Thursday, May 04, 2006
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If you believe in something because you want to believe in it, or because it is to your advantage, or because it enhances your image and flatters your vanity, you will be closer to the truth if you believe the exact opposite.
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There is only one way to see through lies and propaganda and that’s by learning to think against yourself.
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At an early age I sensed that working for a living meant doing what others tell you to do even when these others happen to be idiots motivated by greed; and since I could not hide my feelings, I was constantly being fired, laid off, demoted, and forced to resign. As a result, I never made more than minimum wage.
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Society moronizes you because it divides men into employers and employees, or masters and slaves (Hegel), or capitalists and workers (Marx).
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Society tells you to gain the whole world even if it means losing your soul.
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You are never at your best when you do what is expected of you, because to conform to someone else’s wishes means to sacrifice part of your freedom, your self, and your deepest impulses.
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Three things to remember: (i) perennial victims are easy to manipulate; (ii) where there are victims there will also be manipulators; (iii) manipulators do not manipulate against their own interests.
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Friday, May 05, 2006
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MORALITY: IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
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In theory, the aim of morality is to establish what’s right and wrong, or what’s good and evil. In practice, it’s to misrepresent wrong as right, and evil as good.
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Until very recently, to justify their racism, Americans invoked god. Children were educated to believe god is a racist, and racism was not a prejudice but one of god’s commandments. And if you think this type of perversion of morality was peculiar only to Southern hillbillies, consider the fact that at one point in his career, Mahatma Gandhi, that apostle of love, truth, and non-violence, called the British “satanic.” It probably never occurred to him that on the day the British quit India, his own people would engage in satanic wholesale massacres – Hindus slaughtering Muslims, and Muslims slaughtering Hindus by the million.
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I was myself brought up to believe that Turks massacred Armenians because all Turks are bloodthirsty, Mongoloid, subhuman barbarians; and I said as much in my first book, and was outraged when a Canadian critic called me a “racist” in his review of the book.
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One of the most important undertakings of a state is to demonize the enemy. Children are brought up to believe the enemy eats babies for breakfast. To suggest otherwise, saying that the enemy is a human being like us, is seen as an act of treason.
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Which is why arguing with a brainwashed Armenian can be as difficult as arguing with a brainwashed Turk. To paraphrase Lenin, a brainwashed person is a brainwashed person regardless of nationality. Which is also why only perverts use morality to assert moral superiority.
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Saturday, May 06, 2006
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TURKEY’S JOYCE
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James Joyce called himself “Shame’s Voice” because he exposed what his fellow countrymen tried to ignore, cover up, or pretend it does not exist, namely, Irish intolerance. In his own words, “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.” Our own Joyce, Gostan Zarian, echoed this very same sentiment when he said, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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It is not at all unusual for a murderer to begin by pleading not guilty. If the evidence against him is solid, he may plead self-defense. When more evidence to the contrary is presented by the prosecution, he may plead murder two, or justified homicide, or manslaughter. The same applies to perpetrators of genocide, with one difference. No nation in the history of mankind has ever invented a genocide, and having done so, believed in it for a hundred years.
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Orhan Pamuk: Turkey’s Shame’s Voice.
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