Sunday, July 09, 2006
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The first and most important rule in etiquette: never say what you really think. Sometimes it is even advisable to say the exact opposite, especially in your dealings with superiors or anyone in a position to retaliate.
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Because I say what I think, I have made more enemies than friends and even my friends don’t like me. But I plead extenuating circumstances: I am a writer, an admission that in the eyes of our philistines amounts to an insanity plea. That’s the way it is with philistines: if you expose their dishonesty they will label you as insane.
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“I have learned a great deal from my critics,” one of our notorious philistines once told me; what he neglected to add is, when was the last time this miracle had taken place.
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I don’t remember any one of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their dupes saying they have learned something from Baronian or Odian, or for that matter, Yeghishe and Khorenatsi. That’s because these gentlemen proceed on the assumption that they know everything they need to know, and since they can read the mind of God, they don’t need a scribbler’s two cents’ worth. And they say they have learned from their critics because it is good PR, it denotes an open mind, even if it is the exact opposite.
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By learning all about PR and etiquette you may master the art of hypocrisy and doubletalk, two necessary ingredients for going places.
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Beware of the defenseless; they may be your most dangerous adversaries.
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There is nothing in this world as good as the love of a good woman, except perhaps the love of a bad one.
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Monday, July 10, 2006
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THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE
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Like all conquerors in the history of mankind, what the Soviets did was to expose our tribalism in both the Homeland and the Diaspora by adopting divide-and-rule tactics.
In the Diaspora, Tashnaks opposed the regime and in doing so they identified the people (the victims) with the commissars (their victimizers) and ignored the majority of the people who were too busy trying to survive to have the luxury of political awareness.
The Ramgavars supported the regime because they saw the conquerors not as oppressors but as defenders against the bloodthirsty monster next door.
Others confused the regime with the ideology and the ideology with theology. In their eyes Lenin and Stalin were messianic figures and defenders not only of the Homeland but also of all exploited workers around the world. Communism was a religion for whose sake they were willing to betray the heretics to the authorities even if the heretics happened to be friends and brothers. That’s bad enough, but what is infinitely worse is that even after the collapse of the regime, even after the show trials of the 1930s, even after the starvation of millions, the successive waves of purges and the Gulag, some of these “defenders of the faith” refused to give up their religion and openly declared to have been proud members of the Party. Were they “useful idiots” or cunning operators willing to sell their souls to a ruthless gang of criminals in exchange of thirty pieces of silver? Were they sleepwalkers who refused to wake up because waking up meant facing the reality of their betrayal?
In all fairness, I should also mention the fact that there were decent and selfless Armenians who refused to join the chorus of dupes even if it meant persecution, exile, and death, but as always in our environments, they were ignored.
It is not my intention here to open old wounds but to ask: What have we learned from the Soviet experience? The answer is, nothing! We continue to be at the mercy of crypto-Stalinist and neo-fascist charlatans who believe they know better what’s good for the people and armed with that article of faith they violate the fundamental human rights of free speech of anyone who dares to disagree with them.
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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
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IN PRAISE OF FREE SPEECH
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If I knew what you know and vice versa, perhaps some of our disagreements would take a step towards reconciliation. And if I knew what everybody else knows and has experienced, and vice versa, we would all have a better chance of reaching a consensus. Which is why free speech matters. Which is also why those who violate anyone’s free speech promote ignorance and legitimize internecine conflicts without end. It is this and nothing else that has made of us perennial losers and victims.
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Where there is no free speech, there will be fear of knowledge and a favorite target of vilification. Under the Nazis it was the Jews; under the Soviets bourgeois nationalist reactionaries, in the Muslim world today it’s “infidel crusaders,” and under our own “genocide fascists” it’s Turks.
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Unlike charlatans, an honest man will never say, “My free speech is more important than yours,” which amounts to saying “What I know is more important than what you know.” Where people are allowed to assess themselves, even an inbred moron with a negative IQ will assess himself as a genius. I have seen it happen.
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In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church said, “What we know is more important than what everybody else knows, including scientists.” Result: a thousand years of Dark Ages during which Muslims were ahead of the West in all fields of knowledge. If it were up to our partisans and pundits, we would never emerge from our own Dark Ages.
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When our partisans and pundits expect me to believe that Turks are the most important subject of discussion, I feel justified in suspecting there is something rotten in their state of mind (if you will forgive the overstatement) and that these gentlemen (ditto) are hiding something from me, and that something may well be fear of being exposed as charlatans.
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To say that Turks should be our favorite subject of discussion is to imply that what was done to us nearly a century ago is more important than what’s being done today; and the past (which we cannot change) is more important than our present and future (which we can change). But change is what all authoritarian rulers and fascists dread most. Because change may erode their petty little powers and privileges which may not even amount to thirty pieces of silver.
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Germans lost World War II because they believed what Jews know (among them Einstein) can’t be as important as what Germans know. It never pays to underestimate the value of someone else’s knowledge. Had Germans been more tolerant, I would probably be writing these lines in German now.
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When we choose not to know that which we ought to know, when that is we value ignorance over knowledge, we choose death — if not of the body than of the spirit.
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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ON THE REALITY PRINCIPLE
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What’s positive and what’s negative in life? This question interests me because sometimes I am urged to be more positive on the grounds that I am consistently negative.
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An environment in which illusions, fallacies, misconceptions, lies, wishful thinking and, by extension, propaganda are dominant, he who speak of facts or the reality principle will be perceived as negative. And because I stick to facts, readers who are too cowardly or brainwashed to cross a specific propaganda line label me as negative.
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Once upon a time I too had many illusions and I appreciate the ease and comfort they provide; I also know how hard it is to give them up. But give them up we must because challenging the reality principle may end in tragedy.
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What could be more positive than the idea of a free, independent, and historic Armenia as proclaimed by our revolutionaries a hundred years ago? And yet, it resulted in wholesale massacres that came close to destroying the nation.
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Behind every tragedy there is an illusion; a tragedy may even be defined as the reassertion of the reality principle. Oedipus blinded himself because he acted on the false assumption that the old man he was killing could not be his father, and the old lady he was marrying could not be his mother. King Lear deluded himself into thinking that he could count on the gratitude of his offspring. Hamlet thought his mother could never marry a man guilty of fratricide. The Trojans deluded themselves into thinking that they should not question the integrity of Greeks bearing gifts. I think it was Einstein who once observed that sometimes we pay most for things we get for nothing.
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Consider the mess in Iraq today: Bush went to war there under the misconception that as the head of the mightiest empire in the history of mankind, he could win an easy victory. And then to his surprise, the reality principle kicked in.
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Consider our century-old campaign on the Genocide recognition issue: my guess is we have invested more money on it than we will ever recover in reparations. Am I being positive or negative? You decide.
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Finally, may I confess that I continue to labor under the illusion that I can reason with my fellow Armenians notwithstanding the fact that two thousand years of history prove the contrary.
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