century they know all about the evil of intolerance and hatred. You want to hear more new ideas? How about this? Van, Erzrum, Kars and Ardahan belong to us in the same way that Detroit, New York City, Washington, Chicago and Dallas belong to the Apaches, Sioux, Seminole, and Cherokee Indians of North America, and our chances of getting them back are as good as theirs. The main thing is not to give up, to persevere, to have faith in our leaders and to support them. The best is yet to come. All our dreams will come true provided of course you send them a little money.
*
Speaking about new ideas: Paul Valéry once asked Einstein: “Do you carry a notebook on your person so that when a new idea comes you may put it down for future reference?” And Einstein replied: “New ideas don’t come to me that frequently.” And sure enough, good old Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life in search of a new idea that he never found. It is such a heavy burden being a mediocrity among geniuses!
#