Author: arabaliozian

Sunday, May 08, 2005
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DEFINING ARMENIANISM
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If you analyze the Armenianism of our superpatriots, you may discover that most of it consists of tolerance for that tiny fraction of their fellow Armenians who are members of the same mutual-admiration society. Everyone else, including fellow Armenians (that is to say, 99% of mankind), are perceived as hostile witnesses and enemies.
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ON GENOCIDE
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Those who are on our side will be one our side for their own selfish reasons and regardless of what we or anyone else says. Those who are against us will never allow their conscience or sense of justice and fair play to shape their convictions. As for the skeptics, the ignorant, and the apathetic, the best way to enhance our credibility in their eyes is by presenting both sides of the story and allowing them to decide for themselves.
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WORTH REMEMBERING
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There is no accounting for tastes. Some scholars are Turcophiles in the same way that some women fall in love with serial killers.
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ON CONTEMPORARY
ARMENIAN LITERATURE
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The cruelest thing that has happened to Armenian writers after they were systematically and ruthlessly slaughtered by Talaat and Stalin was to become dependent on the charity of swine.
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Millionaires don’t read books; they prefer to count their money. I don’t blame them. If I had any money, I too would probably trade in my typewriter for an adding machine.
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One of our benefactors is quoted as having said to one of our writers: “I hire and fire people like you every day.”
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Stalin had his commissars of culture whose function was to silence dissent and to bury critics. Our benefactors have their hirelings whose function is to be guardians of mediocrity by supporting only brown-nosers.
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A LOSE / LOSE SITUATION
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After calling me the “son of a Turkish whore,” one of my gentle readers added, “No offense!” More recently another gentle reader (I have been blessed with so many of them) after leveling a string of insults, accused me of being too sensitive. Had I ignored his insults, I would have been accused of having the skin of a crocodile.
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Monday, May 09, 2005
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The Armenian psyche has been a central theme of our literature from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe (5th century AD) to Shahan Shahnour, Gostan Zarian, and Baruir Massikian (20th century). Everything I say about us is a paraphrase. I invent nothing, and I am original only in the etymological sense of the word – I go back to the origins…thus it was in the past, and thus it is today. Progress is our least important product, and vicious circle our favorite trajectory.
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One way to define Armenianism is to say that it ought to be the opposite of Ottomanism. If Ottomanism is intolerant, despotic, cruel and ruthless, Armenianism ought to be tolerant, democratic, compassionate, and considerate towards underdogs and minorities.
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If the Turks say, what really matters is only their side of the story, we should not say the same about our side of the story.
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Perhaps the problem with Turks is that they think only with their Turkish brain. We should avoid emulating them. Instead, we should follow Woodrow Wilson’s advice and “not only use the brains we have, but all that we can borrow.” And we wouldn’t have to borrow from foreign sources either, because everything that needs to be said has already been said by our own writers.
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Yugoslav proverb: “Man is harder than rock and more fragile than eggs.” If we view Turks as hard as rocks and ourselves as fragile as eggs it may be because, by uniting them, their leaders made them stronger; and by dividing us, our leaders made us weaker and more vulnerable. If you think I am the first to say this, read Yeghishe (410-470 AD): “If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish.”
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To ignore our prophets is bad enough; to cover up their prophecies is to pretend that history fell on us without warning, like a thief in the night.
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Here is another quotation from Yeghishe: “Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil ones.”
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And now, compare these two quotations from the 5th century AD with two parallel quotations from Nikol Aghbalian (1873-1947), statesman, literary scholar, and educator: “When man does not submit himself to the rule of law, he will have to submit himself to the rule of men, that is to say, cliques and gangs.”
And, “We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks and Kurds, and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly rooted even among our leaders and elites.”
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Thus it was in the past and thus it is today.
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Tuesday, May 10, 2005
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LATERAL THINKING
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I don’t write against anyone, not even Turks. I write against the Turk in me.
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Some of my readers operate on the assumption that by insulting me they assert their superior brand of morality and patriotism, as opposed to exposing themselves as products of an inferior educational system.
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Who will disagree with me if I say to have an Armenian friend is to harbor a potential enemy?
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There is a difference between history in the making and history as a fait accompli. History in the making is a messier affair fraught with uncertainties, doubts, and misunderstandings. During World War I the Turks had no way of knowing they will come out of it alive, in the same way that we were sure the Christian West would not abandon us at the mercy of bloodthirsty infidels and Asiatic barbarians.
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Because we are experiencing a slow-motion and self-inflicted white massacre, we pretend it is not taking place.
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I neither preach nor teach. I share. There is an element of coercion in both preaching and teaching. A preacher relies on a captive audience, and a teacher on his own authority. Sharing is between equals; it does not exploit or violate anyone’s freedom.
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Martin Luther (1483-1546): “I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.”
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
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If members of your mutual admiration society are unanimous in agreeing with you, the chances are the rest of the world will be against you.
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Most so-called good Armenians are good only by their own definition. I have yet to meet a good Armenian who was not bad in the eyes of other Armenians; and some of the most repellent Armenians I have met thought of themselves as standard bearers of Armenianism. And if you were to ask me if I think of myself as a good Armenian, I will say that I am so busy trying and failing to be a good human being that I no longer care if I qualify as a good Armenian by anyone’s definition.
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To assume that one is better than others may be said to be the source of all violence. What are wars and revolutions, massacres and genocides if not results of this aberration?
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As Armenians we see ourselves as innocent victims. As Turks they see themselves as unjustly accused. When we judge others, we always judge them in relations to ourselves rather than in relation to their fellow men.
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Erich Fromm: “Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.”
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If you say I am making so many demands on my fellow Armenians that it amounts to victimizing the victims all over again; I will say, all I have been saying is that, only if we shed our Ottomanism may we usher in another golden age. You might even say I am the bearer of good tidings and joy.
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Sunday, April 10, 2005
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SUNDAY SERMON
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It seems to me, the only way to convince the Turks to change their tune about the Genocide is to make them an offer they can’t refuse by holding a gun to their heads. But since Americans are not willing to do that, and in view of the fact that we are in no position to threaten or blackmail them, I suggest the following maneuver out of this impasse.
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We say to them: We know you are lying and we also know you too know you are lying, but we understand. After all, political thinkers and leaders from Plato to Machiavelli, and from Hitler to Leo Strauss agree that sometimes it is necessary to lie in the interests of the nation. We understand that and we want you to understand too that we cannot simply say, let bygones be bygones.
We therefore have the following proposal: Let us for the time being postpone the resolution of our differences and cooperate in all other matters whenever cooperation is to our mutual interests. We have nothing to lose but our feud.
May we remind you that if the Ottoman Empire lasted six centuries it’s because our best brains served in its administration, our boys shed their blood in its defense, and our girls gave birth to members of its political, diplomatic, and military elites.
Let us therefore declare a moratorium on name-calling. Perhaps in time we may be able to erode our differences and to reach a settlement that will be to our mutual advantage.
Let us adopt the British motto “We have neither enemies nor friends, only interests.” But if the British model is alien to our natures, let us refer to the examples contained in the Old Testament which the Koran paraphrases.
We have there two sets of brothers, one of which (Cain and Abel) ends in tragedy for both, and the other (Joseph and his brothers) in forgiveness and consensus.
It is up to you to decide which sets of brothers we adopt as our role models. And while we are reflecting on this choice, let us ask, which course of action would be more pleasing to your “merciful and compassionate” Allah and to our Lord Jesus Christ, who shed his blood for our sins and taught us to love our enemies.
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Oremus!
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Monday, April 11, 2005
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An Australian philosopher on the radio this morning: “Judging by our newspapers, we don’t like to think
And I reflect: Judging by our weeklies, we love to think, but only about Turks.
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When one of our weeklies advertises or reviews a book, the chances are it will be about the massacres.
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Whenever I read still another reference to the massacres, my hatred of Turks is enhanced; so is my image of myself as a perennial victim, and my view of the world as a cynical place populated by swindlers who care much more about money and power and less about principles, ideals, and truth.
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The more we think about the moral failures of the world, the less time is left to reflect on our own. Hence, the tendency of some of us to believe they are la crème de la crème.
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Philosophy in Greek means literally love of wisdom. But if I were to define philosophy today, I would say it consists in an attempt to introduce sanity in an insane world.
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The irresistible charm of money and power: Imagine if you can a Jacqueline Kennedy or a Maria Callas falling in love and marrying an unemployed and slum-dwelling Onassis.
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An Armenian clings to what he was taught as a child the way a drowning man is said to cling to anything, including a snake.
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Chauvinism: When a damaged ego brags, all I hear is the rattle of bones.
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To say we did nothing wrong is to condemn ourselves to learn nothing from our blunders. To say we did nothing right means to have a better chance to rise from the ashes.
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A reader once wasted a thousand words to explain that I had nothing to say.
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Julian Barnes (b. 1946), English writer: “The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”
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Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish playwright and novelist: “There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.”
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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
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Unhappy is the nation whose martyrs outnumber its heroes.
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Our generation is lost. We grew up with too much hatred and we cannot imagine a world without it. Our task is now to educate the next generation to think in terms not of hatred but of interests.
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One of my critics agreed with me today. I must be on the wrong path.
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There is a familiar type of Armenian who thinks he is settling a score with Turks whenever he insults a fellow Armenian or slices a watermelon.
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Maya Angelou (b. 1928), U.S. poet: “Life is a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
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Jean Anouilh (1910-1987), French playwright: “Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know He is.”
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To be dehumanized also means allowing newspaper headlines and propaganda to shape your identity.
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Sometimes the death of a nation is so gradual that it may easily be confused with survival.
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It is a thankless task to inform readers that they are not as good as they think they are and that their so-called wisdom is nothing but a byproduct of blind spots, prejudices, limitations, fallacies, and misconceptions.
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To speak of reality to individuals who live in a dream world means being the bearer of bad tidings.
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We don’t need political leaders. We need public servants. Did we ever have them?
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
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One reason I don’t trust those in power is that, whenever I had the power (an extremely rare occurrence that may have happened once or twice in my life), I behaved as ruthlessly as a Turk. I consider myself a more or less harmless person but I shiver to think what would happen if some day I acquired the power of, say, a sultan or a Talaat.
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There are many Armenians who would like to say what I have been saying but they keep their peace because they don’t relish the prospect of being verbally abused by their fellow Armenians.
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To have a more balanced view of ourselves, we must also see as others see us, and by others, I don’t just mean friends but adversaries. An Armenian who believes only in the judgment of Armenophiles is no different from a Turk who believes only in Turcophiles.
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When I wrote what they expected to read, they called me a genius. When I wrote what must be said, I acquired the status of a non-person. When they called me a genius, I was not flattered; and as a non-person today I am more than ever aware of my personhood.
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It is better to fail in a moral enterprise than to succeed in an immoral one.
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Progress: For a number of years I worked for philistines; now, I am only insulted by them.
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Sunday, April 03, 2005
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It happened twice last week. To settle an argument in their favor, two readers (both parading as authentic and patriotic Armenians) quoted Ottoman sayings, in Turkish too! Figure that one out, if you can.
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Armenianism as it is understood and practiced today is simply Ottomanism by other means – the same unquestioning reverence to mini-sultans (instead of a single Sultan), and the same contempt for the fundamental human right of free speech.
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You either live the way you think or the way someone else thinks. If you choose the second option, make sure that someone else is not your enemy.
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Some readers approach my writings as lovingly as a starving cannibal spicing a fat missionary.
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Commissars and mullahs are philistines, that is to say, killers who adopt an ideology or religion to legitimize their killer instincts.
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In his travel impressions of the Caucasus, Alexandre Dumas pere (of THE THREE MUSKETEERS fame) says something to the effect that, Armenians have a reputation of being untrustworthy. When I first read this a few years ago, I thought, “What an anti-Armenian bastard!” But after being hoodwinked, flimflammed, and bamboozled by a number of Armenian wheeler-dealers, including an archbishop, I have been reconsidering my position.
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Who cares what a minor Armenian scribbler thinks? My tentative answer: Only readers who cling to major lies.
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If I have achieved immortality in the minds of some readers, it’s because I have insulted them. An injured Armenian has the memory of an elephant and the venom of a Turkish viper.
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Monday, April 04, 2005
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Our knowledge is limited and our ignorance infinite. Only fools and fanatics forget this.
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Writing for Armenians sometimes feels like swimming across a Brazilian river teeming with piranhas.
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I am beginning to think of death as liberation. Writing for Armenians may have something to do with this.
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If an Armenian has a choice between reading the lines and reading between the lines, he will invariably choose the latter even if what he reads there has nothing to do with what is written.
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Armenians who say Armenians are smart get on my nerves. I can imagine what they do to odars. Because to say we are smart is to imply the rest of the world is less smart.
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As for being smart in the marketplace, frankly, like most people around the world, I prefer to deal with honest men. I have dealt enough with smart ones to know the world would be a better place without them. And I look forward to the day when Armenians will be known not as smart in the marketplace but as honest everywhere. Call me an incurable optimist. Call me a fool.
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There is a big difference between being the right man at the right time and the wrong man at the wrong time. Being an Armenian writer means being the wrong man at the wrong time everywhere and at all times.
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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The first time I met an honest Armenian who made sense, I thought he was crazy. That’s how thoroughly brainwashed I was. It took me a number of years to realize this.
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An assertion and its contradiction are only two steps on a road that stretches to infinity. But in an Armenian context, they might as well be dead ends leading to a cul de sac.
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Armenians may be divided into two camps: the alienated and those who alienated them (fools and fanatics, charlatans, chauvinists, and panchoonies). It is my ambition to alienate the alienators. But after twenty years of trying, I find this uneven battle to be similar to that of a sardine against a school of sharks.
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Intolerance is quintessentially Ottoman. We should teach our children to be intolerant only of Ottomanism.
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Happiness consists in choosing your brand of misery, accepting it as an inevitable fact, and getting used to it.
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Against a dismembered and disintegrating Ottoman Empire, we had Russia, the Great Powers, and God on our side. We thought we were invulnerable. And we were dead wrong! What have we learned from this blunder? After thinking, ‘Who could be more harmless than a minor Armenian scribbler?’ some readers go out of their way to verbally abuse me on the assumption that I am in no position to retaliate.
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We can truly say of the brainwashed: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they say because they understand nothing and they know even less.”
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Writes Shahan Shahnour in a letter to a friend (I am now translating and paraphrasing from memory): “Blind faith has been the source of our downfall. What we need most today is the kind of common sense that can discriminate right from wrong, and good from evil. What we don’t need is the empty verbiage of partisan rhetoric. In the words of Arpiar Arpiarian, ‘if we can’t be useful to this nation, let us at least refrain from doing it any harm’.”
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The headline of a recent article in LE POINT (Paris, March 10, 2005) reads: “Is Prime Minister Erdogan a successor of Ataturk who wants to make of Turkey the first secular Muslim state, or is he a Muslim head of state who wants to introduce Islam into Europe?” Further down we read: “Of the 2 million Armenians in Turkey, 1,5 million were exterminated in the 1915 genocide. There are no more than 40,000 or 50,000 Armenians left in Turkey today.” The article goes on to speak of the desecration of 5th-century Armenian churches in Kars.
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005
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Every other Armenian I meet these days is convinced he is the only authentic Armenian who knows what’s best for the nation and everyone else is at best a disoriented second-class citizen who should assume a passive stance and follow his guidance. Which is why I refuse to write as an Armenian. Instead, I write as a human being or, to be more precise, as a former Armenian who is trying very hard to recover his humanity. And if you think I am being too critical of my fellow Armenians, I suggest you stop speechifying and start listening.
I have an 81-year old born-again Armenian friend (whose every other sentence is a quotation from the Scriptures) who believes Armenians were massacred because they were evil.
“Now that I have placed a safe distance between myself and my fellow Armenians, I feel much better,” writes another friend from his deathbed.
I could go on, but I rest my case.
And to those who love to quote Ottoman sayings in order to settle an argument in their favor, I ask: “Did you know that the most frequently quoted saying among Armenians is not in Turkish but in Armenian, and it is: “Mart bidi ch’ellank!” (We will never acquire the status of human beings, or, We will never recover our humanity.)
To our partisans (in whose eyes the Party can do no wrong), dime-a-dozen flimflam pundits, and loud-mouth panchoonies, I say: Next time you open your mouth, ask yourself: “Will my words alienate a fellow Armenian?” And if alienation leads to assimilation and assimilation is “white massacre,” please feel free to rephrase the question.
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Thursday, March 31, 2005
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BOOK REVIEW
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CORRESPONDENCE. Volume 2. LETTERS TO GOURGEN MAHARI AND ANTRANIK ANTREASSIAN. By Shahan Shahnour. Collected, edited, and annotated by Krikor Keusseyan. 227 pages. Boston: Mayreni Publishing (50 Watertown St., Watertown, MA 01472). 2005.
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In his preface, Krikor Keusseyan writes: “The CORRESPONDENCE is a mosaic of opinions and judgments on art, literature and politics.” What makes these opinions eminently readable is their objectivity. Obviously, they were not meant for publication. If they have been published it’s because of Krikor Keusseyan’s steadfast admiration of Shahan Shahnour. But let the author speak for himself.
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On Siamanto: “A plagiarist who translated Maeterlinck’s verse word by word and passed it on the unsuspecting reader as his own. No one is aware of this, and it was by pure chance that I stumbled on it.”
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On Simon Simonian: “There is about him the odor of the shopkeeper.”
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On Arshak Chobanian: “He is an untrustworthy, self-centered careerist.”
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On Hagop Oshagan: “He is incapable of writing an accessible, clear sentence.”
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On his fellow Armenians: “I will not comment on my adversaries. As for my so-called friends: if you only knew the acts of stupidity, cowardice, and duplicity that I have witnessed.”
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On Gostan Zarian: “He describes nature well. The problem is, the principal subject of literature is not nature but man.”
I disagree with Shahnour here. Zarian’s portrait of Charents in his BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH has Dostoevskian penetration. There are, moreover, unforgettable portraits and sketches in all his works – Martiros Saryan in THE TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD, Zabel Yessayan in the WEST, Lawrence Durrell in THE ISLAND AND A MAN are three that come readily to mind.
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Shahnour was born in Istanbul but spent most of his life in French hospitals, sanatoria, and retirement homes. In a letter to Mahari he has this to say about his fellow French-Armenians: “They are all well off now, but they can no longer be said to be Armenians. Which is why all that talk of repatriation in the Yerevan press strikes me as so much empty verbiage.”
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At one point in his career, Shahnour adopted the pseudonym Armen Lubin and published several critically acclaimed volumes of prose and verse in French. In another letter to Mahari he writes: “I have heard it said that I write in French to make a little money. What nonsense! Writing poetry has at no time been a source of income to anyone, be it in France or anywhere else for that matter.”
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About himself: “I have committed many thoughtless acts in my life, or so they tell me, but no one can testify that these acts have been to the detriment of the nation, only to myself and my reputation, both of which are of no consequence to anyone else but me.”
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On our dime-a-dozen pundits: “Shopkeepers drop in on me out of nowhere and take it upon themselves to deliver lectures. What do they know about conditions of life in France? What do they know about literature? To learn and to know are two different things. They have learned some things but they lack intuitive knowledge. What am I supposed to do with them? Tell them to shut up? But that’s against my temperament.”
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Friday, April 01, 2005
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BOOK REVIEW
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LA VIE COMME ELLE EST (Life as it is): Short stories. By Krikor Zohrab. Translated into French by Mireille Besnilian. 110 pages. Marseilles. Editions Parentheses. 2005.
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A highly respected lawyer, politician, editor, and author, Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915) is remembered today as one of our ablest short story writers. Writes Hagop Oshagan: “Zohrab is one of those rare individuals who do the work and live the lives of eight or ten men and excel in each. He is the most brilliant, accomplished and enduring figure in the Realistic movement of our literature.”
According to Mesrob Janashian: “Zohrab viewed conservatives as hidebound obscurantists. He attacked the Armenian establishment of Constantinople – the Church as well as the bosses. He constantly urged the youth to adopt progressive Western ideas. Even when he went to extremes, he at no time passed the bounds of reason and common sense.”
In American terms he might best be imagined as a hybrid of President Kennedy (Zohrab was likewise assassinated at the height of his powers), and Hemingway – though as a short story writer he is more like Guy de Maupassant in his subtle depiction of feminine psychology, and Anton Chekhov in his sympathetic treatment of the lower classes.
The collection under review contains some of his most widely admired stories. Their translation is so elegantly executed that they read as though they were originally conceived and written in French.
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The recent study of Armenian women writers by the Canadian academic Victoria Rowe, and now this translation by Mireille (not an Armenian) Besnilian, may suggest that odars are more interested in our literature than our academics and pundits from the Middle East, most of whom happen to be fluent in half-a-dozen languages (or so they tell us), who are, it seems, too busy with far more important projects to have any time left for translating our writers, a great deal of whose works remain terra incognita not only to odars but also to the overwhelming majority of Armenians in the Diaspora who cannot read Armenian.
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Saturday, April 02, 2005
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QUOTATIONS FROM
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR’S
CORRESPONDENCE, VOLUME II.
Collected, edited, and annotated by Krikor Keusseyan.
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On Vazken Shoushanian:
“I have read only one book by him, an epistolary novel, which is a definite failure because it happens to be a youthful work. Has he written anything better? I asked this question to an associate of his, Nartuni, who answered: “He is a worthless man. He will write nothing of any value.”
I don’t accept this verdict at face value because these two Tashnaks can’t stand each other.”
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On Antranik Zaroukian:
“When he was young, he was a fanatic Tashnak. And more. He confused swearing with reasoning. He is wrong if he thinks I hold a grudge against him. No, never! Even if he had remained an obstinate partisan I could not have harbored vengeful thoughts in his direction, only pity and scorn.”
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About the shenanigans of the Jerusalem Monastery:
“Among other thing, Nartuni told me all about the wheeling-and-dealing in Jerusalem and the scandalous conduct of our Holy Fathers there – their alcoholism, contrabandism, womanizing, gambling, thievery…He knows them well having spent some time in their company. He tells me these high-ranking ecclesiastics are themselves former orphans [survivors of the massacres] gathered from the desert. Alas!”
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On our press:
“In order for our press to play a useful role in our social and political life, there must be such things as public opinion and collective memory, in whose absence blunders will be forgotten and incompetent leaders glorified.”
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On the literary scene in the Diaspora:
“Our literary market place is now in the hands of senior citizens – Vratsian, Chobanian, Oshagan – individuals who don’t have to work for a living and they have all the time in the world to write and write…Let them write so long as they don’t give us a headache with their endless arguments and senile problems.”
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In my recent review of this book I neglected to mention that half of it consists of endnotes, that can be read as a brief introduction to 20th-century Armenian history and culture. In addition to being a dedicated fan of Shahnour, Krikor Keusseyan is a meticulous scholar whose comments are as informative as Shahnour’s observations and insights.
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Thursday, March 10, 2005
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MEMO TO A TURKISH READER
WHO DENIES THE REALITY
OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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No nation in the history of mankind has ever invented or imagined a genocide and believed in it for a hundred years.
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Also to be noted: Armenia is not alone in asserting the reality of the Genocide. There are a number of other Western nations that at no time have questioned or doubted its reality.
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A serial killer becomes a serial killer exactly because, after killing his first victim, he fails to come forward and confess his crime. If Sultan Abdulhamid II had come forward after the first massacres of the Armenians in 1894 and admitted to the world that he Ottoman Empire had been guilty of crimes against humanity, he would have changed the profile of the Turkish people far more effectively and radically than Ataturk with his superficial reforms (the elimination of the fez and the adoption of the Latin alphabet); and in doing so he (the Sultan) would have prevented the Genocide, with the result that Turks would now enjoy all the rights and privileges of members of the European Union, instead of being what they have become: rejects of their own country, garbage collectors of Europe, and unwanted candidates of the EU.
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Hitler would not have admitted the Holocaust if he had won the war. As long as Stalinists were in power, they at no time admitted the existence of the Gulag. By denying the Armenian Genocide, Ankara is tacitly admitting to being the legitimate heir and successor of the despotism of the Sultanate and the fascist regime of the Young Turks.
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As for the suggestion that it was the Armenians who committed genocide against the Turks: throughout history genocides have been committed only by armed majorities against unarmed minorities and civilians. Within the Ottoman Empire, Armenian communities were only “tiny islands in a Turkish sea” (Oshagan) and most of the victims were women, children, and old men. To say otherwise is to demonstrate an appalling ignorance of world history and a total absence of common sense.
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I will not speak of common decency and fair play because these have never been attributes of despotic regimes.
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History, it has been said, is the propaganda of the victor. It has also been said that the aim of propaganda is to deceive friends, not enemies. If Israel and the United States speak today of the Armenian Tragedy (as opposed to the Armenian Genocide), they do so not because they are dupes of Turkish propaganda, but because they happen to need Turkey more than they need Armenia. And if Europe has so far rejected Turkish membership in the EU, it’s because it is against its own interest to have an underdeveloped and backward nation that may end up as a heavy burden on its resources.
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On the positive side, not all Turks are dupes of state propaganda. Some of their most progressive intellectuals and historians are now willing to concede that if Turkey wants to take a step in the right direction towards civilization and democracy and away from Asiatic despotism, it has no choice but to accept Germany as its role model, which means coming to terms with its dark past by admitting its crimes against humanity.
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Sunday, February 06, 2005
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If you are an honest man, you will make many enemies but very few friends.
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My patriotism is as necessary to me as air and water. My enemy’s patriotism might as well be carbon monoxide and arsenic.
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In my salad days I wrote a number of dishonest books. When I wrote them I did not think of myself as being dishonest but as being patriotic. And I was outraged when a Canadian critic accused me of racism for my uncompromising pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish stance. It took me twenty years to realize that he was right and I was wrong. It may take me another twenty years to realize that when I write an honest line today I should not expect to have the agreement and support of our chauvinist charlatans.
*
Patriotism, we are taught to believe, is a far more important attribute than honesty. Unfortunately for us and for mankind in general, our enemies are similarly brainwashed. Result? Millions of innocent victims. It may take not twenty but two thousand more years for humanity to realize the obvious fact that patriotism is not a virtue but an integral part of our killer instinct.
*
History is clear on this point: territoriality and terrorism might as well be synonymous.
*
Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And that it has no name.”
#
Monday, February 07, 2005
*********************************
ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
**********************************
I was brought up to believe in the moral superiority of Armenians. Since then I have been disappointed so many times that I no longer believe in the moral superiority of any race, nation or tribe; neither do I believe in their moral inferiority. We all swim in the same soup. Germans as well as Russians, Americans as well as Africans – they have all produced their share of swine, and Armenians as well as Turks are no exception to this rule.
*
It is not the best among us who assert moral superiority, but the worst. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a good look at himself in the mirror and question his readiness to accept racist propaganda as the final arbiter of morality.
#
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
****************************************
BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
***********************************
In the second half of this wonderful historical novel by Louis de Bernieres, we read the following:
“The Armenians and the Kurds have loathed each other for centuries, and, owing to the fact that there are many Armenian units and commanders in the Russian army, the same banal atrocities have been committed against the Kurds that the latter have always enjoyed committing against Armenians.”
*
Further down there is a similar passage dealing with Adana.
*
May I confess that I read similar passages in foreign books with a sense of relief and malicious pleasure. I for one am tired of seeing Armenians portrayed as perennial victims of bloodthirsty savages.
*
Perhaps we owe our survival not to our religious faith or superior intelligence or degree of civilization (probably all myths created by our propagandists), but to the fact that, in human affairs, past conduct is not always an infallible index of future conduct and appearances can be misleading. So much so that, only the naïve and the ignorant are perplexed when sheep behave like wolves.
#
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
*************************************
OUR GREATEST ENEMY
**************************************
Gostan Zarian (20th-century author): “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
*
Avedik Issahakian (20th-century poet): “Our three curses: earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, brainless leaders.”
*
Yeghishe (5th-century historian): “If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subject will perish.”
*
To those who say, “Yeghishe was wrong because after 1500 years of his prediction we are still around,” I say: “We may be around, yes, but one could also say that we have been perishing the death of a thousand cuts.”
*
Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran Contra, Clinton and Monica: politicians never admit errors of judgment until caught in the mesh of an inflexible justice system. If it were up to our Ramgavars, all Tashnak leaders would be forced to resign on grounds of criminal misconduct, and vice versa – all Ramgavar leaders would hang from the nearest tree for their support of a criminal regime in the Homeland.
*
That’s one reason why these two entities cannot engage in dialogue. There is no honor among charlatans.
*
As an anti-partisan, I would like to see leaders of both parties cross-examined by an unbiased panel. Will that ever happen? One can only hope and pray. But I have every reason to suspect that both parties would rather disband than admit any errors of judgment. Their only defense so far: “We are not perfect, no one is.” Ask them to expand and they will say “No comment,” or words to that effect. They admit their imperfection only to appear more human – that is to say, more perfect in their humanity.
*
I began by quoting a medieval historian and two contemporary writers. Let me conclude by quoting three more intellectual leaders:
*
Raffi (1835-1888): “Those who are responsible for our safety are themselves a gang of criminals…We are like sheep without a shepherd.”
*
Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973): “Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naiveté
mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sharagans.”
*
Shavarsh Missakian (1884-1957): “I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to ideals and principles.”
*
It is to be noted that Shavarsh Missakian was himself an intellectual as well as a Tashnak political leader.
#

Sunday, January 16, 2005
**********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
***************************
If fools outnumber the wise, they will choose a fool as a leader.
*
Some of my critics pretend to know better, but instead of sharing their wisdom, they prefer to share their venom.
*
Because three readers disagreed with me, a fourth reader writes: “If one man calls you a fool, you may not have a problem. If two men call you a fool, you may have a problem. If three men call you a fool, you might as well resign yourself to the fact that you are a damn fool.”
*
Maybe so, but it is also written: “Not everyone who identifies himself as a man is one.”
*
It is also written: “You cannot contradict the braying of an ass. Neither can you contradict the braying of three, or, for that matter, four asses.”
*
Let it be said, if this is not written, it shall be.
*
I knew we were in deep trouble on the day one of our elder statesmen wrote me a letter saying he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was spelling my name wrong.
*
“May you go to hell!” might as well be synonymous with “May you spend the rest of your life working for an Armenian.” I know what I am saying; I have been in both places.
*
A tolerant atheist is closer to god than an intolerant Christian.
*
I wish someone had warned me that in the first thousand days of every important undertaking, you will make a thousand mistakes; and the worst mistake you can make is to assume that in the second thousand years, you will make only 999 mistakes.
#
Monday, January 17, 2005
***********************************
In the December 16, 2004 issue of LE POINT, a Paris-based French-language illustrated weekly, there are a number of articles, commentaries and a long interview about Turkey in which Armenians are inevitably mentioned and discussed.
*
“There is a Christian – a Bulgarian or an Armenian – in the family tree of every Turk [alive today],” states Levent Yilmaz, identified as a young Turkish intellectual.
*
To the question, “Why is it that there is a law that prohibits all mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916?” Yilmaz replies: “No, that is not true. The law does not mention this or any other event specifically. It speaks only of blasphemy against the integrity and unity of the Republic – a judge is free to interpret the law in many ways.”
*
To the question whether or not Turkey is in denial of the Armenian genocide, Yilmas is willing to admit that the Armenian genocide is the last great national taboo, and it must be openly discussed, which is being done by a number of Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Tayyip Erdogan. He goes on to say that Vahakn Dadrian’s book was published recently without cuts. The debate, he adds, is whether or not the word genocide, “which was coined in 1948 in reference to the Jewish genocide,” can be applied to the Armenian experience.
*
In the concluding remarks of the editorial on page 3 by Claude Imbert, we read: “Turkey’s ambition is to be part of the West, but its interests lie in the East with the Turkish-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and by the Caspian Sea. Turkey also comes with a heavy freight of controversies (Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdistan)….”
*
A subtitle in an essay titled “Europe: The Battle of Turkey,” reads: “The Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Is It an Obstacle to
Its Membership?” It goes on to say that it will be a point of contention during the next ten years of negotiations.
*
Far from being “forgotten,” it looks like our genocide is very much alive and kicking.
*
Elsewhere, in the same issue, and on the occasion of the sale of one of his paintings at Christie’s in London, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) is identified as a Russian. It seems, an anonymous buyer paid 2.1 million euros for it – “a record so far for a 19th-century Russian painting.”
#
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
***********************************
The internet is a useful medium in so far as it allows hoodlums and cowards to expose themselves.
*
There should be an unspoken law that says, if you are going to attack or insult someone on the internet, you should identify yourself, because to do so anonymously is a sure symptom of cowardice.
*
We are insensitive to human rights issues. We don’t even like to mention free speech. After all, who among us can plead not guilty to the charge of not having violated the free speech of a fellow Armenian by means of insults masquerading as criticism?
*
And since literature is inconceivable without free speech, it follows, we are all guilty of implementing a policy of systematic extermination of our intellectual class. But perhaps what I am talking about here is not free speech but civilized conduct.
*
When was the last time any one of our academics spoke up in defense of free speech? As for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (our axis of evil): what can I say about them that has not already been said by Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Massikian, and Zarian, among many others?
#
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
**************************************
When I first met an assimilated Armenian in Italy, I remember, he looked down at me as an odd curiosity, and I looked at him as a brazen renegade. I was wrong and he may have been right. Because, as a teenager, I might as well have been a walking encyclopedia of chauvinist clichés and a dupe who believed my elders knew better and they had done whatever was humanly possible to save and preserve the nation. I know better today.
*
In a commentary, I read the following: “The inhabitants in many of the hardest hit areas [by the tsunami] are amongst the poorest in the world. One reason they live in squalor is that the governments in their countries rule by force, keeping everything for the ruling class. Long before the tsunami hit, peasant populations had been excluded from aid programs intended to benefit them.”
My first thought: our homeland too has been hit by an invisible and slow-motion tsunami of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence. We, in the Diaspora, may be better off financially, but are we really better of morally?
*
A headline in our paper reads: “Pope wants more dialogue between Jews and Catholics.” I can’t help wondering what were they doing during the last 2000 years? – except perhaps calling one another blasphemers. And what will they call one another after 2000 years of dialogue? Brothers? Maybe. But perhaps the real question should be: Will they ever stop thinking of one another as blasphemers? Can they, without sacrificing a central tenet of their faith?
#

Sunday, December 19, 2004
*********************************
TRANSLATION FROM ARPIAR ARPIARIAN
***********************************************
“We sent our representatives all the way to Berlin to liberate us from the yoke of Kurdish and Turkish bloodsuckers, as if our own bloodsuckers were not worse than any Kurd or Turk.”
*
There are two things on which our turn-of-the century writers agree: the detestable nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul and the suffocating influence of the clergy in the provinces. To which I can only add: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
*
FOR OR AGAINST
**************************
Others may speak of their silent majority; we can speak only of an indifferent one.
*
Agreement and disagreement in our context might as well be meaningless. For everyone who agrees with you, there may be 2 or even 22 who may disagree, and 222 who will not give a damn one way or the other.
*
But when two schmucks agree, they assume they have achieved national consensus.
*
IMAGINARY INTERVIEW
*******************************
-Your greatest mistake?
-Being born an Armenian.
-Your second greatest mistake?
-Writing for Armenians.
-Why is that a mistake?
-It’s like writing for an army of Napoleons?
-Why Napoleons?
-Make it, lunatics who think they are Napoleons.
#
Monday, December 20, 2004
************************************
The central concern of all intellectual labor is human nature. “Scientific experience,” writes Spengler, “is spiritual self-knowledge.”
*
By devising extensions of the human body, technology reveals the secret direction of our desires.
*
To say that psychology, historiography, mythology, philosophy, sociology and the writing of fiction share in common an interest in human nature is to say the obvious.
*
Consider the following thought by Freud as a case in point: “It is not our hatred of our enemies that harms us: it is our hatred for the people we really love that destroys us.” What better key to our own history or status as perennial losers and victims!
*
The following passage by a historian (Toynbee), that explains many aspects of universal history, including – and especially – our own, could have been written by Jung or Freud: “The egocentric illusion…this most fantastic of all freaks of Maya… has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.”
*
When our own turn-of-the-century novelists like Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Nar-Dos, and Zohrab wrote about the repulsive nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul, they might as well have been echoing Spengler’s sentiments in the following passage from THE DECLINE OF THE WEST: “The parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman….”
*
And speaking of religion:
All social movements are conceived by underdogs and confiscated by top dogs. Which amounts to saying, eventually, Marx will be followed by Stalin, and Christ by anti-Christ (Renaissance popes and American televangelists).
#
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
***************************************
A history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Armenian literature reads today like a work of science fiction of another nation, from a different planet, in a distant galaxy.
*
Whenever I read biographies of Abovian, Raffi, Baronian, Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Voskanian, and many, many others, I marvel at their fearless dedication and stubborn refusal to compromise or to cushion their blows. And the question I keep asking myself is: What the hell happened to our literature? The only answer I can come up with is also the most obvious: our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their parasitical panchoonies finished the job begun by Talaat and Stalin.
*
Unlike Odian’s Panchoonie, today’s Panchoonie is as smooth, well fed, and soft-spoken as any American Chief Executive Officer. He sports a blue suit, red tie, a laptop and a salary of over a hundred thousand dollars (according to an insider in New York, whose word I have no reason to doubt).
*
If a writer like Baronian or Odian were to appear among us today, he would be silenced and starved before anyone can say Jack S. Avanakian.
*
I don’t write to change things – my megalomania has its limits. I write to remind our midgets and their dupes that once upon a time, giants walked among us – giants whose shadow would be enough to pulverize their bones.
*
What will a history of 21st Century Armenian literature written a hundred years hence read like? Imagine, if you can, the description by a blind man of a non-existent black hat in a dark room.
#
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
***************************************
IMAGINARY INTERVIEW (II)
*********************************
-What’s your racket?
-I am in the business of being misunderstood.
-Any money in that?
-Only insults.
-What kind of insults?
-Being called all kinds of names.
-Such as?
-Son of a whore, disgrace to the nation.
-What nation?
-Armenian.
-Romanian?
-No, Armenian.
-Aramaean?
-No, no. Armenian.
-What’s the difference?
-Aramaeans are extinct.
-And Armenians aren’t?
-Only the real ones.
-You mean, the phonies aren’t?
-Right.
-So, why write for them?
-To defend the honor of the real ones who can no longer defend themselves.
-But since they are dead and buried, they are in no position to express their appreciation: am I summing up the situation correctly?
-I couldn’t have said it better myself.
-In that case, your situation is shituation.
-You took the words right out of my mouth.
-As a matter of fact I did: I read some of your things on the Internet.
-So, tell me. What do you think?
-About what?
-My things.
-You really want to know?
-I do.
-You are wasting your time.
-I agree.
-So, why go on?
-I was hoping you would tell me.
-Sorry, friend. I can’t help you there. Unless, of course, you believe in an afterlife.
-I don’t.
-Then I ask you again: if the living insult you and the dead will not thank you, why go on?
-How about, to balance the score.
-But who will know – if the living don’t give a damn and the dead can’t speak?
-I will…and now, you will too.
-Is that enough?
-No, but it may be a step in the right direction.
#

Sunday, December 05, 2004
*************************************
After Bach, the Beatles; after Socrates, Stalin; after Elgar, Elvis; after Sibelius, Sinatra; after Hegel, Hitler; after Vermeer, Warhol; after Gostan Zarian, Nairi Zarian…I could go on. The human race does not seem to be open to reason or esthetic and moral values.
*
No matter what your field, you will have competitors who will be more successful by prostituting its integrity.
*
After Jesus Christ, televangelists, who amass vast fortunes by perverting his message of love and compassion to greed, intolerance, and hatred.
*
Speaking of man’s primitive faith in explanations: we are fond of saying that what made of us perennial losers is our geography, thus implying that we have been enslaved by our mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys; or we have allowed our longitudes and latitudes to be masters of our destiny. If true, emigration would mean liberation. But consider our academics in America, our crème de la crème, who are in no position to plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance or unawareness: not only are they subservient to our mini-sultans and pseudo-imams but also to their flunkies.
*
To assert their independence of mind, courage, and daring, some readers insult a defenseless and harmless scribbler anonymously and from a safe distance, all in the name of patriotism, of course, which means allegiance to the Homeland, namely Mount Ararat, Mount Aragats, Lake Sevan, Dilijan and Hraztan.
#
Monday, December 06, 2004
************************************
When Schopenhauer called Hegel an “arch-charlatan,” his unspoken intent was to replace Hegel’s philosophical system with his own; or, to propound an antithesis to Hegel’s thesis. Which means, in his rejection of Hegel, he was being a Hegelian.
*
When your average layman calls an intellectual giant like Marx, Freud, or Sartre a charlatan without having read their works, he only succeeds in exposing his prejudice and arrogance.
*
I define an intellectual giant as one who unveils something that has been hidden from view, and having done so, he changes our understanding of reality. He may be proven wrong and corrected by future thinkers, but only in the sense that Einstein corrected Newton.
*
Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) publicly condemned communism. But when he declared in one of his encyclicals, “Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, whereas man are corrupted and degraded,” he might as well have been speaking as a Marxist. And this indeed is an unmistakable mark of an intellectual giant: it becomes impossible to speak about anything that matters without in some way quoting or paraphrasing him.
*
Sartre put it best when he said: “An anti-Marxist argument is only the apparent rejuvenation of a pre-Marxist idea.” Which also means, you cannot contradict a new thesis with an obsolete anti-thesis; or again, any effort to arrest the advance of human thought is destined to fail.
#
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
***********************************
ON INTERMARRIAGE
***************************
In the Armenian ghetto where I was born, raised, and brainwashed, I was led to believe intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy. I know better now because I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages, namely, racial and religious tolerance. And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals, from Abovian to Zarian, and from Arlen to Saroyan, married odars.
*
How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? — (about 80% in the U.S., I am told). A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the two meet, everything else – moral and esthetic values, political orientation, financial status, religious and ethnic affiliation – fly out the window. What remain are a man, a woman and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.
*
ON BEST-SELLERS
***************************
In the U.S. best-selling books are as a rule either ignored or torn to shreds by critics. What makes them best sellers are average readers and word of mouth. We Armenians don’t have best-selling books because we don’t have average readers. Every Armenian who knows how to read considers himself not only a distinguished literary critic with impeccable esthetic criteria but also an expert on any given subject.
*
ON GENTLE READERS
************************
Whenever I am described by some of these distinguished scholars and gentlemen as a purveyor of b.s. I am reminded of a popular saying in Hollywood, which brought a smile, when I first read it: “It may be shit, but it has integrity.”
*
I once called one of my abusive readers an “inbred moron,” and ever since then he has done his utmost to prove me right.
#
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
*************************************
ON FUNDAMENTALISTS
*************************************
A fundamentalist is one who uses (make it, abuses) the scriptures to camouflage his carnivorous instincts and cannibalistic disposition.
*
“A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of national origin,” Lenin said. So is a fundamentalist — regardless of belief system.
*
Lawyers, theologians, politicians, sophists and charlatans in general have at one time or another proved that a man may behave like swine and portray himself as a noble specimen of humanity. History is very clear on this point.
*
A fundamentalist believes being virtuous, superior, or one of the “chosen,” consists in basing one’s conduct on the scriptures, and by cunningly isolating certain lines and completely ignoring the spirit of many other lines, he can prove to be (to his own satisfaction, at any rate) a man of compassion even as he engages in the massacre of innocent civilians.
*
Those who commit massacres don’t like that word. They prefer the word war, and in war sometimes “bad things happen.”
*
Fundamentalism in both the West and the Middle East might as well be reflections of one another. One reason Kerry lost is that as a moderate he could not see this, he thus underestimated the evil in both camps.
*
How can any reasonable man change a message of love and compassion to one of hatred and murder? Easy. Listen to Richelieu: “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”
#

Thursday, November 25, 2004
*************************************
André Gluckmann is a contemporary French philosopher and the author of over twenty books, the most recent being A TREATISE ON HATRED. The following three quotations are from an interview dealing with this book.
*
“It is said that hatred is born of oppression, destitution, and humiliation, as if everyone living in deplorable conditions were ravaged by hatred. What could be more offensive to the poor and the disadvantaged of this world!”
*
“The terrorist is not a robot manipulated by material conditions. The terrorist is an assassin who takes pleasure in indiscriminate killing….”
*
“The great writer is a prophet of doom. He exposes that which has gone wrong and that which is evil.”
*
Portuguese proverb: “Better a red face than a black heart.”
*
Stephen Leacock: “A half truth in argument, like a half brick, carries better.”
*
Bulgarian proverb: “Other people’s eggs have two yolks.”
*
Speechifiers and sermonizers are like men who praise vegetarianism while dining on shish kebab.
*
When it comes to thinking, real thinking, asking questions and raising doubts are more important than making dogmatic assertions and relying on authority.
*
I am an Armenian, which means when I think of my fellow Armenians, I lose both sleep and appetite.
#
Friday, November 26, 2004
************************************
Whenever I question Zarian’s contemporaries, I notice again and again that they refuse to discuss the work and prefer to gossip about the man, and more specifically the insults he apparently inflicted on them.
A minor novelist: “We organized a picnic in his honor and instead of thanking us he complained about the food.”
A third-rate versifier who considers himself a first rate poet: “He was an arrogant name-dropper. Unamuno told me this, Verhaeren told me that, Picasso told me, me, me, me!”
An academic in Yerevan: “He was unbearably self-centered. No one liked him.”
An occasional journalist: “Once, when I was a boy, I carried two of his atrociously heavy bags to the top of a mountain in Cyprus and he didn’t even thank me.”
*
Of Zarian we can truly say that he was too good for his people, including our so-called intellectual elite. To those who say, “But there must be some truth in all that anecdotal evidence. The man must have been inconsiderate, perhaps even rude, in his dealings with his fellow Armenians.” I say, yes, certainly, I agree. Rudeness is unforgivable in any man, including writers, especially writers. But then, Charents was an attempted murderer: that doesn’t seem to stop our academics from studying his works and the public from idolizing him.
*
More from André Gluckmann’s interview:
“Anti-Semitism antedates any encounter or dealing with a real Jew.”
*
“Hatred is directed at imaginary objects of a certain type: reflections of oneself that one refuses to recognize.”
*
Simone Weil: “It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.”
*
Writes Olivier Messiaen: “Among birds most fights are settled by tournaments of song.”
Imagine, if you can, American marines and Iraqi insurgents today (or, for that matter, Armenians and Turks, or even Armenians and Armenians), settling their differences by bursting into song. And to think that homo sapiens thinks he has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.
*
My favorite three funeral marches: the slow movement from Beethoven Eroica Symphony, the first movement of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, and Siegfried’s orchestral threnody from the final act of Wagner’s GOTTERDAMMERUNG (which was also Hitler’s favorite).
#
Saturday, November 27, 2004
************************************
There are those who think by writing one or more articles in our weeklies they have made a valuable contribution to the solution of our problems. There are even those who think if they succeed in solving all our problems, the nation will be grateful to them. I thought so too when I was young, naïve and inexperienced – in short, a dumb jerk. The truth is (and historic evidence is clear on this point) no power on earth, not even a messiah, can solve the problems of a nation that does not want to solve its problems. And if you are ever successful in solving all our problems, consider yourself lucky if they let you live.

It was Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher, who said that for every wise man you meet, be prepared to deal with ten thousand fools, or words to that effect. He also said: “Astrology is a disease, not a science.”
A thousand years of progress and what do we have? For every astronomer today there are probably ten thousand astrologers and a hundred thousand fools who believe in them.
*
It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken in by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and completely ignored the voices of such dissidents as Thomas Mann, Gramsci, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.
If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.
*
Denis Donikian: “Being Armenian means to have a license to exploit fellow Armenians in the name of Armenianism.”
*
Russian proverb: “Dwell on the past and you will lose an eye. Ignore the past and you will lose both of them.”
*
With enough checks and balances even a mediocrity may behave like a statesman. Without checks and balance even the greatest statesman may behave like a serial killer.
#