Sunday, March 19, 2006
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We are outraged whenever Turks accuse us of massacring them. I am not. I even welcome this development because, for a change, I begin to see myself not as the offspring of perennial victims but as a human being. To paraphrase Shakespeare in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, “I am an Armenian. Hath not an Armenian eyes? Hath not an Armenian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If they massacre us, shall we not massacre them?”
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Once upon a time I believed in our moral superiority. I know better today, and whenever I hear someone making such claims, I add hypocrisy to his list of failings.
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In his POLITICAL PARANOIA: THE PSYCHOPOLITICS OF HATRED, co-author Robert Robins says all stories of “good against evil” are just that, stories, and as such are viewed with some degree of justified skepticism.
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Again, let me add, repeat, and emphasize, I am not questioning the reality of the Genocide and Turkish responsibility, only our claim of moral superiority. Whenever we portray Turks as bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians and ourselves as the first Christian nation and the cradle of civilization, who believes us? Surely not the Germans, or Americans, or Russians, or Muslims, or Hindus, whose innocent victims number in the millions too.
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I say these things for two reasons: to enhance our credibility in the eyes of the world; and to tear ourselves away from the comfortable reality to which we have become accustomed and which may make us vulnerable to the charge of racism.
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Monday, March 20, 2006
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There is a natural tendency in all of us to divide people into friends and enemies, or good and evil, and judgments into true or false. But reality is more complex, and more often than not it can be simultaneously good and evil as well as true and false.
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When someone tells me, “I don’t like Armenians,” my first impulse is not to accuse him of being an enemy but to ask myself, “Are we likeable?”
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Nobody is perfect. We all have our share of failings. Whenever I mention one of them, however, I am told it is not a specifically Armenian failing but a human, therefore, a universal failing. Which raises the question: What is our view of humanity? Turks we call Asiatic barbarians, and the West a bunch of double-talking degenerates.
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If we are like everybody else, we must also have our share of barbarians and
degenerates who pretend to be civilized. Don’t get me wrong. If I am disappointed, it is not in my fellow Armenians but in myself for overestimating them and for failing to see them as they are – human beings with their share of contradictions, wounds, and complexes.
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We like to say that we have massacred no one, but we forget to add, only in our version of the story. And if we are like everyone else, our version of the story, like everyone else’s, must be full of holes.
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Am I saying we are as bad as Turks? No, I am saying not all Turks are “as bad as Turks,” and not all Armenians are morally superior. Collective moral superiority, or any other kind of superiority, is a myth created by the likes of Hitler. Which amounts to saying it is not just a lie but a Big Lie, and thus the source of some of the worst blunders and crimes against humanity.
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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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Alain: “There is no doubt whatever that on certain occasions Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon behaved like fools. It has been my aim in life to avoid emulating them.”
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The credibility of historians, even the best among them, has been questioned by fellow historians since the beginning of historiography. Herodotus, “the father of historians,” has also been called “the father of lies.” More recently, Arnold J. Toynbee, one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century, has been dismissed as “a prophet of mumbo jumbo.” And consider the case of Edward Gibbon (1737-1794): in his universally acclaimed DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, he portrays Romans as the good guys and Christians as the villains. To say that Armenian historians are more trustworthy than Herodotus, Gibbon, and Toynbee is to certify our status as perennial dupes.
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Again, my intension here is not to question the reality of the Genocide but our version of its context, or rather our treatment or cover up of its context.
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If Turks disagree with us, and now with themselves (as the Orhan Pamuk episode
suggests), it may be because the Armenian side stresses the facts, and the Turkish side stresses the context; and the context, to put it in a nutshell, was the very real threat of annihilation not only of the Ottoman Empire, which was moribund, but also that of the Turkish nation.
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In the Turkish version of the story, the slaughter of Armenians was a case of self-defense or justifiable homicide. Armenians were not alone in threatening their survival, of course. There were others. Many others. But they were beyond Turkish reach. We weren’t. And that was our misfortune. It is true, Turkish conduct was savage to the point of being irrational. But who has ever been able to reason with a man who is convinced his own existence is in peril?
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Did we act reasonably when we drove the Azeris (most of them innocent civilians) from Karabagh? Is Israeli conduct towards Palestinians consistently reasonable? Even many Jews say it is not.
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Speaking not as a historian but as a human being, I view the Genocide not as a clash between good and evil but a result of two enormous miscalculations or blunders: (one) that of our revolutionaries or freedom fighters (in our version of the story, terrorists in theirs) in thinking that with such mighty allies as the Russians and the Great Powers of the West, we couldn’t lose; and (two) that of the Turks in assuming that unarmed Armenian civilians were a real threat to their survival.
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Alain: “I have at no time believed that it is possible to create a new philosophy. What I have been doing instead is re-creating the best of what has already been said. But is this not also creating in the best sense of the word?”
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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Judging by the number of books that tell you how to solve problems, there must be two or more solutions for every problem. But judging by the number of people who don’t read books, the nation must be lousy with people drowning in unresolved problems. You may now guess what happens to such a nation when it goes out of its way to solve the problems of other nations.
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And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous: I am an Armenian. As if that weren’t enough, I also write for Armenians. Two jumbo-sized problems right there. Which may explain why so far I haven’t been able to solve a single problem. Which may also explain why I have a grudging admiration for our Turcocentric pundits who have been successful in convincing their readers that on the day Turks repent three golden apples will fall from heaven and we shall live happily ever after.
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As we wait for that day, here is a piece of advice you may wish to keep in mind: Never marry a woman whose three previous husbands committed suicide.
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