Sunday, June 18, 2006
*****************************************
It’s not easy writing for an audience of laymen who think they are wiser than writers if only because, unlike writers, they deal with reality every day.
*
Since we can never be sure to be right, let us at least make an effort not to be catastrophically wrong, as we have been in the past.
*
Sometimes to be understood can be much more painful than to be misunderstood.
*
Dissidents have been victimized not because they were wrong but because they were right.
*
As things stand, I suspect we are a nation whose writers and poets outnumber their readers.
*
Whenever I write “nation” I think “collection of tribes.”
*
We have a rich literature but a destitute readership.
*
Under Talaat and Stalin, our writers risked their lives. Today our academics are afraid to risk their income brackets. Result, an abundance of books on massacres and Turks.
#
Monday, June 19, 2006
****************************************
Where everyone believes he is among the chosen, being unchosen becomes a privileged condition.
*
Why should I be on the side of little men if their sole ambition in life is to be big men in order to oppress little men?
*
Unlike some of my fellow Armenians, I will not pretend to know everything there is to know about Jews, but I can make the following assertion with some degree of certainty: even at their worst, they are not as bad as those who hate them.
*
The more accurately I describe our tribal ways, the greater the number of readers who would like to cannibalize me in order to prove they are better Armenians.
*
“If you gaze long into the abyss,” Nietzsche warns us, “the abyss will gaze back into you.” Elsewhere: “Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.” And: “No one is such a liar as the indignant man.”
*
There is a price to be paid for writing too much about Turks and massacres. Or, writing about Turks is not the best way of de-Ottomanizing ourselves.
*
More quotations from Nietzsche:
On benefactors: “This is the hardest of all: to be modest as a giver.”
*
On bishops: “After coming in contact with a religious man, I feel the need to wash my hands.”
#
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
******************************************
Once more I stand accused of plotting the ruin of the nation by promoting miscegenation – a word I have never used if only because it is closely associated with Nazis, members of the KKK, and racist bigots in general.
*
The overwhelming majority of Armenians today are very probably of mixed parentage. If it were up to our racists, they should be classified as lesser Armenians or second-class citizens.
*
What destroys a nation is not miscegenation but intolerance, racism, arrogance, prejudice, and ignorance.
*
What defines a man is neither his race nor his nationality but how much he has contributed to the welfare of his fellow men regardless of race, color and creed.
*
If miscegenation were such a bad thing why is it that some of our most ardent nationalists, from Abovian to Zarian, married odars? And how does one explain the fact that some of the most popular political leaders were either foreigners or the offspring of mixed marriages: Napoleon was not a Frenchman but a Corsican, Hitler was not a German but an Austrian, Stalin was not a Russian but a Georgian; closer to home, the Mamigonians were of Chinese descent and the Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews.
*
Throughout world history, from Alexander the Great to our own, the ruling classes and elites (the very same individuals who promote nationalism) have practiced miscegenation as a matter of course. Neither the czars of Russia nor the kings of England were pureblooded Russian or English. The Greek royal family was not Greek but German.
*
I have said this before and I will go on repeating it: I find all assertions of moral or racist superiority odious and I’d rather deal with a good Turk than a bad Armenian.
#
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
*******************************************
TALAAT AND I
**************************
When told not all Armenians were guilty, Talaat is said to have replied: “After what we have done to them, if they are not guilty today, they will be guilty tomorrow,” or words to that effect.
For many years, whenever I was told not all Turks were guilty, I would think, “After what they have done to us, they are all guilty!”
Readers who insult me today may plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance, but the same cannot be said of those who were better at programming us to hate the Turks but not to love our fellow Armenians.
*
THEN AND NOW
***************************
When I was young I tried to change the world; in my old age I try to share my understanding and so far I have been as successful in the second enterprise as in the first.
*
BENEFACTORS AND WRITERS
*****************************************
Benefactors are more popular than writers because they share their money, and everyone is convinced he has more than his share of understanding but never enough of the green stuff. Between thirst for knowledge and greed for money, who among us will choose knowledge?
*
KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE
***************************************
What you think of yourself is only half the story. What others think of you is the other half. Knowledge based on only one half of the story is closer to ignorance.
#