Sunday, December 03, 2006
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WORK IN PROGRESS
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Identifying oneself with a fraction of mankind — be it race color or creed, or nation, tribe, and party — means drawing a curtain on the rest and adopting a propaganda line; and as we know by now, for every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line with all the familiar results – contradictions, conflicts, assertions of superiority, intolerance, and hatred leading to war, massacre, and atrocities. I see this clearly today but for a long time my “betters” did their utmost to make me an unthinking robot who will swallow their venom, ignorance, prejudices, and unsettled scores, and feel as though I were discharging my patriotic duty and acting in the name of a noble cause, as opposed to satisfying some imbecile’s lust for power.
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No one (except perhaps the Pope of Rome) dares to assert infallibility, because doing so would mean provoking ridicule; but everyone argues as if he were infallible in his judgment. The hardest thing for a dogmatist, fanatic, and patriot is to say, “You were right and I was wrong”; and the hardest thing for a self-assessed smart person is to say, “You are smarter than I am.”
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Some may describe what I have been doing “masochistic self-examination,” others “deconstruction,” which may not be the same as destruction but shares something with it. But then, all creation begins with destruction.
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When we argue perhaps our real goal is to assert some kind of superiority – if not in IQ than in wisdom or patriotism. But suppose we were to come right out at the beginning of an argument and say, “What I think is right because I am smarter and wiser than you”: would anyone believe us?
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If you think my views are unorthodox or anti-establishment or radical in any way, allow me to quote a passage from a recent commentary (September 30, 2006) by Rev. Frank Morgan, a local faith columnist who died last week at the age of 92: “Don’t claim to have all the truth and don’t claim that other faiths are lesser faiths than your own. And be very sure that if your thinking about God and His will has not changed since you were in public school, then you really need a spiritual refit.” And from another commentary (June 15, 1991): “I believe the Bible to be the greatest and surest guide to faith and life. I am also convinced that if you take it literally, you will lose that guide. It [the Bible] is a story of people’s growing understanding of God and His will for us. We still have a long way to go.” In other words, none of us can claim to be a finished product because we are works in progress.
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On the subject of having a long way to go: I remember to have heard an old story about a man who went all over the world in search of something or other, only to come back home and discover it in his own backyard.
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Before we engage in an argument, we should ask ourselves: “Is my central concern love or hatred? And worse, is it hatred in the name of love? What is it that motivates me, tolerance or intolerance, arrogance or humility?” If you can’t answer these questions clearly and unequivocally, it only means one thing: you are in deep sh**!
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Monday, December 04, 2006
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ON PRIDE
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“I am proud to be the offspring of a persecuted nation,” writes a reader, thus proving that one can be or pretend to be proud of anything, including degradation. Speaking for myself, I can’t say I am proud of anything, and I have every reason to suspect no one who has ever been persecuted, really persecuted, can be proud of it.
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We were persecuted because we were defeated. We were defeated not because God made our enemies strong and us weak but because they were united and we were divided. We were divided because our wheeler-dealers parading as representatives of God on earth and leaders of men failed to unite us. To say we are proud of being the offspring of a persecuted nation amounts to bragging about being divided, defeated, massacred and scattered to the four corners of the world like unwanted, uninvited, and useless autumn leaves. I have heard of people bragging about their success. Leave it to Armenians to brag about their failures.
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“I am glad we never had an Ataturk,” I read elsewhere. As a matter of fact we had several potential Ataturks, among them General Antranik and Nejdeh, but we also had many more mini-sultans and crypto-commissars who excel in only one endeavor – obstructing the path of all those who attempt to achieve solidarity. This minor detail is not stressed in our textbooks because that would amount to admitting incompetence. I say these things not to gloat over our failures but to point out the simple fact that only after we admit failure we may aim at success. To be satisfied with our incompetence and failures also means to perpetuate them.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
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ON GOD, ETC.
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Like most of my fellow Christians I was brought up as a believer. In my teens I lost my faith. Today I am no longer sure what to believe. I can say the same about so many other things, including my Armenian identity and everything that is connected with it. Lucky are those who are born, raised, and grow old with certainties, which they never question, doubt, or lose.
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I agree with Descartes who once said the only way to reason and make sense is to assume that everyone, including an army of invisible cunning demons, were out to deceive you. One of my very few certainties is this: if I ever see the light and regain my faith, it will not be a belief in the god of our priests, televangelists, imams, and mullahs.
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I don’t mind admitting that I tend to simplify complexities, but my simplifications are more akin to counter-simplifications: I simplify to expose the simplifications of meaningless clichés and slogans of propaganda, which are simplifications twice removed from reality, and not so much lies as absurdities whose ultimate aim is to remove us from the demands that life makes on us.
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As long as we say to our leaders “You are our best and brightest,” they will never try harder, and even as we sink into oblivion they will continue to brainwash a new generation to brag about our genius for survival. And if you were to accuse me of always seeing the dark side of things, allow me to remind you that (one) optimism thrives in insane asylums, and (two) it was optimists who said if we rise against a tottering empire (with the blessing of the Lord and the support of the West) we will recover our historic lands and live happily ever after. What they didn’t know or refused to consider is that the Good Lord may or may not care what happens to His Chosen People (which we may or may not be), and the mighty West may be too divided (very much like us) to be in a position to help us, or for that matter, itself. Our revolutionary heroes were too naïve and simple-minded in their simplifications to know what Herzen knew nearly a century before they went into action, namely that “nature and history are full of the accidental and the senseless, of muddles and bungling.”
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006
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ASSERTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS
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Confronted with an assertion, I think of its contradiction and if I see any merit in it, I know the assertion to be full of holes. The roots of some of the most important ideas are not to be found in life or reality but in contradictions. Hating the enemy comes naturally to all of us, but only a revolutionary of genius could come up with the idea of loving the enemy. For centuries kings were thought to be representatives of god on earth, until someone had the brilliant idea that they may well be representatives of the devil, and as such they deserved to be “strangled with the guts of the last priest.” Closer to home, the loudmouth dupe who preaches Armenianism and practices Ottomanism.
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I look forward to the day when the English language will acquire a new verb – “to iraq” (pronounced I rock), meaning to make a royal mess of things in the name of god, freedom, progress, justice, and everything else that is good in life. After Saddam sodomized Iraq, Bush iraqed it. But when it comes to iraqing things, no one can beat our “best and brightest.”
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The first four words from god’s memoirs: “Big mistake – creating man.”
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To those who brag about being fluent in more than one language, I say: “What’s the use of speaking seven or seventy-seven languages if you are going to make an ass of yourself in all of them?”
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A nation needs heroes willing to die in its defense, yes, certainly! But what a nation needs even more are leaders who value peace over war, especially wars they cannot win.
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