Author: arabaliozian

April 10, 2010
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ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND
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Whenever asked for solutions, I offer a single word, “honesty.” And when asked to define honesty, I say nothing on the grounds that anyone who cannot recognize an honest man when he sees one deserves to be taken in by crooks.
We are responsible for our actions as surely as we are for our thoughts and attitudes; and life, as well as the law, do not allow us to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance.
*
For many centuries men were deceived into thinking kings ruled by the will of God; and after abolishing monarchy they consented to be ruled by even more dangerous charlatans. As a result, many more millions died in wars, massacres, and genocides.
*
Who is more guilty – the deceiver or he who consents to be deceived?
Mutual deception may be said to be at the root of all tragedies.
God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, where He not only planted the Tree of Knowledge but also introduced the Serpent. In legal parlance, entrapment; in layman’s terms, deception.
*
We were deceived into thinking the Empire would not strike back because the Great Powers were on our side.
Hitler deceived his people into believing they belonged to a superior race and were therefore qualified, nay destined, to rule the world.
Stalin deceived the people into believing the economic foundations of capitalism were rotten and the future belonged to Bolsheviks.
*
And consider what happens in HAMLET: Claudius deceives the people into thinking he is not a murderer and a usurper but the legitimate king of the land. Whereupon his nephew plots his revenge by deceiving the court into believing he is mad.
Who can forget the magnificent exchange between the usurper’s senile minister of state and the “mad” prince?
POLONIUS: Do you know me my lord?
HAMELT: Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS: Not I my lord.
HAMLET: Then I would you were so honest a man,
POLONIUS: Honest, my lord?
HAMLET: Ay sir; to be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
#
April 11, 2010
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ON POPULARITY
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It is an honest man’s duty to expose the dishonest because not to do so amounts to legitimizing dishonesty and ignoring their victims. And because the dishonest outnumber the honest, an honest man is bound to be unpopular.
My guess is, the Beatles made more money in a single day than Mozart in a lifetime.
Popularity is for the birds and the likes of Elvis Pelvis.
Whenever I make myself unpopular with a reader, I think “mission accomplished.”
Can you name a single Armenian writer who was popular?
Naregatsi? Abovian? Baronian?
The first led an anonymous existence in a monastery.
The second committed suicide at the age of 43.
The third was betrayed to the authorities, driven out of business (as publisher) and died of TB at the age of 49.
And they were the lucky ones.
Charents and Bakunts were worse off.
The first was betrayed, arrested, and committed suicide in a Yerevan jail at the age of 40.
The second was betrayed, arrested, tortured, and shot and the age of 38.
First nation to convert to Christianity?
Maybe, but in name only.
Intelligent, progressive, civilized?
Don’t make me laugh.
Philistinized, Ottomanized, Sovietized (which also means converted to atheism)?
That’s more like it
*
The Polish nation is in mourning today.
If what happened to them happened to us, I have every reason to suspect we would be celebrating.
*
When the truth is unbearable or unreachable, we lie.
#
April 12, 2010
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MUMBO JUMBO
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Some words are untranslatable. Case in point: in Armenian we have a word for “house,” but not one for “home.” There is a popular and widely quoted poem in English that says, “Every house ain’t a home,” and “It takes a heap of living to make a house a home.” Translate that, if you can.
*
Man does not understand man (including himself) and yet, theologians pretend to understand and explain God to us. We can’t understand God for the simple reason that God and man do not share the same dictionary. Man may need dictionaries. God doesn’t.
*
God created man, and man created words, and the twain shall never meet. That’s why everything we say about God is irrational, absurd, and blasphemous in the eyes of other men.
*
When we say “God is love,” or “God is our Father,” we in a sense make an attempt to bring Him down to our own level of understanding, and in this effort we fail miserably. Hence countless orthodoxies, heresies, religious wars, and massacres. It is no exaggeration to say that more people have died in the name of God than any other concept, including the Devil. Figure that one out if you can.
*
The Tower of Babel, like Reincarnation, is not a single occurrence but a constant and ceaseless process.
*
For millions of years, primitive man thought of God as the Unknown and the Unknowable; the source of all good as well as evil. Traces of this belief may be found today in all organized religions, including our own – as when we say in the Lord’s prayer, “Do not lead us into temptation,” thus identifying God with the Devil whose business it is to lead man into temptation.
*
God may be many things but he is not and cannot be a contradiction. Some day we may see and understand this very clearly but not as long as we speak of Him as if He were a superior version of ourselves.
*
When we say God knows everything, do we mean He knows all the names and numbers in all the telephone books in print today? God’s words – assuming he has them, or needs them, or uses them – are not our words, and neither are ours His. When Wittgenstein said we should not speak about things we know nothing about (in his own words, “…about that of which one cannot talk, one must be silent”) I suspect he had God in mind and he was saying “Shut up!” to theologians. Two and a half millennia ago Socrates made a similar assertion when he said, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
*
Jean-Paul Sartre, a contemporary of Wittgenstein, wrote a big philosophical treatise titled BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. In the cosmos, the planet on which we live is the size of a speck of dust so tiny that it might as well be invisible. Which may suggest that “being and nothingness” are not two contradictory conditions but one and the same, or as complementary to one another as mumbo jumbo.
#
April 13, 2010
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APHORISMS
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We all harbor a killer and like 007 all we need is a license to kill.
*
God did not create man in His own image. Man is prone to error. God is not – provided we assume creating man not to have been a serious blunder on His part.
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We choose an ideology or belief system not by its truth but by its usefulness to us.
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By selecting a set of values and facts, one can formulate an almost infinite number of belief systems and ideologies.
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There is a natural tendency in all of us to believe in pleasant lies and to reject painful truths.
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If the Bible is the word of God, then it is a clumsily garbled paraphrase by someone suffering from an advanced case of Alzheimer’s.
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True knowledge contains doubts, false knowledge only certainties.
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If as a teenager I had read someone like me, I would have hated his guts.
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A bad reader can be a mean critic.
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Men have been talking about women since the beginning of time and they still can’t figure them out. What does that tell you about the state of human knowledge and understanding?
#

Thursday, September 17, 2009
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OUR FATHER
WHO ART IN HEAVEN
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Readers who contradict and insult me
do so with the self-righteous arrogance
of our revolutionaries whose revolution
resulted in in one of the worst catastrophes
of the last millennium.
They may think they have God on their side
(meaning of course our bosses, bishops, and benefactors)
but I have His word on mine.
You don’t believe me?
Read instead the Scriptures.
But if you are too lazy to do so,
allow me the privilege:
“Put not your trust in princes.”
For “Wide is the gate and broad is the way
that leadeth to destruction.”
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“Where there is no no vision, the people perish.”
“What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?”
“The wages of sin is death.”
“If the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall into the ditch.”
“The way of transgressors is hard.”
Amen!
Let us now pray.
“Our Father…”
#
Friday, September 18, 2009
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WHO SAYS WE CANT
DEVELOP A CONSENSUS?
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When it comes to praising God
and worshiping Mammon,
we all sing in harmoney
and use the same hymn book.
When it comes to bragging about survival
and lamenting our countless victims
we are all on the same page.
We all agree to confuse reason with treason.
We are unanimous when it comes to
praising our poets when they are dead
and burying them when they are alive.
We all agree to believe in Big Lies
and to verbally abuse those who expose them.
We all agree to preach Armenianism
and to practice Ottomanism in the Diaspora
and Sovietism in the Homeland.
We are all for freedom
and dead set against free speech.
We are solidly united
when it comes to creating problems,
pretending we have none,
and blaming the rest of the world for them.
And if you say that doesn’t make sense
I will also say
we all agree that
making sense
is an unArmenian activity.
#
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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If Freedom or Death does not mean
my freedom and your death,
why is it that our revolutionaries had a Plan B
only for themselves?
*
Memo to our revolutionaries:
Freedom from oppression
does not mean freedom to oppress.
*
Whenever I am insulted anonymously,
I count my blessings when I think
in the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union
I would have been betrayed to the authorities.
*
If my central ideas are paraphrases
of Biblical quotations (see above)
does that mean God too is an enemy?
*
A fool’s silence
is more valuable than his speech.
*
An established truth is a grave
from which only lies are resurrected.
#

An excerpt from
Pages From My Diary, 1986-1995
by Ara Baliozian
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Excerpts (Part I)
1986
Somewhere George Orwell says that at fifty everyone has the face he deserves. Whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror I can’t help thinking: This isn’t quite what I had in mind. But then, I say this about a great many other things: my fellow men, life, the meaning of life, or rather its meaninglessness.

1987
All people with a long history of oppression are short-tempered. When an Armenian loses his temper, the message he is trying to convey is: “I took it from the Turks for a thousand years; I don’t have to take it from you.” The “I” of course stands not just for himself but for all his ancestors as well—or his collective unconscious.
Whenever I read a book by an odar Armenologist, I cannot help thinking that he is more interested in our past than in our future. He values our antiquities much more than ourselves. These academics will probably be happier if we were to vanish from the face of the earth, thus providing them with a clear-cut ending and a final chapter to their field of inquiry.

Whenever I read a critical letter from one of my readers, I am reminded of a friend who runs a pizza parlor. “Armenians are hard to please”, he is fond of saying. “Everyone likes my pizza, except Armenians—they always have something critical to say. Some day if you ever go into pizza business you will know what I mean.”
I have never bothered to explain to him that I am myself a battle-scarred veteran of many wars; and that unlike the owner of a pizzeria, an Armenian writer is asked to bear not just the cross but also the cost of Armenian literature.

Nothing can be more repellent to me than the self-satisfied smile of someone who thinks he has got it made. Whenever I see such a smile on the cover of a magazine, I feel like going down on my knees and saying: “O God, allow me to die a miserable failure in order that I may never smile like that.”

1988
A reader writes: “In one of your articles dealing with wealth, you speak of pirates and merchants as if these two terms were interchangeable. As a businessman myself, I resent that very much. I think you owe all businessmen an apology.”
This businessman is right, trade is superior to piracy. But on this point, let me quote the words of an old wise man: “Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.”
It is a mistake to think of writers as members of an exclusive club – self-centered eccentrics overly fond of abstractions that have little or no bearing on reality and our daily existence. There are no fundamental differences between writers and ordinary human beings.
The most important difference between an ordinary human being and a writer is that a writer has discovered a way or developed a skill which allows him to transfer his inner world onto a piece of paper—that’s all.
To those who say: Since writers are no better than the rest of us, why should we bother with them? I say: To ignore a writer’s words would be as risky as ignoring or dismissing the advice of a physician, an electrician, a plumber, or for that matter, a garbage collector.

The earthquake may have been an act of God, but we, all of us, must bear some degree of responsibility for its tragic—and tragic to the point of being genocidal—dimensions.
When I speak of catastrophes I have in mind the kind that can be prevented. Man-made catastrophes as opposed to acts of God. Catastrophes can be easily foreseen if we decide to open our eyes and choose not to take refuge in prejudice, ignorance, and apathy.
Again and again I have heard Armenians say: “God must have something against us!” or, “We are not God’s Chosen People but Cursed People!” I say, we can no longer afford holding God responsible for all our misfortunes. We must learn to accept responsibility. Because earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do.

1989
It is a mistake to name our schools after millionaires because it sets our children a bad example. Since every illiterate may become a millionaire, a child may be justified in thinking that he doesn’t have to bother with arithmetic and spelling because when he grows up he will be a millionaire; and as everyone knows, a millionaire can always hire a secretary and an accountant (who are a dime a dozen) who will handle both his spelling and arithmetic.
If the choice is between schools that bear a millionaire’s name and no school at all: then let us at least have the decency to explain to our children that our hands are tied and that the name of the school is a matter of necessity rather than free choice,and that financial profit and the accumulation of wealth are not the noblest and most admirable pursuits in life.
So much valuable time is wasted in life to prove to morons that you are not a moron.

Loyal, dependable reliable: I loathe these terms. Superiors use them to describe those they exploit. I have worked for a large variety of employers none of whom was, and for that matter, cared to be, loyal, dependable, and reliable. Loyal to profit, yes. Loyal to their employees, certainly not. Loyal to principles and ideals—don’t make me laugh.

The two supreme aims of American behavioral sciences: (i) How to make workers more productive; and (ii) How to make consumers more greedy. Understand this and you will understand many other facets of American life.

Thomas Carlyle: “I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

Will anyone ever brag that he studied political science in Beirut, literary criticism in Teheran, historiography in Ankara, and architecture in Yerevan?

There are people whose only talent consists in being consistently wrong, and they are the very same people who insist on telling others what to think.

A novelist once said that whenever he takes a dislike at someone he puts him in a book and draws royalties on him. I do the same minus the royalty part.

Oscar Wilde in De Profundis : Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinion, their lives a mimicry, their passion a quotation.”

Anton Chekhov in his Notebooks : “The university brings out all abilities, including stupidity.”

1990
Sometimes in the middle of the night I receive telephone calls from distant places by individuals in search of immortality. These individuals seem to think that I have influence in those places where immortality is dispensed. I try to explain to them that I have problems of my own, that I can’t even make ends meet, that my so-called influence is a figment of their imagination, that the status of an Armenian writer in our communities is that between a janitor and an unemployable misfit, and that even if I were to write to a flunky, the chances are I would be completely ignored.
The Arabs castrate rapists and cut off the hands of thieves. Both procedures may be viewed as forms of censorship. Literary censorship is even more barbaric because it attempts to castrate or maim the expression of man’s mind and soul. Literary censorship is the first step on the road that leads to massacre.

Some of our academics appear to have made the brilliant discovery that, the more useless and irrelevant their field of expertise, the more they can count on institutional support. I am personally acquainted with academics who know everything that happened to us 70 or even 700 years ago but pretend to know nothing about what’s happening today in their own community.

“Why have you given up writing?” I ask a friend who until very recently contributed regularly to our press.
“How can you go on writing?” he replies.
A good question. I wish I knew the answer

Sunday, November 11, 2007
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WORSE THAN A CRIME
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“It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.” The French diplomat who delivered that line was not talking about our genocide but he might as well have been. It was a major crime on the part of the perpetrators, no doubt about that, but it was also and above all a colossal blunder on ours – a blunder in so far as we let it happen by making ourselves vulnerable to them, by freely choosing, as it were, the worst case scenario, and this notwithstanding the many warnings, previews, trial-runs, and rehearsals of 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1909. And what is even more incomprehensible to me is that to this day we ignore or cover up that aspect of the Crime perhaps because we care more about our image than about understanding reality, as if political leadership meant leading the people to hell and pretending it’s for their own good, or like shepherds, leading the sheep to the slaughterhouse after protecting them from wolves. Don’t think for a single moment that I am making unreasonable demands on our leadership. Neither am I asking for greatness or vision or prophetic insight. We don’t need learned scholars or eminent historians or charismatic leaders to point out where we went wrong. What we need are honest men with common sense willing to place the interests and welfare of the people above their contemptible little egos. This is not something that requires two or three generations, as our pro-establishment dupes like to say. This is a decision that can be taken in an instant. And speaking of two or three generations: once in a while I watch the Armenian hour on TV emanating from Toronto, mercifully only once a week. Most of it consists of videos of half-clad and heavily made-up girls dancing and gyrating provocatively in the manner of their best American counterparts. And I cannot help reflecting that if these zilli cheltiks can learn to mimic the worst that the West has to offer, why can’t our leaders learn to emulate the best or even the average?
#
Monday, November 12, 2007
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THE LIGHT OF REASON
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It has been observed that on recovering their sight, blind men take refuge in dark rooms. You may now draw your own conclusions.
*
An Armenian poet and academic from Yerevan, during a visit to the U.S., made fun of our Turkish surnames. Later, he was exposed as a prominent member of a mafia dynasty. What does that prove, you may ask. Simply this: a man will cling to any flimsy idea to assert his superiority over his fellow men.
*
To believe someone in authority means to allow him to recreate you in his own image.
*
When a friendly forum moderator once asked me if he should delete an offensive comment dealing with my person, I said, “No. Free speech allows everyone the same right to make an ass of himself in public.”
*
All political leaders have adversaries and the chances are what these adversaries say about them is more objective and therefore closer to the truth than what they and their partisans say about themselves.
*
Insults have a longer lifespan that compliments perhaps because they are more solidly rooted in reality.
#
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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THE ORIGIN OF ALL SINS
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5:45 AM
What if we never quite outgrow the infantile misconception that we are the center of the world? What if most of our problems and aberrations stem from our inability to realize that so is everyone else? What if belief systems, ideologies and their perversions, such as racism, nationalism, and fascism, enjoy ready and wide acceptance because they are extensions of this misconception? My God, my Country, my Leader, Mein Fuehrer, Heil Hitler!
*
We sometimes forget that misconceptions are luxuries obtained at a very high price. Consider racism or the myth of the Chosen People or the Superior Race. By dehumanizing “inferior” races we dehumanize ourselves. Hence the spectacle of a superior race behaving like inferior swine. What if nationalism is nothing but collective narcissism? What if fascism and intolerance of criticism and dissent are based on the phoniest of all assumptions, namely that we are beyond criticism, that is to say, infallible, which is an attribute of God and of those who speak in His name even as they go about doing the devil’s work?
*
6:30 AM
I read the following quotation of the day by W.R. Inge in our local paper: “The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.” In other words, you cannot have a normal or a healthy child in a sick environment and an educational system with a perverted values.
*
10:20 AM
Writes Orhan Pamuk: “Living as I do in a country that honors its pashas, saints, and policemen at every opportunity but refuses to honor its writers…” (See OTHER COLORS: ESSAYS & A STORY [New York, 2007] page 237.) Armenian translation: Living as I do in an environment that honors its bosses, bishops, and benefactors at every opportunity but refuses to acknowledge even the existence of its writers unless they are murdered by the likes of Talaat and Stalin, or they are dead, buried, and permanently silenced…preferably in a previous century…
#
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
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HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
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To kill the enemy without guilt, he must first be dehumanized and whenever possible demonized. This is what the Turks did to us during World War I; this is what the Germans did to the Jews during World War II; this is what African-Americans do whenever they voice the slogan “White man is the devil”; this is what Sartre did when, speaking of the human condition, he delivered the dictum “Hell is other people”; and this is what we do today when we speak of Turks or, for that matter, fellow Armenians who disagree with us.
There is only one way to demonize another and that’s by projecting the evil that is within us.
To avoid facing reality by admitting the evil that is within him, man has invented the blame-game. If we can blame our misfortunes on others, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and we are born again as exemplary human beings without blemish. That is why the Turks cannot acknowledge the genocide, and that is why our self-righteous dividers cannot compromise and reach a consensus even as they speechify on patriotism or nationalism and practice tribalism.
The blame-game allows us to ignore the evil that is within us by concentrating on the evil that is within the enemy, even when the enemy happens to be our brother. Hence Zarian’s dictum “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
#

Thursday, October 18, 2007
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MEMO TO OUR PUNDITS
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They were discussing the recent Congressional vote on the Armenian Genocide on CNN and I heard one of the talking heads say that Turks and Armenians hate each other and they have hated each other for a very long time. It is human, and therefore understandable, to hate the enemy, especially when he is guilty of an unforgivable, unacknowledged, and unatoned crime – and what could be more unforgivable than the massacre of innocent women and children? Understandable, yes, but also politically, diplomatically, and legally incorrect. Hatred and justice might as well be mutually exclusive concepts. For the ultimate goal of hatred is not justice but the total ruin and destruction of the guilty party.
All the Turks have to do to reverse the American initiative to recognize the Genocide is to emphasize Armenian hatred and the unreasonable demands it inspires.
*
Whenever I mention hatred to our Turcocentric pundits, they tell me I am wrong, they hate no one, they want only justice. Whether they believe this themselves or not is irrelevant. The truth is, so far they have convinced only themselves and no one else. I would therefore urge them to cease and desist. If they carry on as they have until now, they may do more harm than good to our cause. No one in his right mind wants a new gang of terrorists killing innocent civilians and endangering the lives of others who had nothing to do with what happened a century ago. Let cooler heads, preferably diplomats, historians, and experts in international law, handle the subject. But if these pundits are so addicted to their Turcocentrism that they cannot stop writing about it, I urge them to read Saroyan, Toynbee, and Turkish writers like Pamuk, Akcam, and Safak, all of whom have dealt with the subject without hatred. Saroyan went further and said he felt sorry for the Turks. After writing several books on the brutal tyranny of Turks and the Armenian massacres, Toynbee acquired Turkish friends, learned the Turkish language, and became a Turcophile; but went on asserting the reality of the Genocide in nearly all his future books, including the last one. As for the Turkish writers mentioned above: only a handful of petty bureaucrats, fascists, and fanatics accuse them of insulting Turkishness, and what leads them to do so is blind hatred. There is more than enough hatred in the world and the last thing mankind needs is more of it.
#
Friday, October 19, 2007
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AN ARMENIAN DECALOGUE
& A PRAYER
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I.
Thou shalt not believe in white men for they speak with a forked tongue.
*
II.
Thou shalt not believe in self-appointed pundits and ghazetajis whose role models are not historians but other self-appointed pundits, ghazetajis, and partisan agitators for whom objectivity and impartiality are alien concepts.
*
III.
Thou shalt not hate thine brothers for hating them means adopting Cain as a role model.
*
IV.
Thou shalt not believe in charlatans who know everything but understand nothing.
*
V.
Thou shalt not believe in salesmen of bridges and overly generous Nigerian royalties with vast fortunes.
*
VI.
Thou shalt not believe in those who read between the lines for the Writing on the Wall has only one line.
*
VII.
Thou shalt not play the blame-game for it is the favorite sport of baloney artists.
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VIII.
Thou shalt not oppose or suppress free speech for fear of free speech is the worst kind of cowardice.
*
IX.
Thou shalt not believe everything thou readest in the papers.
*
X.
Thou shalt not believe the promises of politicians for they are written on water.
#
A PRAYER
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Let us now pray for our million and a half who were victimized because their self-appointed, unelected, and non-representative leaders believed in the empty verbiage of white men.
#
Saturday, October 20, 2007
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TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
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Gostan Zarian: “The complex psychology of small nations. Their naïve and tragic readiness to entertain great illusions. Their tendency to see decisive historic moments in petty occurrences and insignificant details.”
*
After accusing us of being liars, they now tell us we speak the truth (which they knew to be the case all along).
*
It took them nearly a century to decide that the Genocide is not a figment of our collective imagination. Why the sudden change of heart? One possible explanation: the Dems demanded a raise from Turkish lobbyists and were turned down. The irony here is that the Americans didn’t want any Turkish money; only a partial refund…
*
Anonymous (American): “Our Congress is the best money can buy.”
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Cui bono? Who benefits? Whoever gets your vote, that’s who.
*
Memo to our Turcocentric ghazetajis: If you think you have the persuasive skills to change a politician’s mind, I suggest you apply them next on our own.
*
Gostan Zarian: “What are we but a handful of persecuted exiles at the mercy of the wind, like dust clinging on stones on dirt roads and assuming their shapes – grateful whenever we fall on a vegetable planted by someone else.”
#

Sunday, October 14, 2007
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NEST OF VIPERS
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When it comes to our clergy and their contributions to our spiritual and intellectual welfare, no institution can rival the Mekhitarist order. And yet, writing nearly a hundred years ago, Daniel Varoujan has this to say about them: “The sermons of our clergy are as sweet as their prayers but their hearts are as black as their cassocks. There are some good souls among them who deserve our respect, granted, but the rest are a nest of vipers.” What Varoujan doesn’t tell us is that the “good souls” are invariably marginalized and rendered ineffective.
Varoujan was educated by Mekhitarist monks in Venice. So was I. It occurs to me now that they at no time emphasized the importance of unity and solidarity probably because they too had split into two independent branches, both of which are now bankrupt and moribund, not because they lacked popular and financial support but because they were taken in by smooth-talking crooks who stole their millions (perhaps even billions) by promising them greater wealth.
Because being duped comes naturally to us we feel the need to compensate by assessing ourselves as smart. But whereas our status as perennial dupes is a fact, our self-conferred superior IQ is fiction bordering on fantasy.
It has been said that once upon a time we were slaves; we are now slaves of former slaves. We could also say that, once upon a time we were dupes; we are now dupes of former dupes.
Here is another useful quotation by Daniel Varoujan: “What’s the use of acquiring knowledge and developing one’s esthetic judgment in a world run by ignorant scum?”
#
Monday, October 15, 2007
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THE UNSPEAKABLE IN SEARCH
OF THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
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Whenever I am accused of being an atheist, I say, “I don’t believe in the god of our priests.” That seems to placate my accusers, who are more than eager to change the subject.
*
No word, no being, no concept has been more mercilessly, consistently, and ruthlessly exploited and abused than that of god.
*
“Man cannot create a single worm, yet he has created ten thousand gods.” And all these gods have their followers who claim their god is the only true god.
*
There are those who see god everywhere. There are others who see only his absence. And then there are men of faith willing to slaughter one another on grounds that all gods except their own are phonies.
*
In all organized religions, obedience to god inevitably evolves to subservience to men who speak in the name of god. It is easy to speak in the name of god, but much more difficult to speak with his wisdom.
*
Where there is talk of god, the result will be intolerance, hatred, persecution, torture, terror, and slaughter, all of which must be god’s way of punishing the arrogance of men who dare to speak in his name.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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THEOLOGIANS AND MYSTICS
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One way to describe a theologian is to say that he is like an ant in a deep hole who claims he can describe what’s on the other side of the horizon as seen from the top of a mountain; or, he is like a man who searches for a black hat in a dark room, both of which (hat/room) are figments of his imagination.
As for interpreting the word of god: I urge you to read two classics in the field: Bertrand Russell’s WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and G.B. Shaw’s preface to his play, ANDROCLES AND THE LION (which, like most of his prefaces, is longer than the play).
I wouldn’t be surprised if some day theological treatises are read the way we read science fiction today.
*
MYSTICS
*******************************
As Aldous Huxley explains in his PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, mystics of all persuasions speak essentially the same language, and their two central messages are, (i) their visions or experiences are more real than reality, and (ii) they cannot be described with words.
My favorite mystics are the Zen Buddhists (who, by the way, happen to be atheists) and my favorite writer on Zen is not D.T. Suzuki but Arthur Koestler, and I quote from his THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT: “Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into verbal diarrhea to prove constipation.”
*
WHAT I THINK
*****************************
To those who say, we don’t want to know what others may have said on the subject; we want to know what you think. My answer is: I was brought up as a Catholic, which means, as a child I was thoroughly indoctrinated by priests, brothers, nuns, monks…the whole schmear. But I am no longer a child and long beards, big books, and solemn titles no longer impress me, and I respect an Eminence as much as I respect a Highness or an Excellency.
#

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
K-W RECORD
*******************************************
October 16, 2007

In his commentary on the recent Congressional vote on the Armenian Genocide (U.S. motion will damage relations with Turkey – Oct. 16) Gwynne Dyer writes that, unlike the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire was not premeditated – in his own words: “It was certainly genocide, but it was not premeditated, nor was it systematic.” What he fails to note is that the Genocide was not an isolated or a spur-of-the-moment improvised reaction. The systematic massacre of Armenians began in 1894 and was followed up by successive waves of massacres in 1895, 1896, and 1909. The disposition to massacre was there long before the Genocide of 1915. In what way, may I ask, genocide by predisposition is politically or morally more acceptable than genocide by premeditation?

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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
********************************************
REFLECTIONS
******************************
Writing for Armenians is like trying to share your crust of bread with individuals who dine on five-course meals in four-star restaurants.
*
Nothing exposes our degree of civilization more effectively than the manner in which we conduct our disagreements.
*
In a kleptocracy, plutocracy, and generally speaking in all undemocratic governments, charlatans prosper because the men at the top need them to legitimize their power; and where charlatans prosper, honesty will be outlawed.
*
Knowledge increases in one direction, ignorance in all directions exponentially. One way to explain why Jack S. Avanakian knows everything, Socrates nothing.
*
To how many of our charlatans I could say, it isn’t that I don’t believe what you say, you don’t believe it either, and the only reason you are saying it is to see if you can fool me and get away with it. Because that’s how you measure your IQ: the more people you fool, the smarter you are.
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Sunday, October 07, 2007
******************************************
ARROGANCE AND DISSENT
**********************************
What is censorship if not another form of dissent by those in power against the defenseless. Assassination, it has been said, is still another form of dissent.
*
Arrogance can be lethal to the best among us, how much more so to a nonentity. If you want to understand why we have been perennial underdogs and victims, have a talk with one of our smartass, know-it-all, holier-than-thou nonentities who will tell you what brought us to this pass is our geography, our religion, our neighborhood…and a thousand other reasons, never their own kind of dogmatism, intolerance, and contempt for what others think.
*
A man of average intelligence will assess himself as above average. That’s more or less normal. It happens all the time. What is not normal but a constant in politics, including our own, is for a nonentity to assess himself as a genius, a man of vision, and a leader of men. Speaking of one such leader (Hamo Ohandjanian) Granian once told me, “He was credulous to the point of being naïve. During World War II, in the middle of an argument, I heard him say, ‘Churchill does not lie!’”*
*
And speaking of arrogance and Churchill: when Michael Arlen (real name Dikran Kouyoumdjian) once challenged Churchill to admit that his tanks were no match for Hitler’s, Churchill didn’t even bother to lie; he just let him know – and this in the presence of distinguished guests — what he thought of him: “You are a foreigner, an intruder, an Armenian who dares to come to this country and write books purporting to be about the manners and behavior of its aristocracy. You do not belong and never will belong to the classes in this country, which you are so profitably describing. You have, in point of fact, no right to be sitting at this table.”**
*
Today’s quotation in our local paper is by Havelock Ellis and it reads: “What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.” Armenian translation: “What we call leadership is the succession of one arrogant nonentity with another.”
#
FOOTNOTES
*****************************
*See my VIEWS / REVIEWS / INTERVIEWS (Los Angeles, 1982)
**See Harry Keyishian, MICHAEL ARLEN (Boston, 1975).
#
Monday, October 08, 2007
**********************************************
ON FRACTIONS AND WHOLES
****************************************
Human understanding deals with fractions. Only god’s understanding deals with wholes. When a man says his understanding extends from alpha to omega, you can be sure of one thing: he doesn’t even understand a fraction of alpha. If a man says he has all the answers, he has only one answer and that answer is wrong.
*
If we agree that the international community is moved only by self-interest, the question we should ask is, do we have anything to offer? If the answer is we have nothing, then obviously we have been wasting our time.
*
In what way are we different from the rest of mankind? Is not self-interest what motivates us too? If the answer is no, that may indeed be our problem. If the answer is yes, then we have no right to portray ourselves as morally superior.
*
The greatest obstacle to understanding is understanding itself, or to think that, just because we have understood one fraction, we understand the whole.
*
Historians disagree because they focus on different aspects of reality. Philosophers disagree because they deal with different aspects of understanding. Both reality and understanding are complex concepts with many facets and layers.
*
Knowledge and understanding advance through many stages. To say I know and understand all I need to know and understand is to confuse the first step of the journey with the last.
#
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
*******************************************
SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION
***************************************************
When I was young I believed everything I read in our history books. I was shocked when I heard a Mekhitarist scholar say that there is more fiction than fact in the works of our historians. I know now there is some nationalist, religious, ideological or philosophical bias in all historians.
“The Soviet period of Armenian history is highly controversial,” writes Manuel Sarkisyanz in the preface to his MODERN HISTORY OF TRANSCAUCASIAN ARMENIA (Leiden, 1975). What makes the Soviet period controversial is ideology, of course, and where ideology enters, propaganda and bias are sure to follow. Elsewhere, on page 209, we read: “British propaganda in the United States was publicizing the Martyrdom of the Armenians to enflame American conscience – which, in 1917, contributed to American willingness to enter the war against Germany. For this purpose an enormous amount of information on the Armenian massacres and the alleged German responsibility for them was published in the interest of the Entente. As it was meant to serve the Allied war effort, much of it contains anti-Turkish and anti-German bias.” It is this very bias that is at the source of Turkish denialism and American reluctance to call a spade a spade.
Speaking of ideology and bias, here is another passage, on page 323, that may not be flattering to our collective ego: “The War [World War II] also caused an improvement in the position of the Armenian Church in the Soviet Union. The Communist regime needed the Churches to endorse its war effort.”
Further down, on page 326, Sarkisyanz tells us, the regime’s influence reached far beyond the borders of the USSR: “The pro-Soviet Archbishop Tiran Nersoyan was, in 1944, appointed from Etchmiadzin to be Prelate of the Armenian Church of North America. He endorsed Communism as ‘leading to a Christian ideal’ and had written that ‘what the clergy is…on the spiritual level, the Communist Party is on the worldly level of politics and economics.’” You may, if you wish, call this bias fueled by ideology. But I would agree with my Mekhitarist teacher in calling it fiction bordering on fantasy.
#
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
********************************************
PARAGONS OF VIRTUE
**********************************************************
Armenians divided?
Not so! We are just about the most united people on planet earth.
Armenians intolerant?
Wrong! As the first nation to embrace Christianity, we are the most compassionate, tolerant, understanding people in the world and anyone who says otherwise is a lying Turcophile moron and very probably a paid agent of Ankara.
Armenians dupes?
It’s common knowledge that we are the smartest people on the face of the earth and it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian. I dare you to name another nation that can boast of a Mikoyan, a Gulbenkian, a Kirkorian, not to mention our Jack S. Avanakians, Khartakhians, Khembelians, Kheyarians, Abdalians, Avazakians…
Armenians corruptible?
We may have our share of rotten apples, like you, but on the whole, when it comes to standards of honesty and personal integrity, we are the envy of the world.
Armenians have a highly developed spirit of contradiction?
If that means we don’t take no sh** from nobody, especially Turcophile bastards like you, then yes, certainly, why not? I consider that an asset, not a liability.
Armenia a mafia democracy?
You are alive, aren’t you?
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Thursday, October 04, 2007
****************************************
MORE ON PATRIOTISM
***********************************
Our problem, which is also the world’s problem, is not the underworld but the overworld, i.e. the men at the top. When the underworld stages a massacre, like Al’s St. Valentine’s Day, its victims may or may not number a dozen. But when states commit massacres, its victims may number in the millions.
“What we need is solutions,” the average dupe is brought up to say, thus implying these solutions don’t yet exist, and they need to be discovered by a visionary, another messiah, who will appear among us out of nowhere and be our savior. This, needless to add, is a rumor created and publicized by our propagandists who are so used to playing the blame-game that it doesn’t even occur to them that they are our problem and the only solution is getting rid of them. Either that or to convince them to get out of their box by learning to think not as leaders of men (or mini-sultans and neo-commissars) but as servants of the people.
What do the people want? This is a question they don’t even bother asking perhaps because they already know the answer, which is strength through consensus, and peace and prosperity.
People who preach patriotism pretend to be ignorant of misguided patriotism, the kind that dehumanizes the enemy and ultimately legitimizes hatred and serial killers on a massive scale.
Some philosophers and creators of closed systems of thought like Saint Thomas Aquinas and Karl Marx may speak of just and unjust wars and revolutions. But as Toynbee points out somewhere in his monumental STUDY OF HISTORY, just wars have a way of becoming indistinguishable from their counterparts, because once put into motion they create their own rules and forget those formulated by the likes of Aquinas. As for revolutions, they succeed only in replacing one set of rascals with another.
Patriotism and wars may save the hide of a tyrant or increase the size of his dominions, but they are not the solution; and if they are, they have not solved any one of our problems.
This much said let me add that there is nothing wrong with patriotism in itself as long as it is a sentiment between you and your homeland. But when it is politicized and organized, it is invariably coupled with militarism, and the ultimate aim of all militarism is slaughter. And slaughter is slaughter. To say if my enemy slaughters my family it’s bad, but if I slaughter his it’s good, is the kind of moronic primitivism that rightfully belongs to the jungle.
#
Friday, October 05, 2007
******************************************
WHERE THERE IS NO VISION
THE PEOPLE PERISH
************************************************
Verbal abuse in the name of Armenianism is not patriotism but hooliganism. I am not casting aspersions. I am only confessing past sins. But if the shoe fits, you are more than welcome to it.
*
When I was young I thought the aim of an argument was to win it by silencing the opposition, and the surest way of achieving that goal was by raising my voice and escalating the personal attacks. Another tactic was assuming superior airs, making dogmatic assertions with the clear implication that only an idiot would dare to contradict them. As for dialogue and consensus: I considered both to be anti-Armenian activities. It never even occurred to me to suspect that my way of winning an argument may result in alienating a fellow Armenian. And I know something I didn’t know then. To alienate an Armenian is to carry on Talaat’s policy of extermination by other means. To silence a fellow Armenian by means of verbal abuse or censorship is also an unconscious admission of the fact that we don’t deserve to live.
*
We lie when we blame others for all our problems. We deceive ourselves when we brag we survived where many others perished, when our survival is nothing but a slow-motion death of a thousand cuts, most of them self-inflicted. We flatter ourselves when we say we are smart. Some of us may indeed be smart, but collectively and politically we are no better than perennial dupes of foreign and domestic manipulators. Consider the evidence of history: at the turn of the last century we were taken in by the empty verbiage of the Great Powers and the Young Turks. Even our ablest statesman, Krikor Zohrab, not only trusted Talaat but also risked his own life to save his from the secret police of the Sultan. In the Soviet Union we were taken in by Stalin’s b.s. In the Diaspora we fought for Hitler. That’s right: Armenians fought for both Hitler and Stalin and their only tangible achievement was killing one another. And today we believe in our own propaganda, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to a nation: to believe in the flattery of their baloney artists whose favorite line is the one immortalized a century ago by Yervant Odian: “Send us a little money.”
*
Nothing I have said so far is new or original. My line is neither novelty nor originality. I have only been paraphrasing and repeating what has already been said by far better men than myself. What I have said above may be said to be a variation in a minor key of Zarian’s dictum: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
*
If you think I am being negative, consider my two main sources so far: the Bible and our literature. After writing these lines I came across the following passages in Santa Teresa of Avila’s BOOK OF MY LIFE, in a chapter subtitled “Advice to World Leaders” (page 150): “There is so much deception and duplicity here on earth. A certain person persuades you that he is your friend, and then you find out that it was all a lie. Who can live in a world so rife with deceit and betrayal?” And, “No one believed those who expressed themselves better than I have.”
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Saturday, October 06, 2007
******************************************
SITUATION / SHITUATION
****************************************
A Kurd was being interviewed on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and I was immediately struck by the way he was bragging about Kurdish history and culture. Was it possible that all oppressed and divided people were indoctrinated to think, feel, and speak the same way? And even more to the point: have they ever been successful in fooling anyone but themselves? The suspicion that we may be no better than Kurds became a certainty when I undertook the task of translating three books by Zarian – actually, four (the fourth, like so much else, remains unpublished and very probably will never see the light of day). That’s when I started writing critical commentaries. At first no one objected. Partisan as well as non-partisan papers printed everything I wrote, probably thinking my critical barbs were aimed not at them but at the opposition. Only when it became clear that I was targeting all sides indiscriminately did they pull the plug. To those who say they did the right thing because I am a bad influence, I say: Relax, no harm done. No respectable young lady ever lost her virginity to an obscene book; far better men than myself have failed to breach the stone walls of our collective consciousness; and for every dissident, we have a chorus of pro-establishment pundits, brown-nosers, and ghazetajis who sing our praises during the day and dig our graves at night.
*
The question all patriots should ask themselves is: Why is my patriotism right and my enemy’s patriotism wrong if both spring from the same source and aim at the same goal, which is slaughter of the enemy?
*
And here is an example of speaking with a forked tongue: We like to identify ourselves as a peace-loving civilized nation and not as ruthless bloodthirsty imperialist barbarians, and yet we brag about our Dikran the Great and his ephemeral little empire.
*
Richard Millet (French writer and critic, b. 1953): “I thought literature was immortal. I thought the French language and France were immortal. I know now that not only are they mortal but moribund.”
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Sunday, September 30, 2007
*********************************************
“THE ART OF DIALOGUE”
BY JACK S. AVANAKIAN
**************************************
You begin by establishing your infallibility.
*
The best way to avoid criticism and contradiction is to brag as forcefully as you can about how much you know. The more forcefully and aggressively you brag, the more invulnerable you make yourself. After all, who in his right mind would want to tangle with a foul-mouthed ignoramus?
*
I once met an Armenian who asserted no one knew as much about Armenian history and culture as he did. When asked where he had studied these subjects, he replied, “In Zimbabwe.” (May have been Timbuktu or some other remote corner of the Dark Continent – please, don’t ask me to quote verbatim the utterances of an idiot). After that no one dared to question his expertise and infallibility. It worked. See what I mean?
*
As children we are brought up on stories, myths, fables, legends, and fairy tales, and eventually become addicts of fiction. This may explain why as adults we develop a violent allergic reaction to facts. Hence our preference of propaganda and illusions, and our intolerance of straight talk.
*
The Brits have a favorite slogan: “We have neither friends nor enemies, only interests.” An original and practical, even if cynical, approach to diplomacy? Not quite. I read the following in Polybius (2nd century BC): “Kings look on no man as a natural friend or foe, but ever measure friendship and enmities solely by the standard of expediency.”
*
There are no new ideas and Hemingway is right: “Why plagiarize if you can steal?” And speaking of garbage-mouth braggarts and diplomacy: We brag about Mikoyan’s skill and cunning as a diplomat even though he engineered the Stalinist purges in Armenia that in its ruthless efficiency and number of victims has been rivaled only by Talaat’s purges of Armenian intellectuals in 1915. We brag about Byzantine emperors of Armenian descent even when they adopted an anti-Armenian foreign policy. We brag about our heroic revolutionaries who took over the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul at the turn of the last century even when this publicity stunt resulted in the massacre of several thousand defenseless innocent civilians.
*
Where did our leaders, diplomats, and nationalist historians study their subjects, you may wonder. Since I don’t know everything there is to know about Armenian history and culture, I can only guess: it was either at the Saddam Hussein University in Basra or the Ayatollah Khomeini Center of Higher Learning in Qum. It may also have been somewhere in Libya, Namibia, or Botswana. Go ahead, I dare you to make a damn fool of yourself by questioning my infallibility!
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Monday, October 01, 2007
**************************************
TWO SAINTS AND
TWO THOUSAND RASCALS
*******************************************************
There are a number of good reasons why I prefer to emphasize the negative, one of them being, the positive has been repeated and instilled in us for so long that we have lost all awareness of our failings. So that we see more merit in pride, arrogance, and prejudice than in humility, objectivity, and tolerance.
*
In the Prologue of her autobiography, Santa Teresa of Avila tells us it is at the request of her superiors that she is undertaking to write a book about her spiritual experiences. She goes on to say, she wished she had been asked instead “to make a detailed list of all the things I have done wrong in my life,” and “I would be so much more comfortable disclosing my imperfections.” All this in the first brief paragraph of her preamble. She goes on to describe herself as “wicked” and “incorrigible.”
*
“Wicked” and “incorrigible”: Naregatsi’s LAMENTATIONS may be said to consist in endless variations on this theme. By acknowledging Naregatsi as our Shakespeare, we also express a tacit admiration for the “method in his madness.”
*
I don’t expect our bosses, bishops, benefactors, charlatans, and commissars to behave like saints; neither do I want them to behave like rascals. If we want to improve things we can’t begin by saying we are God’s chosen and he has created us in his image, we are therefore models of perfection and the envy of the world.
*
The mark of a good quotation is this: once heard or read it is not forgotten. One such quotation is by Santa Teresa of Avila, which I remember to have read twenty or thirty years ago: “Never submit your intelligence to someone who doesn’t have much of it himself.” Hence my inability to say “Yes, sir!” to our dupes, morons, and rascals.
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
*******************************************
WHAT I BELIEVE
****************************
I believe in Socrates who said, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
I believe in Tolstoy who said you don’t have to believe in god to be a good Christian.
I believe in Gandhi who said god is truth, and truth is not a commodity that can be acquired, but an endless journey fraught with doubt, uncertainty, anxiety, agony, and despair.
I believe in Karl Barth who said heaven, hell, and immortality don’t have equivalents in the real world as we perceive it with our senses but are only metaphors,(*) in the same way that when Christ said “the kingdom of god is within you,” he was saying god and his kingdom are only dimensions within our psyche.
I believe in Sartre’s dictum “We believe that we believe but we don’t believe.” Which may explain Mother Teresa’s “dark night of the soul” that was not just an isolated episode, as described by Santa Teresa of Avila in her autobiography,(**) but lasted most of her life.
*
WHAT I DON’T BELIEVE
*************************************
I don’t believe in a god that is swayed one way or another by human desires and prayers. A god, who allows a brute to rape and murder a defenseless child when he can put a stop to it, is not a god who takes sides or gets involved in human affairs. To say therefore that god is on our side is to blaspheme.
*
TWO PRAYERS
*************************
Be on my side. Teach me to think against myself.
*
Bernard Berenson: “Give us this day our daily idea and forgive us all those we thought yesterday.”
***
FOOTNOTES
***********************************************
(*) In Karl Barth’s own words: “Resurrection means not the continuation of life, but life’s completion. The Christian hope is the conquest of death, not flight into the Beyond.”
(**)For more details, see “A Glimpse of the Underworld,” in THE BOOK OF MY LIFE by Teresa of Avila, translated by Mirabai Starr (Boston, 2007, page 251).
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Wednesday, October 03, 2007
*********************************************
ON PATRIOTISM AND RELATED
ABERRATIONS AND ATROCITIES
***********************************************
Patriots of all nations share three things in common:
(one) hatred of the enemy; (two) intolerance of dissent; and (three) a genetic predisposition to confuse indoctrination with education.
*
When ideology enters a controversy, reason flies out the window.
*
Patriots are the ideal dupes of tyrants.
*
Whenever I step out of the box, I am called an enemy.
*
In a patriotic environment anyone who refuses to be brainwashed is called a traitor.
*
You know all you need to know? What if your need of flattery exceeds your desire for knowledge?
*
There is collective wisdom and there is collective stupidity. You may now guess which is more popular.
*
I should like to see our patriotic speechifiers discharge their empty verbiage on an odar audience instead of preaching to the choir.
*
All ideologies generate their own jihadists.
*
Never call a moron an imbecile; he may take it as a compliment and spend the rest of his life trying to live up to it. I have seen it happen.
*
If straight talk offends you, blame your ego, not me.
*
Our enemies speak in the name of the devil even when they speak in the name of god.
*
A headline in today’s paper reads: “Study says half of fraud victims relied on trusting relationship.”
*
Delivering patriotic speeches is like offering free drinks to alcoholics.
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Thursday, September 27, 2007
********************************************
EXPLAINING THE INEXPLICABLE
*************************************************
For a long time I thought being Armenian allowed me to know all there is to know about Armenians, Turks, and the Genocide. I even wrote several books and reviewed hundreds more based on that false assumption. I know now that it is almost impossible for a victim to be objective about his victimizer. It is true, Turks behaved like racists when they punished the many for the crimes of a few. No doubt about that. But then, at the turn of the last century and even during World War II, which nation was not racist? Or which civilized and progressive nation today does not have racists among its people who in time of war may assume leadership positions and implement racist policies towards its minorities? I am not justifying, only explaining.
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Friday, September 28, 2007
********************************************
COMING TO TERMS WITH REALITY
**************************************************
Did Khorenatsi and Naregatsi have their critics? If they had readers, they had critics, and their critics had their critics who had their own critics… In our reality it’s critics all the way down. Nothing and no one stands on terra firma. Only the blind and the mute have no critics.
*
When propaganda meets truth, truth is bound to lose. Propaganda has one advantage over truth: it flatters the ego. It tells Pepe le Pew, “You smell like roses,” and there is an el Pepe in all of us.
*
I can save nothing and no one. Those who are on my side were already there long before they read a single line by me. Those who are against me will be against me even after they begin to agree with me. That’s because their pea-sized brain is no match for their inflated Goodyear-blimp sized ego.
*
“Nutritious ain’t delicious.” I speak of carrots and broccoli, propaganda of Big Macs with fries.
*
Somewhere C.G. Jung explains that our subconscious is more visible to others than to ourselves. Propaganda speaks to the ego and its assets; criticism focuses on the subconscious and its liabilities. Not exactly a formula that may lead to popularity and success.
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GOTT MIT UNS
**********************
Propaganda may also be defined as whatever you were told as a child or at any other stage in your life when you were not yet capable to think for yourself. I am not suggesting everything you were told as a child is a lie, unless of course you define a lie as a fraction of the truth or a carefully edited version of the facts.
*
The aim of propaganda is to create dupes.
*
Anyone who thinks propaganda is positive and anything that contradicts it is negative lives in a parallel universe in the company of invisible creatures who are on his side. Remember the Nazi slogan GOTT MIT UNS (God with us).
*
Propaganda cannot be contradicted because it is an extension of a closed system of thought. It can only be defeated by another closed system, but sometimes not even then. Communism was defeated by capitalism, and fascism by democracy but both communists and fascists continue to have their share of dupes today who are convinced their defeat is only a temporary setback.
*
I’d rather be wrong than recycle propaganda. If I am wrong I can be contradicted, corrected, and exposed. But a fascist cannot be corrected in a fascist environment, or a communist in a communist environment, or a denialist in a denialist environment, and in the eyes of some we are all denialists, subversives, and infidels.
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