Sunday, March 11, 2007
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ANSWERS
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Organized religions are the best proof of the fact that an answer, any answer, even the wrong one, is better than no answer. The same applies to ideologies when they are confused with theology.
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One of our ideologies stands for independence and freedom. But how independent and free can they ever be if they live in fear of free speech?
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A GUESS
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There are more Armenians today who don’t identify themselves as Armenians than Armenians of the opposite disposition.
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PEARLS
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Francis Ponge: “It is by his death that a man proves he deserved to live.”
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Jean Cocteau: “The future belongs to no one. There are no precursors, only retards.”
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Julius Caesar: “I’d rather be first in this village than second in Rome.”
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The most important prediction we can make is that we cannot predict everything.”
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Monday, March 12, 2007
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ON REVOLUTIONARIES
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I have at no time questioned the good intentions of our revolutionaries. What I have been doing is reminding them that hell is paved with good intentions.
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In an intolerant environment, even an often-repeated cliché can make one an enemy of the people.
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What could be more cowardly than fear of clichés?
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No writer has ever silenced a politician. Censorship has always been a one-way street.
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ON SERIAL KILLERS
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Serial killers operate on the assumption that truth is as easily killed as defenseless civilians.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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A REQUEST
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Before you contradict me, I beg you to reflect for ten minutes. Because everything I say is a result of at least twenty and sometimes thirty years of experience, study, and reflection.
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CONFESSION
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I don’t mind admitting that I have been wrong so many times in the past that I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if someone were to prove me wrong not just on this or that specific point but on everything. I say this because just when I think I have committed every conceivable blunder I commit a new one. But the blunder that I keep committing again and again is trying to reason with fellow Armenians who know better. For I have yet to meet an Armenian who did not know better.
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SOCRATES
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Socrates never said “I know better.” What he said was “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” What would happen to Socrates in New York, Moscow, or Toronto today? He would be ignored as a harmless and unemployable misfit, eventually acquire the status of a homeless street person, and die of exposure. There are better ways of getting rid of a nuisance than a public trial and the administration of hemlock, both of which cost money.
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PHILOSOPHY TODAY
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Nobody takes philosophy seriously these days; and yet, everyone has a philosophy, even when it happens to be a clichĂ©. “Live and let live, that’s my philosophy,” they say; or “You only live once.” These “philosophers” never ask whether or not they deserve to live at all.
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ENEMIES
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The hardest thing to explain to an Armenian is that divisiveness, corruption, and incompetence are a far greater threat to our survival today than Turks were a hundred years ago. And yet, what we get from our Turcocentric pundits and media is endless talk of past atrocities. After which they accuse me of being negative.
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PAUL JOHNSON ON CROCODILES
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“Everything about a croc is efficient. It copulates under water and takes exactly ten minutes, which oddly enough is the time it took Napoleon Bonaparte.”
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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MEN AND APES
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The status quo will always have its supporters. Even criminal regimes had their rostrum of friends, among them famous writers, composers, scientists, conductors, and Nobel Prize winners. And where there are great men who support a regime for their own reasons, there will also be an abundance of mediocrities and dupes who will support it because better men than themselves do so.
In my anti-Soviet days this type of ape in human form would write me angry letters saying, “Do you think you are smarter than Saroyan?”
What happened to these famous men who supported Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini? Some committed suicide, others like Ezra Pound were declared insane and spent a number of years in an asylum, a few wrote books admitting their mistakes.
It is said that when asked about Jesus, the dying Pilate replied: “I don’t remember anyone by that name.”
The human brain is a marvelous, not to say miraculous, tool a thousand times smarter than the smartest computer. Learn to use it. And if you have your own, why rely on someone else’s? To put it more bluntly, if you are a man, why behave like an ape?
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