crocodiles & others

Sunday, January 20, 2008
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CROCODILES
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Readers who disagree with me and engage in verbal abuse are not my enemies. They are enemies of free speech, and enemies of free speech are fascist bullies who have no place in civilized discourse for the simple reason that they are against discourse.
I did not create free speech. Free speech has been around for a long time. So have been its opponents and victims, of course. Greeks, who 2500 years again disagreed with Socrates, also rejected the concept of free speech and dialogue by silencing him permanently. We have come a long way since then. Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, was also a Nazi, and as a Nazi he deserved the hangman’s noose. But he was left alone, probably because Americans, like Armenians, don’t think highly of philosophers because they favor philomorons, like Senator McCarthy, Kennedy’s “best and brightest” of Vietnam fame, Bush and his gang of neo-cons, and televangelists and their “moral majority.” As for Russians, our “Big Brothers”: they are worse. My guess is, Russians have silenced, exiled, and exterminated more intellectuals (including our own) than all other nations combined. Chekhov was right when he predicted that 20th-century Russia would be at the mercy of “crocodiles,” that, unlike their jungle counterparts, would engage in cannibalism.
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Monday, January 21, 2008
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THE LAMENT OF A WRITER
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“I am ashamed to call myself an Armenian,” Vahé Oshagan is reported to have said when one of his books was given a negative reception in our weeklies. Once upon a time I too identified myself with my fellow Armenians to such an unreasonable degree that I was embarrassed when any one of them behaved badly. I know now that Armenians, all Armenians without exception, are first and foremost individuals before being members of a tribe or nation; and as individuals, they should be judged as individuals. If an Armenian chooses to make an ass of himself in public, so be it, that is his choice, not mine or anyone else’s. If, as an individual he is free, so am I, and I freely choose not to be responsible for his actions.
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Only dumb people assess themselves as smart, believe in their own assessment, and brag about it. And it doesn’t take much to be a victim. It takes even less to wallow in victimhood. Now then, go ahead and say, I am proud to be an Armenian because I am smart and because I come from a long line of perennial victims who have harmed no one but themselves and one another.
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Whenever odars are given the opportunity or care enough to judge us, they will do so not by what we say about ourselves but our history; and no matter how you slice it, our history is a sad one, or, to put it more bluntly, it is nothing to brag about. If we have anything to brag about, it is our literature. But who reads Armenian writers these days? Not even Armenians. If Vahé Oshagan were alive today, I would tell him he has nothing to be ashamed of. After all, his book was read and reviewed by a handful of Armenians, which means, he was better off than most of our classics.
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
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MEMO TO OUR PUNDITS
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Being popular by writing what the people want to read means pandering to the lowest common denominator, and as such it is to be avoided because it is the surest symptom of unprincipled mediocrity.
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To speak of massacres is to relive them, and to speak of Turks means to reassert them as our masters even if the assertion is made in a remote corner of our subconscious. Our aim ought to be recovering our humanity and with it our creative impetus, which will allow us to make contributions to the welfare of our fellow men regardless of race, color, and creed. Then and only then we may deserve universal support.
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Our writers are not our enemies, and yet this is how we have treated them. Being the offspring of victims does not justify us victimizing one another, especially those among us who dare to speak honestly and objectively about our failings. We all sympathize with victims, but if they insist on it day in day out, compassion fatigue may set it and sympathy may turn to annoyance and irritation.
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To our Turcocentric pundits I say, it is now time that you downsize your Turcocentrism and emphasize Armenianism by writing more about our present problems and contradictions, of which we have more than our share.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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HISTORY AS THE PROPHETESS OF TRUTH
& WELLSPRING OF PHILOSOPHY
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Diodorus of Sicily (first century B.C.), Greek historian: “Even the entirely fictitious legend of Hell is a mighty instrument for turning the hearts of men to righteousness and the fear of God. How much greater, therefore, must we conceive to be the potential ennobling influence upon character of History, the prophetess of truth and the wellspring of philosophy?”
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Nothing stays the same. Suppose in a future post-global warming and post-World War III America the Constitution is amended and the laws of taxation re-written, so that instead of collecting taxes from ethnic minorities, bureaucrats from the IRS visit homes and collect our children – boys for the army, and girls for “comfort,” that is, legalized prostitution. How long before we emigrate? It took us 600 years to get out of the Ottoman Empire and even then we had to be driven out at the point of a yataghan. Our pundits are unanimous in saying Turks are butchers, rapists, thieves, and liars. I wonder, why is it that it took us 600 years to figure that out? If my better-informed readers know the answer to that question, why is it that so far they have kept it to themselves? At least let us have the honesty to admit that we may not be as smart as we think we are, and our greatest deceivers have not been the Great Powers of the West but our own speechifiers and sermonizers parading as statesmen and pundits.
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Once upon a time we were free. Then we ceased to be free. We forgot what freedom meant. We had to be taught what freedom meant by the West, and we are still learning. Some day we may even begin to appreciate the value and importance of free speech.
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Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author: “Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”
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