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Sunday, October 15, 2006
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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Where the power of the few is dependent on the ignorance of the many, ignorance will be subsidized and knowledge censored.
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To brag is to expose one’s limitations.
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From ideas I disagree with I have a better chance to learn.
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The most important thing that a master can say to his disciple is: “If you think of me as your master, I have taught you nothing.”
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You can’t learn to ride a bike on a mattress.
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There is more wisdom in silence than in speech. Sermons and speeches are delivered by charlatans to an audience of fools.
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You cannot step into the same river twice not because the river has changed but because your perceptions run swifter than the fastest current.
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Overheard on the radio: “A pessimist is a better informed optimist.”
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Monday, October 16, 2006
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THIS HAS BEEN SAID BEFORE
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It is said of Confucius that because he was honest he failed in politics. You may now draw your own conclusions.
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Is there anything I can say that hasn’t been said before at least a thousand times by far better men than myself? And I don’t just mean Greek philosophers, Indian mystics, Jewish rabbis, and German metaphysicians, but our own writers.
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“I don’t give a damn about the people,” one of our academics once said to me. “I care only about my children!” What if they grow up to be selfish monsters? I didn’t say that. I too can be diplomatic once in a long while, when I set my mind to it.
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In whatever I write I do not say I am right and you are wrong. What I say and what I have been saying all along is that, since I was wrong most of my life, it is conceivable that in the near or distant future you too may reach the same conclusion. Again, I am not saying or implying this is what will happen. What I am saying is that there is a very remote possibility.
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When you hear someone speaking of tolerance, be careful not to react with violent hostility.
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Diogenes (404-323), Greek philosopher: “The smart slave rules his master.”
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Muhammad (570-632): “Trust in God, but tie your camel.”
They now trust their camel and tie God. But that’s the way it is with men whenever they try to put theory into practice.
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In YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US: THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLSHIT by Laura Penny (Toronto, 2005), I read: “Bullshit is all about getting away with something, or getting someone to buy something in the broadest possible sense, which means covering arses or kissing them.”
Crude, my style.
Further down: “Nobody leaves office because they f***ed up; no, they want to spend more time with their families. No mogul says, I do it all for the money, suckers. They blah-dee-blah on about the company, or some magnificent abstract idea the company embodies.”
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There are poor people because there are wealthy people, in the same way that there are slaves because there are masters. If the wealthy are not ashamed of their wealth it’s because they support publishers, teachers, and preachers all of whom conspire to misrepresent greed as one of the seven cardinal virtues.
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
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MORE ON B.S.
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In her book, YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US: THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLSHIT (Toronto, 2005), Laura Penny speaks about b.s. as if it were a recent development. She ignores the fact that b.s. existed even in the Golden Age of Greece (5th Century B.C.). Socrates lived (and died) exposing it.
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One of Laura Penny’s endnotes reads:
“Ben Bagdikian has been studying media consolidation since the early 1980s, and his latest book is THE NEW MEDIA MONOPOLY (Beacon Pres, 2004). He has a Web site at http: /”
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To the perpetrators, a million deaths is not even a statistic, it is victory. If the Nazis had won, the Holocaust would be remembered today as the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
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When propaganda is confused with knowledge, it becomes worse than ignorance.
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“Is it possible to be a writer in this day and age?” a young poet wants to know. My answer: “If you place survival over literature, choose survival.”
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“Speak truth to power!” Armenian translation: Tell them what they want to hear and if necessary swear on a stack of Bibles.
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With the connivance of the State, organized religions preach truth but practice lies. To put it more bluntly: when two sets of wheeler-dealers conspire, the result will be war and massacre.
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When during an argument I quoted Nikol Aghbalian to a fellow Armenian, he said: “I knew Nikol Aghbalian and I don’t think he was a great man.” Why look for greatness in honesty? Is not honesty in an Armenian greater than greatness?
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Whenever I read self-help or how-to books I note that I have been breaking all their rules, which can mean only one thing: I must be doing something right.
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A true disciple surpasses his master because he begins where the master ends.
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The aim of philosophy is to expose b.s., including the b.s. of philosophers.
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Know thyself also means to know that the self is invisible, unpredictable, unprintable, and unknowable.
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A blunder can be either a springboard (if we learn from it) or a cage (if we refuse to acknowledge it).
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A favorite Armenian technique of counter-argument is to be so shamelessly arrogant and brazenly absurd as to reduce the adversary to a pulp of helpless disgust, hopeless despair, and silence.
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“Try to be more like Mark Twain,” I have been advised on more than one occasion. “A touch of humor may make your ideas more palatable to the average reader.” And I can imagine friends advising Mark Twain to be more like Emerson if he wanted to be taken seriously.
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