Thursday, August 16, 2007
**************************************
HOW TO BE A BETTER ARMENIAN
*************************************************
If you think you are a better Armenian, think of it only as a possibility rather than a certainty. Most of our problems would be solved if we were to adopt a less dogmatic stance.
*
The very best way to prove your superiority as an Armenian is by being more tolerant of your fellow men, including Armenians.
*
Whenever you disagree with a fellow Armenian, remind yourself that Armenians have disagreed with one another since time immemorial and the chances are they will continue to do so as long as they exist.
*
If you think those who disagree with you are lesser men, perhaps even Turks in disguise, consider the possibility that what you think of them, they think of you.
*
Above all, never use the Genocide as a license with which to verbally assault and abuse others, be they Armenians or Turks. In this connection, Saroyan may indeed be right: we should speak of Turks and massacres not with self-righteous outrage but with sorrow, and sorrow for both the victims as well as their victimizers. Why victimizers? Because they are either human beings like us (in which case they must bear a heavy burden on their conscience) or animals (in which case, they have shed all traces of that most valuable of all human attributes: their humanity).
#
Friday, August 17, 2007
******************************************
THE SIMPLICITIES OF THE SIMPLE-MINDED
*************************************************************
The simple-minded simplify, and when they speak of patriotism or the homeland, they ignore the fact that they are not speaking of a single entity but of several and sometimes mutually exclusive concepts. Consider the word homeland, as a case in point: does it refer to (a) the real estate (mountains, lakes, rivers, valleys), (b) the regime, (c) the people, (d) the culture? If the regime is corrupt, do we support it or oppose it? If the people have adopted a passive stance (as a result of centuries of subservience to ruthless alien tyrants) do we accept their subservience as an inevitable fact of life or do we expose it as a symptom of Pavlovian conditioning? If such alien excrescences as American materialism, Ottoman authoritarianism, and Soviet contempt for fundamental human rights have contaminated our culture and traditional values, do we pretend our identity and values have not been perverted? I remember one of our patriotic dupes saying: “Even if 1% of the money we send there finds its way to those who need it, we have done some good.” But what if the 99% that goes into the wrong pockets reinforces and prolongs a regime of kleptocrats and bloodsuckers? What if by helping 1% of the population we prolong the misery of the 99%?
#
Saturday, August 18, 2007
******************************************
ON BEING A PROUD ARMENIAN
*********************************************
What’s wrong with being a humble Armenian? To each his own, of course. Speaking for myself, I prefer humility to pride.
*
If you had a choice between dealing with a proud Frenchman or Russian or Greek, and a humble one, which would you choose?
*
When does pride end and arrogance begin? I don’t know. I hope you do, because arrogance or hubris is universally acknowledged not as an asset but as a liability.
*
Is god proud of the fact that he created the universe? As a matter of fact, he is so humble that even the Pope of Rome doubts his existence seven times every day, or so Italians are fond of saying.
*
When an Armenian identifies himself as a proud Armenian, how much of it is reality speaking and how much illusion? We all have illusions, of course – most of them about ourselves. But the older we grow, the more illusions we shed. Perhaps absence of illusions would be another definition of wisdom.
*
Speaking of god and the universe, I read the following quotation by Christopher Morley in today’s paper: “My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.”
#