as i see it

Thursday, January 03, 2008
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ASKING QUESTIONS, GETTING ANSWERS
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If you want to know the truth about the Catholic Church, don’t ask the Pope. This inevitably raises the question: If you can’t trust the Pope, whom can you trust? The answer is and must be: No one with power.
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If you want to know more about Armenians, don’t ask an Armenian, who may know much more about Armenians than most odars. That’s because quantity of knowledge does not always translate to quality, or objectivity, reliability, and honesty. If you want to know the truth about Turks, would you ask a Turk?
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If you want to know more about nationalism, the worst mistake you can make is to ask a nationalist. Ask instead the victims of nationalism, and if you are an Armenian, you don’t have to look for one. Ask yourself. Armenians have been the first major victims of nationalism in the 20th century.
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John Stuart Mill: “No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgement that there are others whose opinion is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his.” Translated into dollars and cents, this means: All men are created equal, but their opinions are not.
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Speaking of the Pope and Christianity, I read the following question in a recent issue of THE SPECTATOR: “Where would Christianity be if Jesus had got 8 to 15 years with time off for good behavior?”
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Friday, January 04, 2008
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AN ABYSMALLY NAÏVE MISCONCEPTION
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In life we take many things for granted, beginning with life itself, and after life, the abysmally naïve misconception that our “betters” are better and what they say is more or less true because they are more or less honest men. In this context, however, when we speak in terms of more or less, the emphasis should be on less. To cover up the less and stress the more, leaders, all leaders, political as well as religious, like to speak in the name of God and Country, two entities that cannot speak for themselves.
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Speaking of honesty and politicians: it is said that there is nothing as dark as the prospects of an honest politician, in the same way that nothing invites violence as surely as talk of non-violence.
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Power, propaganda, deception, and violence or the threat of violence, are inseparable. As for speaking in the name of God: Who would dare to suggest that God is capable of contradicting Himself? And yet, all organized religions contradict one another.
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Greed for power is a malady and an addiction much more dangerous than all other addictions combined because it affects not a single person but the nation and sometimes even the world. Which is why one is fully justified in saying that our “betters” far from being better may well be our worst. Which is also why the only good thing about political elections is that the losers outnumber the winners.
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Saturday, January 05, 2008
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ON FAITH & RELATED ATROCITIES
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The hardest thing in life is to separate the real from what is not. To a believer, faith is more real than reality. By introducing meaning into our lives, faith makes us blind to reality. That’s one way to explain the ruthless and sadistic persecution of heretics, religious wars (one of which lasted a hundred years) and suicidal terrorists who think they will be rewarded with 72 virgins.
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The best things in life are not always free. And sometimes we pay most for the things we get for nothing.
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A dogmatist is one who thinks only God can tell him he is wrong, and he says this in the full knowledge that he is not important enough for the Good Lord to descend from the clouds in order to contradict him.
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A fool knows that the best way to win an argument is to be so irrational, offensive, and vulgar that no one in his right mind would consider getting involved in his verbal filth. Never underestimate the cunning of fools. Since they have been fools all their lives they have developed all kinds of strategies of survival.
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It is written: “Let a men meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs, rather than a fool in his folly.”
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“An Armenian’s tongue can be sharper than a Turk’s yataghan,” Zarian tells us. In what way are we different from them if we do with our tongues what they did with their yataghans?
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To recognize the fool that resides in all of us is the beginning of all wisdom.
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