Thursday, October 20, 2005
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In the latest issue of NEWSWEEK I come across the following highlighted sentence: “For many Iraqis, the only sense of security they can find after so much chaos is in the bosom of their sect or tribe.” There it is, I thought, the roots of our tribalism.
Perhaps one of our problems is that we have too many political pundits and very few or no psychologists; either that or we have them too but they have given up on us as beyond repair.
If you ever suggest to an Armenian that he may be in need of a shrink, he will start analyzing you and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were conceived in an asylum for the criminally insane. I speak from experience. Once when I quoted Jung to a reader, he counter-quoted Freud, Adler, and half a dozen other Germanic names I knew nothing about.
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Friday, October 21, 2005
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When it comes to analyzing Turks, we speak like experts in the field; but when it comes to analyzing ourselves, we cannot even tell the difference between self-analysis and flattery. And whenever an Armenian dares to suggest that we may not be paragons of virtue, he runs the risk of being labeled a Turcophile and a denialist. Again, I speak from experience.
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We analyze Turks as if our aim in life were to improve them, and we avoid analyzing ourselves on the grounds that one should not fix what ain’t broken. Why else would our dime-a-dozen pundits spend more time exposing foreign misconduct and ignoring our own?
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It’s astonishing how many decent people allow their paycheck to dictate their code of ethics and to ignore the fact that “grub first then ethics” is no ethics.
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If you lie down with an Armenian don’t be surprised if you wake up with a Turk.
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Sometimes a man reveals himself less by what he says and more by what he does not say.
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I don’t understand everything and I don’t want to understand everything because I already understand enough; I also understand that there isn’t one hell of a lot I can do with what I understand except to become more aware of my own powerlessness.
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Man is unpredictable even to himself.
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Saturday, October 22, 2005
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In one of their anthems (it may be “Rule Britannia”) the Brits pride themselves of the fact that they have never been slaves. When I first heard that song it occurred to me that we have more reasons to be humble than proud. Which is why the sight of a “proud Armenian” annoys the hell out of me. First of all I consider pride, including British pride, not an asset but a liability. Second, the so-called proud Armenians I have met are as a rule full of bombast or what we call “borodakhosoutiun” (thunder-talk, empty loud verbiage, b.s. for short), that is more a mask of inferiority than self-esteem. Unless we admit that we have been slaves most of our collective existence, we will continue to be slaves to our agha-babas and alienate all decent Armenians who can tell the difference between baloney and straight talk.
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To those who accuse me of having a very low opinion of my fellow Armenians, I can only say, nobody really gives a damn what I or anyone else thinks. What matters, what really matters, is whether or not I can tell the difference between fact and fiction.
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A writer by the name of Robin Abcarian has just published an article in the LOS ANGELES TIMES (reprinted in our local paper today) titled “Bush nominee knows the art of sucking up,” about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, where he explains that brown-nosers create a toxic environment in which objective assessment and honest talk become less valuable than flattery and b.s. Two questions: Why is it that articles like this one are never reprinted in our papers? And why is it that Robin Abcarian is not more widely known and respected in our environment as one of the sharpest and most insightful observers of the contemporary American scene?
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