Thursday, May 25, 2006
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Is Marxism right or wrong?
That’s like asking, is a volcano right or wrong? Like the Koran and the Bible, DAS KAPITAL has reshaped the perception of countless people and the political map of entire continents.
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Many people have read the Koran and the Bible. How many have read DAS KAPITAL?
Very few, probably one in a thousand or even ten thousand. Many others, among them myself, have tried to read it and have given up after the first few pages.
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Is Marxism a science, a philosophical system, or a religion?
To the believers, it is all three.
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If it is incomprehensible to most laymen, why is it so popular?
People are attracted to the incomprehensible. Consider the mysteries of our own religion. Consider the popularity and longevity of astrology.
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What is its source of strength?
The short answer is, propaganda. We call ourselves Homo sapiens (man the knower), but “man the propagandizer” would have been far more accurate.
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If propaganda is the source of many wars, revolutions, and massacres, why is there no law against it?
Because all organized groups (religions, ideologies, and political parties) engage in it. Some day if we ever meet extraterrestrials that have never experienced war on their planet, we may be astonished to discover that the secret of their pacifism is an educational system that rejects propaganda as a medium of communication.
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Friday, May 26, 2006
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Whenever an Armenian wins an argument against a fellow Armenian, the nation loses because once more consensus eludes all three.
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For every article against Turks, our pundits should write at least two about Armenians, and I don’t mean petty little success stories (which may be moral failures) but articles exposing our filth. To concentrate only on Turkish criminal conduct means to cover up our own, which also means to conspire with crooks against their victims.
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With every drop of knowledge I acquire, I discover an ocean of ignorance within me.
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According to Aldous Huxley,”War has been one of the principal occupations of civilized human beings”; which amounts to saying, behaving like barbarians is a favorite pastimes of civilized men.
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If you wait long enough it will come to you, and the chances are, by the time it does, you will no longer need it.
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The less I need, the happier I am.
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Huxley again: “Too much evil and too much suffering can make it impossible for men to be creative.” He could have added, “…or to value creativity in others.”
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Saturday, May 27, 2006
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AN ARMENIAN PIANIST
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In his travel impressions of Jerusalem, titled “Usually Destroyed,” first published in ADONIS AND THE ALPHABET (1956), and more recently included in his COMPLETE ESSAYS: Volume V: 1939-1956 (Chicago, 2002), Aldous Huxley writes: “Here, finally, was St. James’s, of the Armenians, gay with innumerable rather bad but charming paintings, and a wealth of gaudily colored tiles. The great church glowed like a dim religious merry-go-round. In all Jerusalem it was the only oasis of cheerfulness. And not alone of cheerfulness. As we came out into the courtyard, through which the visitor must approach the church’s main entrance, we heard a strange and wonderful sound. High up, in one of the houses surrounding the court, somebody was playing the opening Fantasia of Bach’s Partita in A Minor – playing it, what was more, remarkably well. From out of the open window, up there on the third floor, the ordered torrent of bright pure notes went streaming out over the city’s immemorial squalor.” As Huxley goes on reflecting on music, art, and religion, he hears his guide say: “In the year of Our Lord 1916, the Turkish Government massacred approximately 750,000 Armenians.”
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