Sunday, June 17, 2007
******************************************
INSANITY
**********************
“You read too much and you quote too much,” one of our academics once said to me. “You should rely more on your own experiences and judgment.”
Yes, ultimately I hope to do exactly that, but in the meantime I want to shed the heavy baggage of nonsense that was foisted on me when I was too innocent and naïve to think for myself.
I have since discovered that to unlearn is much more difficult than to learn. If in your formative years someone you trust and respect tells you something, anything, no matter how absurd, you believe him. It is on this principle that all organized religions are based.
What is an organized religion if not a belief system that is force-fed on children at a time when they are not yet aware of the fact that the majority of mankind rejects it as untenable, blasphemous, and dangerous.
To accept a belief system as infallible is bad enough. What’s infinitely worse, not to say contradictory, is to be willing to hate, kill and die in its name. The average dupe – and the world is full of them – is programmed to accept as infallible a religion in which understanding and love have been replaced with intolerance and blind hatred. To know and understand this is to see the world as an insane asylum divided into different camps whose aim is the extermination of all competitors and rivals.
#
Monday, June 18, 2007
****************************************
PERSPECTIVES
****************************
In the years preceding the Genocide we saw ourselves as an ethnic minority within the Ottoman Empire claiming what was rightfully ours. That was our perspective. Turks, on the other hand, saw us as part of an international infidel conspiracy (Russia and the Great Powers of Europe on the other side of their borders, Greeks and Assyrians from within) to dismember the Empire. For obvious reasons the Turks don’t like emphasizing this aspect of the conflict because doing so would mean alienating some important players in the European Union by identifying them as giaours. Our Turcocentric pundits pretend unawareness of it because awareness would somewhat moderate the image of the bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarian slaughtering innocent civilians for the fun of it.
To those who are itching to accuse me of pro-Turkism or anti-Armenianism, I say, my aim is to replace blind hatred and prejudice (the very same emotional state that is at the root of all massacres) with a touch of understanding. Granted, not a very popular undertaking in the eyes of those who are addicted to hatred and are too self-righteous and dogmatic to consider any perspective but their own.
#
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
*******************************************
JANISSARIES
*****************************
One reason I suspect some of my critics to be wrong is that they echo the very same sentiments and thoughts that were mine before I was successful in deprogramming myself. And I can understand why they are having difficulties abandoning their views: deprogramming oneself can be in some ways a painful undertaking.
Another indication that they are probably wrong is that they have a marked preference for thinking in black and white terms by painting their adversaries all black and themselves all white, not because reality is on their side but because it is flattering to their ego. What could be more naïve to the point of being infantile than to believe in something simply because it is flattering to one’s vanity? The rule is: if you assume everything that flatters your ego to be wrong, you will be right more often than wrong.
*
If we approach a subject objectively, a great many invisible things become visible.
*
In Mohsin Hamid’s THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, I read the following definition of janissaries: “Children of defeated nations who conscripted into the army of the enemy, and fought to erase their own civilization.”
#
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
*******************************************
THERE IS NO BUSINESS
LIKE SHOAH BUSINESS
*************************************
If you were brainwashed as a child, the chances are you will die brainwashed.
*
If patriotism means total blindness to our own failings and 20/20 vision to the failings of adversaries, I am proud to assert I cannot qualify as a patriot.
*
Have you ever tried to argue with a Jehovah’s Witness? What about an Armenian in whose mind politics is synonymous with theology?
*
Whenever friends ask me why I bother reacting to nonentities, I explain that I was born and raised in a slum. I love slumming. Call it nostalgia.
*
Some of my critics may think if most Armenians don’t contradict them, they must have the majority on their side. The sad truth is smart Armenians stay away from Armenian controversies because they know they are “sound and fury signifying nothing.”
*
To sum up Armenianism in two sentences: “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.”
#