Sunday, May 21, 2006
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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Propagandists treat the past as if it were a supermarket, picking and choosing only the items that support their interests and ignoring the rest. But reality, being one and indivisible, refuses to be sliced like baloney.
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The belief that God created man comes with a heavy price – keep your nose clean or else! Atheism comes with a price too – you are no better than a chemical accident waiting to disintegrate.
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The believer’s options are between heaven and hell; the unbeliever’s, between freedom and nothingness.
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When a man kills, it’s seldom for a good reason. But when nations engage in war and massacre, nationalist historians and religious leaders combine to convince the people they are carrying out the will of God. Capitalism legitimizes greed; religion, murder.
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When a man kills in the name of God, who is the guilty party? The killer, he who brainwashed him, or He who is the source of their driving force?
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The best argument against nationalism and for atheism: the spectacle of two nations killing, mutilating, and raping in the name of a Being who has the power to stop them but who prefers to stand by and do nothing. (As for the concept of free will: it may apply to the killers but not to their innocent victims.)
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The secret of popularity and success consists in flattering the collective ego of the maximum number of people by saying they are right (even when they are wrong) and God is on their side (even when there is no evidence to that effect). The secret of failure consists in exposing liars and their lies.
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Society rewards those who deal in baloney and penalizes anyone who dares to think for himself.
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Monday, May 22, 2006
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After identifying himself as a competent judge of character, one of my gentle readers takes it upon himself to inform me that I am a self-hating Armenian devoid of all talent.
If I have learned anything from life is that nothing can be as misleading as assessing oneself. I speak from experience. I don’t mind admitting that, once upon a time when I was young and foolish, I too assessed myself as a good judge of character and trusted in the objectivity and accuracy of my assessments until the day I met a loud-mouth inbred moron who had assessed himself as a genius.
I am more than willing to concede that I have no talent whatever, and that all my notes and comments are those of a very ordinary person who uses only his common sense. Does that mean what I say is without merit? Does that also mean only those with special talents have a right to testify or voice their opinions? If so, who among us will come forward and declare himself qualified to separate the sheep from the goats?
As for being a self-hating Armenian: if I hate anything it’s being at the mercy of self-assessed leaders (be they bosses, bishops, benefactors, or academics) who feel authorized to tell who is and is not qualified to exercise his fundamental human right of free speech.
And to suggest that only self-hating Armenians criticize their fellow Armenians is to imply that Armenians, being the Chosen People, are beyond criticism. In the words of a wise Englishman, “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!” – including your own assessment of yourself as a connoisseur of character and talent.
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
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At the center of our being there is a vacuum (Sartre’s “nothingness”) that needs to be filled. That’s one reason why man, who cannot create a single worm, has created ten thousand gods.
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During the Soviet era there were Armenians who believed the Soviet Union, very much like Hitler’s Germany, was going to last a thousand years.
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Believers like to speak in terms of millennia and eternity. It never even occurs to them that the most important factor that goes into defining their selection of belief system may well be the accident of geography, that is to say, real estate; that is to say, mud.
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In his travel impressions of Soviet Armenia, OLD DREAMS, NEW REALITIES (Beirut, 1982) Antranik Zaroukian discusses at some length the conversation he once had with a faithful member of the Party who had a prefabricated argument against all his doubts, objections, and criticisms of the regime.
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I have met several such specimens myself. One of them, also a former member of the Party and, in the words of a friend (himself an Evangelical minister), “a professor of atheism in Yerevan,” who after the collapse of the USSR, emigrated to the United States, saw the light, and became a born-again Evangelical preacher. Which may suggest that some believers let self-interest, rather than mud, handle their selection of belief system. Which may also suggest that their number one concern is neither God nor Country but taking care of number one.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
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The aim of dialogue is not to prove one side right and the other wrong but to advance towards the truth or to reach a consensus, which does not mean agreement on all points but agreement only to work together, because the alternative is Armenian history as we know it.
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He who is consumed with the idea of asserting infallibility is sure to be wrong.
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If he sits on his ass and does nothing on the assumption that in twenty or thirty years all our problems will solve themselves, he must be an Armenian.
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If he is a perennial underdog but speaks with the arrogance of a top dog, he must be an Armenian.
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If he is a loudmouth imbecile and brags about his IQ, he must be an Armenian.
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Please note that I am talking about myself now, or rather, the way I am perceived by some of my readers who invariably ascribe my failings to my identity as an Armenian. The implication being that had I been a Patagonian or a Hottentot, I would have none of these defects. So much for Armenian self-esteem…
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