ABOUT CLICHES AND THEIR COMPREHENSION
Nano Arghutyan

LRAGIR.AM
16:32:18 – 30/03/2009

The world politics, and not only the world one, is leaded by means of
different types of cliches. The letter is banal and at first sight
fair truth, the aim of which is yet to limit strictly the citizens’
world view. These are such kind of frames within which the freedom
is situated, but God forbid you to pass the limits.

The most classic example of such cliches is the idea of national
unity. "The nation must be united," the government says. The idea seems
to be nice, but it contains a number of surprises. First, the unity,
as a rule, is needed in case of general danger on the way of general
development. In the other cases the unity limits people’s activities:
who disagrees with the majority, immediately appears overboard and
becomes a "stranger". Thus, a good cliche at first sight becomes a
mechanism of society’s manipulation.

There were very good cliches in the Soviet times – "Join the Komsomol
(Young Communist League)", "Fly with Aeroflot planes". As if people
had another choice.

Another cliche applicable to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
issue is "The conflict must be settled quickly possible", the worried
mediators repeat it all around. One, two, five times and this phrase is
used in Armenia and in Karabakh as well. Actually, it is impossible to
live in conflict for ever, the Armenian political and public figures
say. But, as soon as, the cliche became the property of the Armenian
society, Armenia was proposed a way of settlement of the conflict
which was totally inappropriate with the Armenian interests. And, the
Armenian public managed to realize that the cliche was just imposed
to it and the conflict was almost settled when a new psychological
repression was made by imposing a new cliche: "the conflict is
impossible to be settled without compromises". Instead of thinking
about its proper interests, expediency in the present situation,
the Armenian government started thinking about compromises under
the influence of imposed cliches. It proposes something, rejects,
marks the limits for the compromises without realizing that these
limits are designated differently for it. A bright example for this
was the Armenian and Azerbaijani meeting in Vienna, during of which
the OSCE Minsk group French co-chair Bernard Fassier told about the
principals of Madrid, noting that only the question of Lachin is
still uncoordinated. As to the rest, the Armenian government agreed,
the co-chair said.

Politics is lead with the help of cliches. But the Armenian authorities
not only do not think out their own cliches but also demonstrate
their inability to understand the sense of the imposed cliches. They
become the hostages of the cliches, in other words just an instrument
in somebody other’s hands. The worst is that these instruments are
used against Armenia, because here operate the cliches and not the
proper interests.