Author: arabaliozian

Sunday, October 10, 2004
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“Armenians are smart.” “Armenians are tolerant.” “Armenians are progressive.” I am astonished at the ease with which some Armenians spout similar clichés that are motivated more by self-flattery and less by objective judgment. Speaking for myself: when it comes to my fellow Armenians, I have more questions than answers, questions such as: “If suffering ennobles, why is it that we have among as such preponderance of loud-mouth charlatans who feel more at home in the gutter?”
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In his latest novel, THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Philip Roth writes that he grew up “with a definition of the Jew as an object of ridicule, disgust, scorn, contempt, derision, of every heinous form of persecution and brutality.” This might as well be how an Armenian writer feels among his “smart, tolerant, and progressive” fellow Armenians.
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Between a short sentence and a long paragraph, sermonizers and speechifiers will invariably choose the paragraph and the longer the paragraph, the shorter the meaning, and the greater the distance from the truth.
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Only Armenians who have been exposed to many sermons but have not read a single book by Raffi, Zabel Yessayan, Zohrab, Shahnour, Massikian, Zarian, and many other 19th- and 20th-century writers are convinced our Church has played a central role in our survival as a nation.
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The only way to avoid controversy is to use words with contradictory meanings. If you think this can’t be done, read James Joyce.
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Judging by the popularity of religions and ideologies, the world seems to be populated by dupes who, when told 2+2=5, say, no, 2+2=22!
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And speaking of our Church: I wonder, how many Armenians are familiar with Toynbee’s classification of it as a “fossil” – meaning, brain-dead.
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I read the following in a review of a recent biography of Jorge Luis Borges: “He insisted that he was part of a universal culture and refused to be pigeon-holed as an Argentine writer, though he was that, too, of course.” I like that.
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More about our Church. The question we should ask is: Do we believe the fellow with a full belly who speaks in the name of God, or the one who speaks for no one but his half-starving self?
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Monday, October 11, 2004
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A routine occurrence in history: when they are underdogs, men of faith preach love, compassion and mercy; but when they are top dogs, they practice intolerance, hatred and murder.
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On the roots of our own intolerance: after centuries of “Yes, sir!” to a long line of ruthless and alien lords and masters, we turn into control freaks among our fellow Armenians, banning, censoring, and verbally abusing anyone who refuses to say “Yes, sir!” to us.
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If “there is a Turk in all of us,” this Turk surfaces only when we deal with fellow Armenians. Hence, the familiar phenomenon of the Armenian who is a lamb among odars and a wolf among his fellow countrymen.
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Am I right or wrong? Frankly, I am no longer consumed with the rage to prove myself right. I know that in the eyes of those who have programmed themselves to disagree with me, I will always be wrong. I also know that I am not qualified to deprogram Armenians. Nobody is!
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Those who disagree with me today may agree with me tomorrow. When I was young, I too disagreed with many things with which I agree today.
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Whenever something bad happens to me, I look for the silvery lining; and whenever, on those rare occasions, I find it, it turns out to have been a mirage. Once, I remember, I even found a positive aspect in our genocide. If it weren’t for the massacres, I thought, we would now be breathing the same air as the Turks, we would be communicating in Turkish with one another, and we would be discussing such topics as the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. And needless to add, we would all be for it.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2004
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We all swim in a sea of uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety. We hunger for certainties, and when we can’t find them, we invent them; and having invented them, we defend them – sometimes unto death.
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Since the beginning of time men have sensed the presence of an invisible and incomprehensible power which they have called god. And in their efforts to make the invisible visible, and the incomprehensible accessible, they have invented an astonishing number of stories, myths, fables, legends, dogmas, rituals, and belief systems which they have called religions. But because they have failed repeatedly to explain the mystery, or, if you wish, to lower god to their own level, they have reached contradictory conclusions. The result has been a long series of disagreements, conflicts, and sometimes even wars and massacres.
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It has been said that, man cannot create a single worm, yet, he has created ten thousand gods.
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Where people can think for themselves, there will be disagreement. There will be disagreement even where people cannot think for themselves because they have been conditioned not to think but to parrot someone else’s thoughts.
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Disagreement in itself is not a problem. The real problem is how we deal with it. Do we see it as a symptom of heresy, blasphemy, or evil, or do we see it as the beginning of a dialogue that may lead to compromise and consensus, which does not mean agreement but working together — as opposed to working at cross purposes and against one another. So far, religions have failed to follow the path of dialogue and consensus by asserting a monopoly on truth and by legitimizing intolerance.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
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When we use the word culture we think of art, literature, and music. We forget that culture springs from an invisible source within us. It is above all an expression of how we feel and think. Ignorance, intolerance and envy are not culture but barbarism.
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There is ignorance, intolerance and envy everywhere, of course, but they don’t set the tone and they don’t animate institutions and their policies. Only cultures or societies that are on a downward path do that.
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In a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper I read: “God is love, yes, certainly! But God is also justice.” The question is: What kind of justice are we talking about here? An-eye-for-an-eye justice, or love-your-enemy justice?
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Sermonizers can’t be contradicted because they speak on the authority of Scriptures that are full of contradictions.
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There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice.
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I share my understanding with those who are in need for it. As for the others, they shouldn’t even waste their valuable time reading me, because I have nothing to say to people who know and understand everything. And they have nothing to say to me either for the very simple reason that once upon a time I too knew and understood everything.
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Thursday, October 07, 2004
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THEM AND US
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Let me put it bluntly for a change.
The Turks are guilty of covering up our genocide (number of victims 1,500,000).
We are guilty of perpetrating two genocides, albeit of the “white” variant – (one) exodus from the Homeland (number of victims so far 1,500,000 and counting) and (two) assimilation in the Diaspora (number of victims many more than 1,500,000 and counting).
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my question to you is: Whose burden of guilt is heavier? Or, if you prefer: In what way are we different from them?
And before you answer that question, please take into consideration the following two factors: The Turks are motivated to cover up their crime by self-interest — if they plead guilty as charged, they may lose a chunk of their homeland.
By contrast, we are so blinded by our incompetence, corruption and greed that we don’t even bother asking: Who is going to defend the Homeland if it is depopulated?
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Friday, October 08, 2004
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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I experience a state of mind that is akin to a combination of compassion, pity, self-disgust and helplessness whenever I see someone who is beyond my reach committing the same blunder that I committed twenty or thirty years ago.
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We sometimes forget that those who disagree with us are also human beings, and like all human beings, they have their own set of blind spots and limitations as a result of a limited number of experiences. After all, who among us will claim he has experienced everything and he knows and understands everything?
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As soon as I think I have explained a very small fraction of reality, something happens to remind me that I have been on the wrong track, and I must go back to square one and start from scratch.
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A woman is just a woman to another woman. But she is pure magic and the promise of heavenly bliss to a man. The more distant and inaccessible she is the more powerful her spell. Which may explain why the Muslim version of heaven is much more irresistible to a sexually starving and voracious teenager than its Christian counterpart is to Christians of all ages.
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Saturday, October 09, 2004
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FROM MY DIARY
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Whenever I am told “I love to read but I don’t have the time,” I translate it to mean, “I hate to read.”
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In his PRISON DIARY, Jeffrey Archer writes that some inmates are “genuinely evil,” and others “congenitally stupid.” But isn’t that true of men on both sides of prison walls?
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According to a Mahdi in today’s paper: “Islam is a religion of peace. A true believer cannot be a terrorist.” But what if the credo of a religion is contradicted by its history?
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Newspaper headlines speak louder than sermons because “actions speak louder than words.”
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Are young terrorists innocent dupes? Yes, of course. But then, all followers are because, to paraphrase Krishnamurti, “If you follow someone, you cease following the truth,” or “the Kingdom of God” which is within you.
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Religions and ideologies survive and prosper because “there is a sucker born every day.”
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Belief systems create dupes because between a pleasant lie and a demanding truth, man will invariably choose the lie.
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The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize is announced. She is an Austrian novelist about whom I know nothing. Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Philip Roth must be three of the most disappointed men in the world today, except perhaps Saddam in his cell and Osama in his cave.
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As soon as I sense where a sentence is leading, I skip the whole paragraph. I read as though I were about to catch a train. No patience with most 19th-century novels. Tried George Eliot and gave up after a dozen pages.
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Sunday, October 03, 2004
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FROM THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
TO THE GRAVEYARD OF BARBARIANS
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What if Saddam Hussein understands his own people better than the ablest American expert advising Bush? What if the only way to govern Iraq is by being a ruthless dictator willing to conduct genocidal war against unruly tribes? What if this is true of all tribal people, including Armenians? Hence the often-heard line: “We are not yet ready for democracy.” Is it conceivable that the cradle of civilization prefers a political system worthy of murderous barbarians?
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In his book on Stalin, Montefiore writes that Mikoyan once delivered a speech in which he said: “Every citizen of the USSR should be an NKVD [later KGB] agent.”
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Censorship is book burning without smoke and fire.
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The only way to make money as a writer, Flaubtert once said, is by flattering the public. Zohrab put it more bluntly when he said, anyone can engage in prostitution, including lawyers (he was a lawyer). Which reminds me of the American joke: “Please, don’t tell my mother I am a lawyer. She thinks I am a pimp.”
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An authentic charlatan knows instinctively that if he wants to deceive others, he must begin with himself. In other words, he consents to being his own first victim.
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The incomprehensible nonsense of a charlatan will be the highest wisdom to another charlatan.
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Charlatans operate on the assumption that they can fool all the people all the time. This false assumption limits their horizons, condemns them to mediocrity, and leads them to disappointment and defeat when they are finally and inevitably exposed.
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When I write about charlatans I don’t expect their agreement; and sure enough, out come the cloven hooves.
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Monday, October 04, 2004
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SOLUTIONS.
ON POLITICS AND POLITICIANS.
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
A PROBLEM OF IDENTITY.
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As for solutions to our problems, it is not easy finding solutions in a tribal environment dominated by jihadist leaders who will automatically reject all solutions that do not require the unconditional surrender of the opposition.
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Do you really know what I think of politicians? I think the world would not be a much worse place if it were run by cab drivers and barbers.
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I suspect the honesty of chauvinists whose patriotism finds expression only in verbal abuse.
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About the word happiness: I consider it to be an untrustworthy word. Happiness for a sadist means someone he can torture. The problem is, what if, unable to find a masochist, he victimizes someone who may not be in a position to defend himself?
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To think in terms of, “If he agrees with me he is smart, and if he disagrees with me he is a fool,” is to condemn oneself to learn nothing from others.
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The search for identity, about which one hears a great deal today, is a luxury only people with full bellies can afford. To the hungry, there is only one legitimate search, that for food. The hungry may find what he is looking for but I doubt if a man without identity will ever find one, perhaps because you can find only that which exists.
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There is a type of Armenian whose primary concern is to prove he is a better Armenian, as if Armenianism were a contest that he must win at all cost.
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Tuesday, October 05, 2004
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FROM MY DIARY
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On the Bush/Kerry debate, a Canadian pundit comments: “Kerry made more sense but I would vote for Bush. Kerry is an intellectual who seems to be talking down to people. Americans are suspicious of intellectuals. They prefer presidents who are more like themselves.” What about Wilson, FDR, JFK, and LBJ? It seems to me, what one expects from a leader, or for that matter, a doctor, a lawyer, or any professional, is not companionship but competence.
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On the radio, the haunting slow movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which deserves to be heard as often as Dvorjak’s and Haydn’s. And I don’t even remember when was the last time I heard Khachaturian’s Cello Concerto. Was it ten or twenty years ago?
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When asked if she had ever considered divorce, an English lady is said to have replied: “No, never. Murder several times, but divorce, never.” I read this in Jeffrey Archer’s PRISON DIARY, not a masterpiece but eminently readable.
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Why is it that a silent woman looks wise, but a silent man dumb?
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Unbelievable but true: Suleiman the Magnificent once wrote a poem in praise of a contemporary Turkish poet.
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Is the word mogul related in any way to the word Mongol?
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Wednesday, October 06, 2004
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ANOTHER PAGE FROM MY DIARY
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Overheard: “Lost my wife ten years ago. Run over by a car. Best thing that happened to me.”
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Nothing gives me more pleasure than a volume of good cartoons. A definition of heaven for me would be a set of good cartoons that stretch to infinity; and a definition of hell, a set of bad translations of German metaphysical philosophers.
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Schnabel playing Beethoven: He makes even the most tedious passages (and there are so many of them in the G Major Sonata) interesting.
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Perhaps one reason we feel guilty when accused of a crime we did not even contemplate committing is that, at one time or another, we have probably committed the most unspeakable crimes in our dreams, most of which we may not remember.
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At the funeral of an elder relative I am introduced to quite a few out-of-town Armenians, one of whom tells me: “Your name sounds vaguely familiar.” I am reminded of an old English joke that goes something like this: Two Englishmen meet in a pub.
“My name is Porter,” says the first.
“Mine is Shakespeare,” says the other.
“A familiar name,” comments the first.
“It should be,” replies the second. “I have been delivering milk in these parts for 35 years.”
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Is it possible to be a political or religious leader and not to engage in some form of propaganda? — which also means, to mislead people into believing that half-lies are whole-truths?
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Thursday, September 30, 2004
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BUDDHA, SOCRATES, JESUS.
THE SEMANTICS OF RELIGION,
PHILOSOPHY, AND MYSTICISM.
GOOD AND EVIL.
GOD AND THE DEVIL.
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Abandon old habits of thought. Do not even think in terms of good and evil, or right and wrong. Forget what you were taught. Get rid of all preconceptions: that’s the only way to grasp reality. This indeed is the central message of Buddhism.
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Now compare this with Christianity’s “Love your enemy,” – an idea so new, so strange, and so much against the grain that after two thousand years of countless sermons in countless churches it has yet to penetrate our crocodilian brain. The only way to understand it is by abandoning all definitions, because (according to the recent academic discipline of semantics) words and their definitions are at the root of all our misconceptions and prejudices.
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Abandoning all definitions: that’s also the mantra adopted by Socrates. In his dialogues Socrates begins by stating that he knows nothing and ends by proving that his interlocutors know even less. And who are his interlocutors? Generals, statesmen, philosophers – in short, la crème de la crème of Athenian society at the peak of its Golden Age. As the dialogues unfold, Socrates makes it abundantly clear that the commonly accepted definitions of such terms as justice, goodness, beauty, and courage are full of inconsistencies and contradictions.
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What I am trying to say here has been said before by far better men than myself, among them Aldous Huxley in his PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, and Arnold Toynbee in the 10th volume of his STUDY OF HISTORY. The aim of all religions, schools of philosophy and mysticism is the same. It is only when religions acquire a power structure, a hierarchy and bureaucracy, rituals and mumbo jumbo that they betray the original intent of their founders and become instruments of the devil by legitimizing intolerance, fallacies, prejudice, hatred, war and massacre.
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Friday, October 01, 2004
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ON FANATICS
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Fanatics are not born but made, and what makes them are fanatics in the opposite camp. Armenian fanatics exist today because Turkish fanatics existed yesterday; and Turkish fanatics will exist tomorrow because Armenian fanatics exist today. Fanaticism is an endless cycle and if allowed to prevail, the world is bound to drown in blood.
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When fanatics fight, it is the defenseless and the innocent who die.
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All fanatics operate on a number of false assumptions or illusions, among them: (one) they are the only answer to a very important question; (two) they are not fanatics but realistic moderates who understand the nature of the adversary; (three) they are instruments of a noble principle or even messengers of God; and (four) they are la crème de la creme (rather than la crème de la scum).
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One reason the Bible is a perennial best seller is that there is something for everyone in it. Good men will find many passages that speak of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance, and love, and bad men will find many more lines that justify criminal conduct, including the massacre not only of enemy tribes, including their women and children, but also their cattle. Hence Shakespeare’s dictum: “Even the devil can quote the Scriptures to his advantage.”
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One of my born-again critics – make it, crypto-commissars or frustrated executioners parading as devout Christians – writes: “There was a time when we burned blasphemers like you at the stake.”
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If “a bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of nationality”(Lenin), so is a fanatic. A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic might as well be interchangeable, faceless units that share the same ambition: to drag the world back to the Middle Ages and to hell with such degenerate Western concepts as democracy, human rights, free speech, and the separation of church and state.
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For every proud Armenian, there are probably ten or more proud Turks. In a battle of prides, we don’t have a chance. Which is why I prefer to identify myself as a humble human being that has no use for pride.
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Where there is chauvinist pride, there will also be self-righteous arrogance, intolerance, hatred, fanaticism, and inevitably bloodshed.
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Saturday, October 02, 2004
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WE ARE ALL ASSASSINS
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From an interview with Yan Moix, a contemporary French author: “There is only one reason that prevents us from behaving like animals: the laws of the land. Without laws we would behave like wild beasts in the jungle.” (LE POINT, September 2, 2004).
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Where there is power, it will be abused. This might as well be one of those rare rules that have no exceptions.
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Knowledge is power. But so is phony knowledge, which can be even more dangerous than abysmal ignorance. By phony knowledge I have in mind the kind that we ascribe to religious leaders, be they popes, ayatollahs or gurus.
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Think of the countless heretics who were persecuted, tortured and killed by the Church on the grounds that church leaders knew God’s will or the workings of the divine mind better than their victims.
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Closer to home: consider the ease with which we verbally abuse one another on the Internet simply because the computer gives us the power to do so.
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I remember the title of a 1952 French film directed by Andre Cayatte, NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We Are All Assassins) that became a widely used slogan. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a fraction of our brain is crocodilian, (students of anatomy tell us this to be literally true), and it will seize the flimsiest excuse to take over our “human” brain.
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If a Pope of Rome and a Stalin can behave like ruthless killers in the name of a religion of love or an ideology based on the brotherhood of all men, who among us will plead not guilty or pretend that his brain has no crocodilian fraction?
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The Turks massacred us because they had the power to do so. Does that mean we wouldn’t have done the same to them if our positions had been reversed? To put it differently: Is the crocodilian fraction of the Turkish brain bigger than ours? Or, are all men assassins except us?
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Sunday, September 26, 2004
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INFORMATION AND WISDOM.
LITTLE BOYS AND BIG BOYS.
ON THE COMPLEXITIES OF LIFE.
ON LOSING AN ARGUMENT.
ON FICTION.
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There is a natural tendency in all of us to overestimate the wisdom of someone who knows something we don’t know, or to confuse information with wisdom.
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Everyone knows something no one knows, even if what he knows is about himself and his experiences.
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Little boys brag about things they haven’t done or cannot do. Big boys brag about things they neither know nor understand, all the while hoping no one can tell if they are bragging.
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In life, the crucified do not always rise on the third day.
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A bishop will never lose an argument if losing it would mean defrocking himself. Neither will a born-again lose an argument if losing it would mean being dead again.
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Reality or life is a succession of false starts, vicious circles, and dead-ends. Faith or a belief system allows us to think otherwise by reducing life to a one-dimensional operation in which all questions have answers, the end is predictable, and man is subject to rigid laws. In other words, a belief system is a program and a believer is one who constantly programs himself in order to eliminate the uncertain, the irrational, and the incomprehensible by means of prayer and ritual, also known as incantation and mumbo jumbo.
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There is a visible as well as an invisible universe. Great many questions about the visible universe remain unanswered. As for the invisible: we know nothing about it. We don’t even know if it is an extension of the visible. To believe means to reduce the mystery of reality by assuming that since we know the Creator, we need all we need to know about His creation. I am somewhat simplifying things, but not as much as a man of faith simplifies reality.
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Every novel has a central theme or thesis, which can be expressed in a single sentence or brief paragraph. I speak only of themes because I have a horror of boring my readers with imaginary characters, landscapes and dialogue. When I was a child, words like “Once upon a time,” were pure magic. But I am no longer a child, and dark forests, castles, palaces and beautiful princesses no longer exercise the same spell on me. And it is beyond me why anyone would be interested to read such an opening sentence as “The bell rang and I went to the front and opened the door,” or “It was on my wanderings that I first met my beloved.”
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Fine sentiments and thoughts should be expressed either in a fine style or with the utmost simplicity, because even a hint of pretentiousness may expose the writer as a counterfeit.
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It has been observed that even when our words have wings they may fly in unpredictable directions.
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Monday, September 27, 2004
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WHEN BELIEF SYSTEMS CLASH.
PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED.
HOW TO JUDGE A NEW IDEA.
REALITY AND PROPAGANDA.
EXPLOITING DUPES.
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It is a mistake to judge a belief system on its own terms. It is only when it clashes with other belief systems that it arouses the irrational and the crocodilian in man.
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If I had a choice between a hundred readers who don’t agree with me and ten readers who do, I would choose the hundred for the very simple reason that there is no merit in preaching to the converted.
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One of the worst mistakes we can make is to approach a new idea with the question: “Is it for us or against us?” We should ask instead: Does it make sense? Does it appeal to our reason or to our emotions? Is it consistent with established facts?
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Whenever a reader writes that he enjoys reading me, I cannot help reflecting that I must be doing something wrong. I don’t write for anyone’s enjoyment.
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The best way to see the discrepancy between reality and propaganda is to study history and compare what happened with what was said by politicians on both sides of the conflict.
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The astonishing ease with which most people believe their side of the story and the ruthless cynicism with which leaders on both sides exploit this human weakness.
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Islam says, “If the enemy is an infidel, he deserves to be slaughtered.” Christianity says, “If Almighty God is on our side, we can’t lose.” The clash of these two belief systems resulted in the senseless slaughter of nearly two million Armenians. I am not saying religion was the main cause of our genocide, but I hope no one will disagree with me if I say it was a contributing factor.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2004
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ON THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
A MONUMENT TO HUMAN DEGRADATION.
THE AIM OF CRITICISM.
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As a child I was brought up to believe all prayers are eventually answered. If we assume that to be true, we must also assume that the millions of innocent civilians who were senselessly slaughtered during two world wars did not pray hard enough; and they did not pray hard enough probably because their faith in God was not of sufficient strength to meet God’s standards. Which also means that in some minimal way, they contributed to their own demise. This type of thinking is another proof of the fact that organized religions, and men of faith in general, are first and foremost in the business of dehumanizing not only their fellow men but also diminishing God. Because, if you think about it, what kind of God would allow children to be slaughtered simply because He was disappointed in the quantity and quality of their prayers? But then, what kind of God would ask a decent father to butcher his own son (see GENESIS) to test his loyalty? Can God be so insecure as to be in need of a poor mortal’s loyalty? And if He knows everything, shouldn’t he already know the answers to His own questions?
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The most underdeveloped countries are also the most religious. Two cases in point: Mexico and India. Where religion plays a central role, there will also be poverty, disease, corruption, prejudice, ignorance, and overpopulation. Are we to assume Mexican and Indian children deserve their fate because their parents did not pray hard enough?
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If Armenians were slaughtered because they more or less deserved it, does that mean the Turks did what they did with God’s consent? Or perhaps Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat were His messengers?
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I read in today’s paper that Taj Mahal (described as “a monumental love nest” and “India’s most famous monument”) was built 350 years ago. When I think of Taj Mahal I do not consider its beauty but the degradation of poor anonymous laborers who worked on its constructions to memorialize the love of two individuals who should have been hanged from the nearest tree for their arrogance and greed for immortality.
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Only the abysmally ignorant view criticism as an expression of hostility rather than concern.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004
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FATHERS AND CHILDREN.
MUD IS MUD.
IN PRAISE OF MODERATION.
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As children we trust our elders and accept their simple answers to our questions. As adults we continue to behave like children when we are told patriotism or nationalism is good only when it is ours; or the word “homeland” is sacred only when it refers to our own homeland; or again, our mud is better than someone else’s.
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Silence contains the worst lies as well as the best truths.
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The difference between a fanatic and a moderate is that a moderate suspects there are two sides to every question and if he is honest and objective he may have a better chance to understand reality.
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If a writer cannot change our perception of reality, he might as well identify himself as an entertainer.
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Never insult an Armenian writer: being one is insult enough.
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
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DISAGREEMENT – ARMENIAN STYLE.
THE LANGUAGE OF PROPAGANDA.
FOUR RULES WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS.
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There is a type of reader who disagrees with me long before he has read the first word of the first line. Such a reader is a critic only in the sense that a cobra is a critic of a mongoose and vice versa. Some cases in point follow.
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“You don’t always mention your sources. Is it because you have none to back up your ridiculous assertions and theories?”
More often than not my sources are anonymous readers like yourself whom I sometimes identify as Jack S. Avanakian.
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“None of your explanations makes sense to me. Why do you insist on wasting your time and ours?”
Perhaps you would like to share your wisdom with us, and if you have none to spare, perhaps you would care to mention another writer we could all read with profit. I hate to think I am the only game in town. Surely, our people deserve better than that.
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To the gentle reader who tells me, “Haven’t you got anything better to do than produce a steady flow of waste matter every day?” I can only say: What’s a major intellect like you reading a minor scribbler like me?
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It has been the destiny of Armenian writers to live among foreigners who don’t give a damn about Armenian literature, and Armenians who care more about the false certainties of propaganda and less about the honest uncertainties of literature.
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Power can speak only one language, that of propaganda. This is true of political as well as religious power. And propaganda and truth are as mutually exclusive as fire and water.
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My source about the above assertion: life in three different countries – the first predominantly Orthodox (Greece); the second Catholic (Italy) and the third Protestant (Canada) all claiming to have a monopoly on truth, and when asked for proof, all pleading faith, the way cold-blooded murderers plead insanity.
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All rules have exceptions, except the following four:
Where there are laws, they will be broken.
Where there are principles, they will be corrupted.
Where there is an ideological movement, it will be confiscated by power-hungry cynical manipulators whose number one concern will be number one.
And (I owe the following to Toynbee): Where there are chosen people, they will have been chosen by no one but themselves.
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Friday, September 24, 2004
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WARNING.
ENFER DE MERDE.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY.
PUNDITS & DUPES.
ON INFALLIBILITY.
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In order not to be misunderstood, one must express the same thought in different ways, and the more ways, the narrower the gap open to misinterpretation.
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What I am about to say you may have heard or read before. Feel free not to read what follows.
*
The world is an enfer de merde or a cesspool of conflicting interests and belief systems because, (one) only historians learn from history; (two) they invariably draw contradictory lessons; (three) they don’t have the power to put into practice what they have learned; and (four) if they had the power, the world would be in a worst mess.
*
We are all authorities on at least one subject: what’s good for us, and more often than not, we are dead wrong.
*
Where there is disagreement, either one or, more often than not, both sides are wrong, because any dupe can say, “my side is right,” and have a counterpart in the opposition who says the same thing.
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If we agree that what we don’t know far exceeds what we know, or “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates), or “we cannot answer the most important questions” (Chekhov), it follows, to assume being consistently right or infallible must be just about the surest symptom of being consistently wrong. This must be true not only of Muslims who speak in the name of Allah, but also of Catholics who speak in the name of the Pope, or partisans who speak in the name of the Party, or dupes who at one time or another spoke in the name of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam, and countless others who pretended to know better.
*
If millions, perhaps even billions, have been wrong in the past, who among us will dare to pretend to be right or to know better?
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Saturday, September 25, 2004
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FROM AN AFRICAN NOVEL.
MORE ON WRITERS AND COMMISSARS.
ON ARMENIAN IDENTITY.
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
OUR PANCHOONIE RACKET.
GOD, OUR FATHER.
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From a contemporary African novel: “as ugly and dirty as a hyena’s anus.”
*
No one and nothing can be as contemptible as a writer in an environment dominated by commissars of culture. Which is why I prefer to identify myself as a concerned citizen. And if, on occasion, I have committed the unforgivable blunder of calling myself a writer, it has been only in the sense of one who uses the written word as a means of communication – as in “the writer of this memo.”
*
If you chart the family tree of a commissar of culture, you are sure to find at least two hangmen, three cold-blooded murderers, several career criminals, and a minimum of a dozen jailbirds.
*
In a non-democratic environment one cannot speak of the voice of the people (“vox populi”) which has been identified in the past with the voice of god (“vox dei”). One can speak only of the voice of an elite or a power structure, which is more akin to the voice of the Devil. And now, consider the fact that throughout our millennial history we have at no time experienced democratic rule. Even in democratic environments like the United States, France and Canada, we are dominated by non-representative cliques that are as representative as exclusive clubs. As for the so-called democracy in Armenia today: it is as representative as a criminal gang or a mafia.
*
An Armenian born and raised in the United States will share more in common with his fellow Americans than with an Armenian born and raised in the USSR. Most Armenians today might as well be foreigners to one another. But whereas the laws of the land promote solidarity in America (which is also populated by foreigners), the absence of similar laws or values in our case moves us in opposite directions, namely, mutual mistrust, alienation, and assimilation.
*
The only time an Armenian will speak of brotherhood is when he goes into the business of raising funds, which I like to call our “Panchoonie racket.”
*
I am willing to concede that even if god doesn’t exist, we should live as though he did, otherwise we may end up slaughtering one another. But man, it seems, is so predisposed to slaughter that he will slaughter even in the name of a merciful and compassion god.
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The aim of propaganda, it has been said, is to deceive your friends, not your enemies. Imagine, if you can, a Turk falling for our chauvinist crapola….
*
After being verbally abused by our commissars and partisans (but I repeat myself) I can truly testify to the fact that an Armenian’s tongue can be “sharper than a Turk’s yataghan” (Zarian) and uglier than a hyena’s anus.
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Thursday, September 02, 2004
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MIKOYAN’S ROLE IN THE STALINIST PURGES.
TOLSTOY, DOSTOEVSKY AND SHAKESPEARE.
GREGORIAN CHANT.
WHAT IS ARMENIANISM?
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A number of Sovietologists have identified Anastas Mikoyan as the main architect of the Stalinist purges in Armenia. If he was, he was a reluctant one, writes Simon Montefiore. In his recently published book, STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR, based on interviews with the children of survivors, post-Soviet studies, and newly opened archives, he writes that Stalin chose Mikoyan for that grim task to test his loyalty. “In late 1937,” we read here, “Stalin tested Mikoyan’s commitment by dispatching him to Armenia with a list of three hundred victims to be arrested. Mikoyan signed it but he crossed off one friend. The man was arrested anyway.”
*
While in Siberia, Dostoevsky read some stories by a writer who signed himself “L.T.” Dostoevsky liked the stories but he said, “I believe he will write very little,” adding, “but perhaps I am wrong.” He sure was! “L.T.” stood for Leo Tolstoy, one of the most prolific writers of all time.
*
Though contemporaries, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky avoided each other. But the last book Tolstoy read shortly before his death was Dostoevsky”s BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, perhaps because his home situation, from which he was running away, was more Dostoevskian than Tolstoyan.
*
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky shared one thing in common: they didn’t much care for Shakespeare.
*
Readers sometimes complain that I don’t always answer questions. The truth is everything I write is an answer to a specific question, even when the questioner is anonymous and even when the question is disguised verbal vandalism and hooliganism. Case in point: on a number of occasions I have been asked if my mother was a concubine in a Turkish harem. My mother became an orphan at the age of one and was brought up by French Catholic nuns in Lebanon. Instead of lullabies she sang Gregorian chant to me, which to this day is my favorite kind of music – music in its purest form: simple, accessible, melodic, incandescent, with none of the technical fireworks of J.S.Bach or the rhetoric of Beethoven.
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Whenever I read an ugly e-mail from an Armenian, I cannot help wondering: what if in our case the concept of survival of the fittest should be replaced with the concept of survival of the nastiest?
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There are open minds and closed minds, but when an Armenian decides to close his mind, he locks it with seven rusty keys.
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Why is it that some Armenians use the massacres as a license to do to civilized discourse what the Turks did to us? And more often than not, they are the very same Armenians who demand our unconditional love on grounds of Armenianism.
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Writes Denis Donikian: “At one time or another we have all been victims of Armenianism.” Perhaps because no one has yet defined what Armenianism is and every Armenian thinks his own brand is the only true one.
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Friday, September 03, 2004
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BAYROU ON TURKS.
MONTEFIORE ON MIKOYAN.
AXIOMS.
MEMO TO MY CRITICS.
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Francois Bayrou, identified as the President of the UDF, in a recent interview published in LE POINT (August 5, 2004): “Turkey’s geography, history, and sociology are not European. Its anthropology is not the same as ours. During a recent conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Nayyip Erdogan, he said: ‘For us, Europe must be a place where different civilizations meet and coexist,” thus conceding that our civilizations are indeed different. In order to qualify as a member of the European Union, Turkey must meet certain criteria. Even the recognition of the Armenian genocide, an indispensable condition in our eyes, is open to negotiation and compromise. That’s not the real stumbling bloc. The real stumbling bloc is the question: Is Turkey’s membership compatible with the political unity of Europe? My answer is, No.”
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Simon Montefiore on Anastas Mikoyan: “This Armenian who had studied for the priesthood like Stalin himself, was slim, circumspect, wily and industrious, with black hair, moustache and flashing eyes, a broken aquiline nose and a taste for immaculate clothes that, even when clad in his usual tunic and boots, lent him the air of a lithe dandy. Highly intelligent with the driest of wits, he had a gift for languages, understanding English, and, in 1931, he taught himself German by translating DAS KAPITAL.” (And to think that most people can’t understand DAS KAPITAL even when they read it in their mother tongue).
*
We know what we think and how we feel. It is only by knowing what others think and feel that we may acquire a better understanding of our fellow men, and by extension, of the world in which we live – that is to say, reality.
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Can we really understand ourselves if we don’t understand others? And if we don’t understand others, what can we really understand?
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Understanding of reality is a seamless web. Partial understanding might as well be misunderstanding, and action based on misunderstanding is bound to fail.
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Memo to my anonymous critics: “The merit of a criticism is diminished when the critic is too afraid to identify himself.”
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Saturday, September 04, 2004
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THE ORIGIN OF WISDOM.
SOCRATES AND ERASMUS.
PERVERTED PATRIOTISM.
ARMENIAN-HATERS.
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All wisdom begins with the realization that what we know is only a very small fraction of knowledge, and very often so small that it would be more accurate to admit, like Socrates, that all we know for certain is that we don’t know.
*
And speaking of Socrates: there are people who reject ideas simply because they are new ideas. Whenever in history great men, like Socrates, have been persecuted, you can be sure of one thing: the persecution was organized by such people, namely, the scum of the earth who, in the words of Erasmus, prefer “the smell of their excrement,” simply because they are familiar with it.
*
Where hooligans are allowed to hijack the word “patriotism,” love of country becomes hatred of fellow countrymen.
*
To those who at one time or another have accused me of being an Armenian-hater, I say: You have no idea what you are saying. A real Armenian-hater is one who hates Turks not because they massacred us, but because they didn’t do a more thorough job; and I happen to be personally acquainted with such an Armenian, and he happens to be a genuine, bona fide, dyed-in-the wool born-again Christian whose every other line is a quote from the Bible. And he feels as he does because he is convinced Armenians are evil and the Turks massacred them because they were following orders from God – not their Allah, be it noted, but our God who can do no wrong. And if you were to say, I should be ashamed to admit that I have such friends, I will reply: I have made it my business to understand all kinds of Armenians and not just a fraction of them.
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
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To speak of the wisdom of propaganda is like speaking of the shadow of a non-existent object in a dark room.
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Fascists make good speechifiers, but I see more eloquence in the braying of an ass.
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Two individuals from two different cultural environments do not speak the same language even when they speak the same language.
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Confucius: “Clever talk and a pretentious manner are seldom found in the Good.”
A variant translation: “A garbage-mouth cannot harbor a golden tongue.”
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I am not in the business of changing anything. I am in the business of understanding, and whenever I am allowed, to share my understanding.
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When a reader tells me he hates what I write, I make an effort to be more hateful. I don’t write to entertain, amuse, and flatter.
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All censors are cowards because they are afraid of ideas, especially ideas that will expose them as cowards.
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Judge a tree by its fruit, a man by his ideas, and a belief system by its history.
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To say nothing is better than to call someone an ignoramus, especially if he is one.
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An easy riddle: “What does an Armenian with an opinion have in common with the Rock of Gibraltar?”
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Friday, September 17, 2004
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AGAINST TURKISH MEMBERSHIP IN THE EU.
ON THE ORIGINS OF PROVERBS.
WAS KOMITAS A TURK?
THE FALLACY OF CENSORSHIP.
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In an interview published in LE POINT (Paris, August 12, 2004) Pierre Moscovici, a member of the European Parliament, cites the following three reasons why Turkey cannot be admitted into the European Union: “The role of the military on the margins of the regime;
the rights of minorities, notably that of the Kurds; and
the recognition of the Armenian genocide – this final point is for me decisive.”
*
If “to kill with words is also murder” (German proverb), who among us will dare to plead not guilty to the crime of massacre?
*
Anonymous: “Let not your tongue cut your throat.”
*
More and more frequently now, in English-language books of quotations, Armenian proverbs are identified as Turkish. Since no one has ever come forward and said: “I was there when this proverb was first spoken,” I suppose, any nation can identify a proverb as its own. The same applies to the origin of dishes and folk tunes.
*
I remember to have read somewhere that in some Turkish reference works Komitas is identified as a Turkish musician, I suppose, in the same way that Mikoyan and Khachaturian are identified as “Soviet,” Saroyan as “American,” and Adamov as “French.” But since present-day Turkey has disassociated itself from its Ottoman past and its many crimes against humanity, it would be more accurate to use the qualifier “Ottoman” in reference to Armenian proverbs and personalities who were active in Istanbul before World War I.
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By silencing a writer and suppressing his testimony, censorship attempts to arrest the advance of time, but the best it can do is to slow it down and to postpone the final catastrophe.
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Whenever I reflect that a fellow Armenian, who insults me or bans me from a forum, would have betrayed me to the authorities or put a bullet in my neck in a different time, place, and regime, I feel like celebrating.
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To how many of my Armenian critics I could say: “Your aim is not to contradict but to murder with words.”
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Saturday, September 18, 2004
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ON PROPAGANDA AND
RELATED ATROCITIES.
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Propaganda is the enemy of literature because literature is the enemy of propaganda.
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Speechifiers and sermonizers are not used to being contradicted.
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One of our elder statesmen once told me: “Why do you bother replying to your readers? F*** them!” To which I remember to have replied: “No, I refuse to adopt our leaders as my role models.”
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I write brief sentences to fit the attention span of my readers. To write long paragraphs would be like serving gourmet dishes to addicts of junk food.
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When a jackass brays he does not expect to have the applause of his audience. But if the jackass is an Armenian he is sure to think his braying is as good if not better than an aria from DON GIOVANNI or THE BARBER OF SEVILLE.
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I grew up among survivors of the massacres who spoke Turkish among themselves. They had no illusions about their fellow men regardless of nationality. They may have been functional illiterates but they had an instinctive understanding of the role of destiny in human affairs. They didn’t make a career of hatred and a full-time job of the massacres. If someone had said to them, by writing books, newspaper articles and letters to the editor, or by delivering speeches and sermons we may be able to persuade the Turks to apologize, they would have looked at him in silent astonishment as if to say: “Of the forty-four types of insanity I have heard about, this must be one of them.”
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Thursday, August 05, 2004
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CRITICISM AND HATRED.
WHY IS ISRAEL PRO-TURKISH?
A REVERSAL OF ROLES.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONS.
THE IRRELEVANCE OF LITERATURE.
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The difference between being critical of American politics and being anti-American is that, Michael Moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is critical, whereas Muslim fanatics are anti-American.
*
Something similar could be said of anti-Armenianism and of being critical of Armenian politics. Movses Khorenatsi, Yeghishe, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zohrab, Zarian, Massikian, Shahnour and many others were critical of Armenian politics, but Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat were anti-Armenian.
*
Perhaps one reason the Israelis are pro-Turkish is that they would like to do to Palestinians what the Turks did to us. And I cannot help wondering what would have happened had the Ottoman Empire been an Armenian Empire and the Turks our “Armenians.” One guess: We would have done to them what we did to the Azeris in Karabagh (more or less), and having done so we would brag about it; and when asked to admit responsibility or guilt we would accuse our accusers of anti-Armenianism sure in the knowledge that we would have the support and understanding of all imperial powers who at one time or another had been in our position.
*
Like individuals, nations too have their psychological complexes. This is not a secret. Anyone in a leadership position knows this but it is to his advantage to exploit these complexes rather than to analyze them, if only because analyzing them may expose him as a wheeler-dealer whose number one concern is number one but who must pretend otherwise by parading as a selfless and humble servant of the nation.
*
Sartre is right. Literature solves nothing and helps no one. Our history is very clear on this point. Writing for Armenians is a waste of time. But I go on because Armenianism has been hijacked by rascals and standing by and saying nothing is as difficult as witnessing a gang rape and assuming a passive stance. So what if everything I have said so far doesn’t even amount to a whisper on a deserted street in the middle of the night?
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Friday, August 06, 2004
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DEFINING PROPAGANDA.
POWER STRUCTURES AND DISSIDENTS.
ARMENIAN HISTORY 101.
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One Way to define propaganda is to say that it is anything and everything that a power structure tells you.
*
If a common crook or a pathological liar tells you 2+2=4, believe it. But if a power structure tells you the same thing, believe it not.
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To recycle propaganda means admitting two things at once: “I am a dupe,” and “I hate to think for myself.”
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Power structures are not monolithic entities; rather, they have internal fissures and divisions with constantly shifting alliances. A smart Armenian who wants to survive in our environment must sooner or later associate himself with and be subservient to either a boss, bishop or benefactor, all of whom unite only against a common adversary, dissidents. That may explain why Armenian dissidents are an extinct species today.
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The French beheaded their king, the Russians executed their czar, and the Italians hanged Mussolini. Our leaders have managed to survive because they brainwashed us to believe we owe our survival to them.
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“When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch,” the Bible tells us. Our history in a nutshell.
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When the blind leads the blind and the inevitable happens, should we call that leading or misleading?
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When the blind lead the blind and if both are Armenian, they will brag about their survival even as they lament over their shattered bones.
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Saturday, August 07, 2004
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THE USES AND ABUSES OF PATRIOTISM.
DEFINING HOMELAND.
WHAT IS CULTURE?
MEMO TO A CRITIC.
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Why is it that some Armenians are not emotionally and intellectually equipped to disagree without engaging in verbal abuse? And to think that more often than not they are the very same Armenians who reject the label “Ottomanized.” And then there are Armenians who think there is nothing wrong in hating a fellow Armenian or an entire class of them so long as it’s in the name of patriotism; and their definition of patriotism is so narrow that any other definition is dismissed as treason.
*
What is patriotism? Let’s see if we can define it or at least take a step in the right direction. If we say it is love of country (in the sense of homeland) then we shall have to define country: is it the real estate? — the mountains, lakes, rivers and valleys? Is it the Armenian people as a whole? Is it the present regime or the administration of justice? Is it the culture? Things, as you may begin to suspect, are not as simple as they may appear to be at first sight.
*
If by country we mean the land, then we must ask the question: In what way Armenian mud is different from Turkish mud?
If it is the people: Does that mean you are less of a patriot if you hate or disagree with even a single fellow Armenian?
If it is our culture: What is culture? Or, who is qualified to define it? – a politician (whose central concern is power), a priest? (whose business is saving souls), or a writer (whose aim is to understand reality by separating fact from propaganda)?
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If, on the other hand, we adopt Goethe’s definition of homeland (“Wherever a man is allowed to work and provide for his family”) we may have to agree that Armenians of the Diaspora and Armenians in the Homeland who wish to emigrate (and I am told everyone except policemen and politicians does), Armenian patriotism might as well be an oxymoron.
*
It took me about three decades to figure out what’s what and who’s who in our environment. Instead of calling me names or identifying me as an enemy of the people, I suggest you give yourself a little more time before you jump to conclusions – unless of course you happen to be one of our dime-a-dozen geniuses or self-appointed experts on any given subject born with superior powers of observation and understanding. In which case you should get busy sermonizing and speechifying in an effort not only to convert skeptics like me but also to re-interpret the work of many of our ablest writers who at one time or another adopted a critical stance.
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