book

Thursday, March 26, 2009
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ON REVOLUTION
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The average layman may not understand the exact meaning of subprime mortgages, hedge funds, toxic assets, derivatives, and all the complexities of the present economic crisis, but he understands greed when he sees it, and recognizes a bloodsucker when he sees one.
Anger is negative, we are told. Anger does not solve problems.
Where would revolutions be without anger?
Where would America be without its Revolution?
Americans today, especially the homeless and the unemployed who number by the million, have many more reasons to be angry and to revolt against their financial officers on Wall Street and representatives in Washington than they had against the mad English king.
You say, anger is negative?
I say, what could be more positive than anger against corruption, greed, incompetence, and injustice?
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Even if they are allowed to keep their bonuses, the CEOs will spend it in fear, they will live in fear, and they may even go underground for the duration. Some day they may even realize that accepting those bonuses was the dumbest thing they ever did.
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Organized religions have victimized more innocent civilians than organized crime. The same could be said of organized ideologies, including nationalism, communism, and capitalism.
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Under a corrupt or authoritarian regime, law and order might as well be synonymous with fear and lawlessness.
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
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RIFFRAFF
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A so-called young financial expert on TV speaking of Wall Street chief executive officers: “Their salaries could be as low as $75,000...they survive on bonuses...”
Bernard Madoff ruined about 5000 investors. Wall Street CEOs ruined the global economy. They should be grateful that so far they haven't been arrested. The very least they can do is work for minimum wage until they correct their blunders. But of course, not being a financial expert, I can rely only on my common sense, which, it seems, flies out the window when applied to Wall Street riffraff. And this so-called young whippersnapper thinks he will be quelling the anger of the unemployed and homeless on the grounds that these poor CEOs work for next to nothing?
*
Speaking of American movies, a French critic once described them as “technical perfection in the service of cretinism.” What we have here is financial expertise in the service of moronism!
Consider the following scenario: Your house is on fire. Firefighters arrive and after pouring gasoline instead of water they expect you to be grateful to them. Thank you for doing such a great job. Here, please accept this small check as a token of my appreciation.
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Another scenario: You hire a contractor to fix your old house. He in turn hires electricians, plumbers, dry-wallers, roofers, and so on. But by the time they are through the house is torn down as in the story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. At which point, the contractor demands to be paid the agreed on amount plus a bonus.
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We are told the CEOs who bankrupted AIG have already quit. So what? Let's get them back and let them work for a dollar a year. Liddy is doing it. Is decency on Wall Street limited to only one CEO?
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Once upon a time, when Communists spoke of Wall Street, they meant everything that was evil in the capitalist system. Who could have foreseen that some day Wall Street would be perceived as such by the whole world, including Americans?
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Saturday, March 28, 2009
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MEN AND WOMEN
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According to a study conducted by a Vatican theologian, men and women are tempted by the same sins but in different order of frequency. Men are tempted by women, food, laziness, anger, vanity, envy, and avarice; and women by vanity, envy, anger, men, food, avarice, and laziness.
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THE SINS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT
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To support only writers who are pro-establishment is to be against literature and for prostitution.
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A NEW BOOK
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In a recent issue of LE POINT (Paris, March 3, 2009) I read the following ad for Gilbert Sinoué's EREVAN:
“The great novel of the Armenian people.”
“A great novel that speaks of a terrible truth.”
“Written with intense emotion, but also with justice.”
“Gilbert Sinoué makes us relive the tragedy of an entire people.”
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CARLOS FUENTES
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“It makes no difference whether you surrender your ass or your conscience: you will get them back in bad shape.”
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reading

Sunday, March 22, 2009
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ON MYTHS
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We either react against the ideas instilled in us during our formative years, or we treat them as infallible articles of faith and stick to them to the bitter end.
Deep inside somewhere Charents remained a nationalist even when he spoke against it; and Zarian remained an anti-nationalist even when he voiced nationalist nonsense. In a letter to a fellow Tashnak, the editor of HAIRENIK wrote: “If we treat him (Zarian) right, he may come to our side.” When he didn't, he was ignored and treated as an eccentric and a non-person. “I was told he was crazy and I stayed away from him,” a Tashnak neighbor of his once said to me, “and now you tell me he was a great writer?”
According to Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin said, “Don't touch Charents, he is on our side,” or words to that effect. But truth or God or the Reality Principle is on nobody's side.
Studied in a Christian context, Greek myths about gods who fornicate with mortals sound blasphemous as well as ridiculous. And yet, the Greek effort to explain Reality makes as much sense today as the myths invented by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theologians who have legitimized murder and massacre in the name of God.
Toynbee is right: after choosing themselves, the chosen assert moral superiority and expect everyone else to be subservient to them. You are either with us or against us, they say, and if you are against us, you don't deserve to live. Some day when mankind is finally civilized, this kind of mindset will be viewed as worthy of barbarians and serial killers.
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Monday, March 23, 2009
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CROOKS UNLIMIMTED
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What's the use of writing if you end up alienating friends and making enemies of the very same people on whose goodwill you depend for your survival? On the other hand, what's the use of writing if you are not allowed to say what must be said? I may be more popular and have a better chance to survive by making at least minimum wage if I were to write cookbooks. I am not much of a cook, granted. My repertoire is limited to hard-boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches, pilaf, and spaghetti. But I am told you don't have to be a cook to write cookbooks. A best-selling author of cookbooks once told me, “I try at least once every one of my recipes before publishing them,” thus implying many other don't. If there are dishonest politicians, incompetent chief executive officers, and fornicating bishops, why not plagiarizing cookbook writers?
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Speaking of crooks: why do you think Bernard Madoff wasn't exposed for twenty years? The answer is simple: Wall Street if full of them. Exposing him would have meant exposing themselves. And now that the bonus scandal has exploded, I am looking forward to the second act of the play – investigations, hearings, and indictments. As for the third act, I expect, very much like Watergate, it will end in the resignation, arrests, trials, and incarceration not only of CEOs but also of politicians and other fat cats. Unless of course there are so many of them that both Wall Street and Washington would be paralyzed.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
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THE PLACEBO EFFECT
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All talk of Historic Armenia belongs to the realm of archeology. In a political context, it makes as much sense as Historic Macedonia, Mongolia, or, closer to home, America.
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There are so many laws and lawyers that protect the interests of the wealthy that even God wouldn't dare to challenge them.
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Whenever a fellow Armenian contradicts me, I cannot help suspecting that he is too smart to be in a position to plead ignorance, and that his disagreement is more like a game, a challenge, or a thoughtlessly adopted political agenda.
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A movement that fails to evolve a leader is as doomed as one that evolves two of them.
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To label ideas as pro- or anti-Armenian can be misleading because what may be in our interests today may be against the Reality Principle tomorrow, as our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire discovered. After all, not all wars of liberation end in liberation, and “freedom or death” makes sense only if it means freedom for the majority. To confuse the placebo effect of some ideas with objective reality may result in disaster.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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READING
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Books are my favorite companions. I don't care where I live as long as there is a good library in the neighborhood. Between a hell with books and a heaven without them, I would choose hell any day.
Once, a few years ago, after observing the monotony of my daily routine and drab surroundings, a childhood friend commented, in my place he would have committed suicide. He promised to share his home and wealth with me if I agreed to return to Athens. Shortly thereafter he went bankrupt and died of a heart attack. I was reminded of this episode while reading Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES (1048 pages). In almost every other entry he speaks of encounters and conversations with the likes of Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Krishnamurti. And yet, he suffers from fits of depression and requires the constant care of quacks, shrinks, and swamis. There are endless passages about dreams, nightmares, meditation techniques, yoga, and mystical nonsense – passages I now skip for the sake of entries like the following:
“After dinner, Aldous [Huxley] and I got in a corner. He was a little drunk, and started on a favorite topic: the poorness of all literature. Homer was terribly overrated, Dante was hopelessly limited, Shakespeare was such a stupid man, Goethe was such a bore, Tolstoy was silly, etc. etc.” (page 92).
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this and that

Thursday, March 19, 2009
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SWINE
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Again and again we are told by so-called experts in Washington that the bonuses of the chief executive officers on Wall Street are such an insignificant fraction of the total bailout that it is a waste of time discussing them. These gentlemen must be blind not to see that a million dollars is a million dollars; it may be small change to some, but they are a fortune to the rest of mankind who must work for a living. And I suspect the outrage is less about the bonuses themselves and more about the fact that the very same individuals who are responsible for the present crisis have the judgment and manners of greedy swine.
*
C.G. Jung: "Even in our civilization, the people who form, psychologically speaking, the lowest stratum, live almost as unconsciously as primitive races."
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The words of an honest man don’t need definitions; but the commas of a crook should be carefully examined under a microscope.
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We are told by scientists that we are made of stardust, and it is the dust that survives.
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I knew I was going places when a number of Oriental carpet dealers wanted to hire my services as reviewer and translator of their books. These gentlemen are not the kind that would waste their money carelessly.
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It is men without honor who are the first to rise in defense of their honor.
#
Friday, March 20, 2009
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ON A NUMBER OF THINGS
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Obama wants to negotiate with Iran. I suspect Iranians will not fall for his rhetoric as readily as those who voted for him. That's because they have their own brand of rhetoric; and when rhetoric meets rhetoric the result is bound to be a dead end.
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Talaat's blunder: left to their own devices, Armenians would have done a far more through job on themselves.
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While listening to the televised sermon of a bishop, I could not help thinking: “I don't believe a word he says, and I doubt if he does.”
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Bonus: What's a five-letter word that starts with a “b” that stands for bastard, and ends with an “s” that stands for swine?
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Armenian Ottomanism: alienating a fellow Armenian in the name of patriotism.
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Atheism: If an ant were to speak to me and say, “I don't believe in your existence,” would I step on it?
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Benefactors: Take away their money and what have you got? An empty suit, albeit an expensive one. Am I alienating benefactors? Hell no! What I say has as much effect on them as the fart of an ant.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
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JOHN UPDIKE
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After COUPLES, I read everything he wrote, and he wrote a great deal, and he knew how to write -- fiction as well as criticism and poetry. He was an inspired craftsman. His nonfiction was as good as his fiction, which is not something that can be said about such contemporaries of his as Mailer, Bellow, and Roth. But somewhere along the line – it may have been after the second or third RABBIT – I gave up reading him.
Shortly before he died a few days ago I read a critical essay about him by a young American writer in whose last sentence Updike was dismissed as an “asshole.” (I later learned this critic had committed suicide.)
I am now reading Updike's TOWARD THE END OF TIME (1997), an autobiographical novel about old age that, as always with Updike, brims with sharp observations and verbal felicities. And now I am looking forward to reading his posthumous works – diaries, notebooks, correspondence, perhaps even an unfinished novel and several big biographies.
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Some random samples of Updike's descriptive skill:
“Girls with orange hair hanging like seaweed or loosely bound with gold barrettes like pirate treasure.”
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“A runty senior with a huge mane of black hair that for diving he did up in a hairband like a Greek girl.”
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“The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.”
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“An aluminum screen door with a misadjusted pneumatic attachment that snaps like lightning the first two-thirds of its arc and then closes the last third slow as a clock ticking.”
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reflections

Sunday, March 15, 2009
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BOOKS IN MY LIFE
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I grew up in time of war – two wars, as a matter of fact: World War II and the Greek Civil War. I grew up in a house without books. It was only at the age of fourteen that I read my first book – WITH FIRE AND SWORD by the Polish Nobelist Henrik Sienkiewicz: a historical novel of WAR-AND-PEACE dimensions, but less Tolstoy and more Dumas pére and Errol Flynn. The only thing I remember about it today is the name of the central character, Pan Mikael Volodiovsky. I read it in an Armenian translation done by a Mekhitarist monk. At one time the Mekhitarists were formidable translators and the most prolific of them all was Arsen Ghazikian, who single-handed translated all the epic poems of the Western canon from Homer to THE SONG OF ROLAND, among many other Greek and Latin classics. Two of his students, Padre Elia (Yeghia) Pachikian and Mesrob Janashian, were my teachers. Janashian was also the author of a highly detailed and competent HISTORY OF MODERN WEST-ARMENIAN LITERATURE.
After FIRE AND SWORD I chanced on a thin paperback, Dostoevsky's THE GAMBLER, and was hooked on the Russians. What fascinated me about Dostoevsky was the fact that his characters spoke their mind, held nothing back, refused to stand on ceremony or consider what others may think of them. In that sense, they were more authentic human beings than anyone I had ever met. Chekhov was different. His characters impressed me as people I had known or could have known. There was nothing bizarre or incomprehensible about them.
The Russians, and I include Tolstoy and Turgenev, made me realize that I wasn't alone, and whenever I try to reread them now I also realize that you can't go home again.
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Monday, March 16, 2009
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THOMAS MANN
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On a visit to Venice, a middle-aged German writer falls for a beautiful Polish boy on the beach, postpones his return home, and dies of cholera. (As a youth, Mann idolized Wagner, who also died in Venice.) I first read DEATH IN VENICE in Venice, at the age of fifteen, in an Italian translation. It left me cold. Much ado about nothing, I thought. Ten years later I read it again, this time in an English translation, with the same result. But I refused to give up on Mann and with CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN I got religion. Immediately after I read and reread THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, and DOKTOR FAUSTUS the way a born-again reads and rereads the Bible.
Two things fascinated me about Mann: his subtle humor and his expertise on a wide range of subjects. When he expanded the Biblical story of Joseph into a four- volume, 2000-page long novel, for instance, he acquired an entire library on both the Bible and ancient Egypt. To write about the life of a modern composer, he befriended and pumped several famous musicologists, composers, and conductors, among them Adorno, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter (who happened to be a next-door neighbor as well his daughter's secret lover). In politics and philosophy, he could argue both sides of any issue – an advantage over Shaw, Sartre, and Nabokov who took sides with disastrous results -- Shaw and Sartre in their support of totalitarian regimes, and Nabokov in his defense of the war in Vietnam.
Mann has had his share of critics: Shaw ignored him, Sartre and Nabokov dismissed him as a bourgeois, Brecht called him “a short-story writer," Stefan Zweig thought he was long-winded, Furtwaengler accused him of changing nationalities as if they were shirts, and Hitler wanted him assassinated -- some said because THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN outsold MEIN KAMPF.
*
Mann on Hitler:
“Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
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“The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible, inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.”
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Mann on what it takes:
“The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made.”
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“The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
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When asked by a journalist what had motivated him to dedicate most of his adult life to writing his monumental multi-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee replied with a single word: “Curiosity.”
Of the twelve volumes, my favorite is the 12th, subtitled RECONSIDERATIONS. Here Toynbee replies to his critics – an astonishingly large number of them from all over the world. Sometimes he is willing to admit error, at others he reaffirms his position and goes further. Case in point: “Spate's failure to keep his knowledge of the Jordan valley's history up to date would have been venial if the tone of his criticism had not been supercilious. However, my concern with Spate is not to return his fire but to follow out the second thoughts into which I have been stung by the stimulating shot with which he has peppered me.”
One reason I enjoy reading and rereading RECONSIDERATIONS is its quintessentially unArmenian tone of tolerance and acceptance of dissent as worthy of consideration.
Toynbee's general theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires goes something like this: civilizations grow by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities, and decline when the leaders fail to react creatively.” In his own words: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, artistic, and scientific] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these elements have fallen into discord.”
All general theories are vulnerable to contradiction and criticism. Plato's were criticized by his student, Aristotle, Marx's by Keynes, Spengler's by Jacques Maritain and Teilhard de Chardin, and Toynbee's by a wide range of specialists who saw in him an interloper who had dared to exploit their findings to serve his own alien agenda.
In my view, Toynbee's greatest merit is not his general theory but the many brilliant observations on the human condition. Random samples follows:
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On racial superiority:
“The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis...all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.”
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On critics:
“Whenever a reviewer is tempted to treat an author as a dart-board he should remember that the missile which his hand is itching to lance is not a dart but a boomerang.”
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On chauvinism:
“Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as a self-adjudicated reward for success, but as a self-exculpating compensation for failure.” (I think of these lines whenever I hear one of our charlatans bragging about our celebrities and achievements.)
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“The egocentric illusion has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.”
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On pessimism and optimism:
“The truth is that Valéry's pessimism and Gibbon's optimism are, both alike, rationalizing of feelings that are irrationally subjective.”
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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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Whether God exists or not is not the problem. The problem, the real problem, the existential problem is placing as great a distance between us and the Devil as possible. Likewise, knowing the truth is not the problem. The problem is recognizing a deceiver when we see one.
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Because I criticize Armenians I am accused of anti-Armenianism; and because some Turks quote me, I am accused of pro-Ottomanism. I may be wrong about everything but I have no doubt whatever in my mind that no one, not even the very best among us, are beyond criticism. And not to criticize in the name of patriotism is to support the corrupt and the incompetent, and when things go wrong, to blame the enemy who probably was also duped into supporting lying riffraff.
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Among us, politics (or the art of the possible) is confused with ideology (the art of the impossible), and inevitably, ideology is confused with theology (the art of the incomprehensible), and theology is confused with pathology. Some day, in a future progressive and enlightened Armenian democracy, if our partisans are arrested and put on trial, they will be absolutely right in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
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As solitary creatures, Armenian writers have been perennial victims of political parties and their satellite institutions, all of which have a tendency to divide their fellow Armenians into friends and enemies or yes-men and dissidents. As for dialogue: who has ever heard of such a thing in an Ottoman or Soviet environment, or, for that matter, in a crypto-Ottoman or neo-Stalinist context?
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literature

Thursday, March 12, 2009
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ON OPTIMISM
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If all our writers, from Khorenatsi to Zarian, have so far failed to penetrate the thick walls raised by our political and religious leaders, whatever possesses me into thinking I have a better chance? And what kind of arrogance bordering on pathological megalomania is it that makes our Turcocentric ghazetajis entertain the illusion they will have better luck with the Turks? Perhaps there is a Don Quixote in all of us – a Don with the IQ of Rosinante, or is it Sancho Panza's jackass?
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“Please, don't tell my mother I am a CEO on Wall Street. She thinks I am a pimp.”
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When millionaires declare bankruptcy, they do so to protect their millions. Some laws, it seems, are made by crooks, for crooks.
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In his autobiography,Theodore Reik, a Freudian psychoanalyst, writes that for many years he was deeply in love with a very attractive woman. But when he finally married her, the wedding night was a disaster. He seems to be saying, a penetrating awareness of the other is achieved only by penetration.
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Both pessimism and optimism are more or less legitimate ways of forecasting the future. Sometimes pessimists are right, and sometimes optimists. But optimists are never right if their optimism is motivated by wishful thinking. Reality advances on a different plane from our wishes. That’s why, even when our dreams come true they have a tendency to turn into nightmares.
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Friday, March 13, 2009
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REFLECTIONS ON OUR HISTORY
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“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
Our history in a nutshell.
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There are two kinds of nations: those who divide and conquer, and those who divide themselves and are conquered.
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The function of a belief system or ideology is to raise a wall between us and our perception of reality. The function of our nationalist historians, leadership, and educational system is to cover up this fact. And the function of our writers is to remind us of it. There are many references to this fact in our literature. (See below.)
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To those who say, how could little Armenia resist the overwhelming might of ruthless empire builders like Genghis Khan (13th century), Timurlang (14th century), and Suleiman the Magnificent (16th century), my answer is: our predisposition for dividing ourselves was in full swing long before these gentlemen went on the warpath. Listen to our 5th-century historian, Yeghishé:
“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil onces.”
Elsewhere: “We may not be allowed to question the integrity of princes, but neither should we praise men who pit themselves against the Will of God” (that is, the Reality Principle).
And more to the point:
“In the same way that a man cannot serve two masters, a nation cannot have two kings. If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish.”
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Am I rubbing salt in our wound? Why not? -- if the wound is self-inflicted.
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Raffi: “An Armenian's worst enemies are not odars but Armenians.”
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Gostan Zarian: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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Charents: “O Armenian people, your salvation lies only in your collective powers.”
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For more on this subject, see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS.
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Saturday, March 14, 2009
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LITERATURE
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The only time I am referred to as a writer by our commissars is when they tell me it is my duty as a patriotic Armenians to echo their sentiments and thoughts. You say I have said this before? How flattering! Not only you read me but you also remember what I say.
*
Money goes to money, they say. Something very similar happens to culture too. Consider the situation of 20th-century French literature, one of the most highly developed and influential in the world: the three playwrights who revolutionized the French theater (Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco) were an Irishman, an Armenian, and a Romanian respectively). And now consider the situation of Armenian literature at the other end of the spectrum: not only we don’t encourage or welcome outside contribution, but we also alienate and silence our own (from Abovian to Zarian). Figure that one out if you can.
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comments

Sunday, March 8, 2009
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IF
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If I speak well of some Turks it's because I have heard about good Turks and even met and dealt with some of them. If I am critical of my fellow Armenians it's because, very much like the rest of mankind, we are far from perfect. If, on the other hand, you think Armenians are beyond criticism, I can only say, you must be just about the luckiest man on earth because obviously so far you have dealt only with good Armenians. Either that or you are a nationalist, that is to say, blind in one eye.
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I was brought up to believe reality is not what I see but what I was told to see. I have wasted so much time seeings things that weren't there.
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Reading teaches us that our blunders, defeats, and humiliations are not unique to us and that countless others have been through the very same experiences.
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It’s not easy civilizing barbarians. But what is infinitely harder is civilizing barbarians who brag about their past civilization.
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Monday, March 9, 2009
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KILLERS
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“But he was such a kind man!” neighbors say of a serial killer. I am not implying kindness is suspect. What I am saying is that there is a killer in all of us.
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Regardless of what you say, you will have your share of critics who belong to the Richelieu school of criticism that says, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”
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I don't expect to be published in a newspaper or magazine where archbishops advertise the sale of Oriental rugs in their cathedral. Neither do I expect to be welcome in an Internet discussion forum whose moderator is the son of a bishop or the hireling of a benefactor.
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To be an honest man means to make many enemies and very few friends.
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When in a hurry, go slower than your normal speed.
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“After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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ON JUSTICE
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I gave up publishing books on the day I realized we had more writers than readers. That may well be another first for us -- first nation to produce more writers than readers, and first nation to massacre more trees per capita than any other nation on earth. One thousand academics in the United States alone – and academics, as everyone knows, must either publish or perish. And then we have, what a friend of mine calls, “a massacre mafia” -- academics whose field is the Genocide and who review and promote books written only by members, they ignore all others.
Once when I wrote something to the effect that massacre books may promote a victim mentality, several reader wrote in protest to say that they don't feel like victims. But suppose a member of your family has been traumatized by a criminal, say, like a rapist. Would you remind her of the rape every chance you get? You may deceive yourself into thinking you are not a victim on the conscious level, but what about your subconscious where the real action is?
Writing books may well be another way of establishing our immortality and as such a legitimate reaction to genocide, granted. But writing books that no one reads?
Like the offspring of all oppressed and victimized people we are first and foremost bundles of unsettled scores for whom verbal abuse is the only safe way to get even. Instead of constantly reminding us of our victimhood, we should be taught the value of such mantras as “Let the dead bury their dead,” and “What's done is done and cannot be undone.” I am not promoting amnesia. What I am doing is reacting against our masochists.
Speaking about verbal abuse: once when I took it upon myself to remind a garbage mouth reader that insulting me simply because he disagrees with me is wrong, he said, “Sue me!” thus expressing an awareness of the fact that the rule of law is mightier than bitching, and one competently written legal brief is worth a thousand lamentations and as many insults.
You want justice? Get a lawyer.
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Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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The real conflict is not between ideologies or belief systems but between those who cling to what they have (even when obtained by piracy or exploitation) and those who have nothing to lose.
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Sometimes the only way to disarm your accusers is by pleading guilty to crimes that didn't even cross your imagination to commit. It is not easy to satisfy someone who has tasted blood.
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The ideal citizen is a fool who allows himself to be brainwashed and manipulated. All others are classified as trouble-makers and malcontents. That's the way it is with gravediggers – they prefer to deal with corpses.
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I don't write to have anyone's agreement. I write the kind of things I would have liked to have read in my formative years when I was programmed not to think for myself.
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We live as though our problems were insoluble; but we argue as if we had a minimum of two solutions for every one of our problems.
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Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don’t have to be corrected. Sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense and decency.
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question

Thursday, March 5, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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When I was a total ignoramus, I always assumed I knew more than the average Joe I happened to be dealing with. Now it's the other way around: I always assume to know less.
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You can tell how ignorant a man is by how hard he tries to make you think he knows better.
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The most ungodly people are those who speak in His name, and the most dangerous dupes are those who believe them.
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I reject the notion that to be a good Armenian means to be a bundle of prejudices and nurse an unsettled score. Which amounts to saying, to be a good Armenian means to be a bad human being.
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What's uppermost in the mind of a successful writer is to live up to his reputation. Which is why as a marginal scribbler and a total failure I find my status both liberating and stimulating.
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It is written: “No one can be as dangerous as the man who has nothing to lose.”
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The greatest challenge a country faces is not electing great leaders but leaders who are the least threat to its welfare. As for our unelected bosses, bishops, and benefactors: they might as well be our Bermuda Triangle.
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Our ghazetajis operate on the assumption that the average Armenian reader prefers to read about little successes (no matter how imaginary) than colossal failures (no matter how real). Never underestimate the cunning of idiots.
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Prejudice allows a man to tailor his questions to fit his answers.
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If you don't know, pretend to know. Few people will have the time and appetite to get into a useless argument with a worthless phony. At least, that has been my experience.
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Friday, March 6, 2009
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MOSAIC
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Truth as a mosaic of lies -- like a pleasing design made of worthless pieces of glass or stone.
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God as a point of reference or God as a means to expose our failings and imperfections, yes. But God as a license to do this, that, and the other – I say that's damn close to confusing God with the Devil.
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What could be more absurd than to say, what I believe is true, what you believe is a lie. And yet...
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Let us teach ourselves to question everything, beginning with our own judgment.
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To say that ideas acquire legitimacy only when they serve our interests is to undermine the legitimacy of all ideas.
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What follows is a true story. It happened last year in a Greyhound bus in Canada. A passenger stabs another passenger – a totally unprovoked attack -- and beheads him. When arrested and tried, he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. God made him do it, he explains.
I suggest the following definition of man: a creature who cannot tell God from the Devil.
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If repetition is a crime, who is the victim? If repetition is a transgression, where is the harm?
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Saturday, March 7, 2009
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QUESTION
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Win an argument and lose a friend.
It has happened to me more than once.
Some of my worst enemies today are former friends; and they have become enemies because of a minor disagreement on an irrelevant topic.
But perhaps they were never friends, and what they lost was much more than an argument.
We are a confused bunch. No doubt about that.
We are confused because we have been shaped by alien, tyrannical, and unjust laws – laws that viewed dissent as a capital offense, and desire for self-determination (i.e. freedom), that most human of all desires, as a crime against humanity or the integrity of the empire.
When contradicted we feel threatened. There are even those among us (I call them skinheads) who see verbal abuse as a legitimate form of counter-argument.
We will be born again as human beings on the day we learn to have a friendly disagreement.
Remember my friends:
free speech is a fundamental human right,
dissent is not treason,
a political party that places its own agenda above the solidarity and welfare of the nation is not democratic but tyrannical,
and our political leaders are not bosses or representatives of god on earth but public servants.
Because I say these things, am I then your enemy?
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more......

Sunday, March 1, 2009
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TRUE STORIES
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Once upon a time I had a friend who was nice to everyone, made no enemies, was invariably generous in his assessment of others, popular with both men and women. And yet, he died friendless. This is not a judgment on my part but a confession on his. He was an Armenian writer.
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Not to love but to pretend to love. Not to believe but to pretend to believe. Not to know but to pretend to know. The world is full of them.
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Should one be tolerant of intolerance?
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Communism has been defined as state capitalism, and capitalism as socialism for Wall Street CEOs.
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The search for reason leads to insanity.
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The most comfortable seating position will give you back pain.
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There is a slave in every conformist, a revolutionary in every dissenter, an atheist in every believer, a believer in every atheist, and a Turk in every Armenian.
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Your truth is bound to be someone else's lie.
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The worst nightmare for an exemplary man or a role model would be coming face to face with his double.
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No one can be as ignorant as the man with all the answers.
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All pro-establishment assertions boil down to the motto “I'm alright Jack!”
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Monday, March 2, 2009
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SOLVING PROBLEMS
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Solving problems is easy. What's hard is implementing the solutions. Consider the present global financial crisis that enriched a few at the expense of impoverishing many.
It seems to me the solution is as clear as daylight and as simple as getting a refund for a defective or unsatisfactory item. In legal parlance: either restitution of funds acquired by the few or a jail term. If this solution is rejected on legal grounds, then all I can say is there is something wrong with the law and it should be rectified and enforced retroactively.
When a doctor kills instead of curing, he cannot plead not guilty by reason of incompetence. Incompetence should not be rewarded but punished. Why should not the same principle apply to economists and financiers whose responsibility it is to take care of the welfare or economic health of the nation?
It goes without saying that law-makers will never agree to pass a law that may expose their own incompetence or corruption or status as co-conspirators with Wall Street CEOs.
But let the world solve its problems. Let's take care of our own first.
How to solve our own problems?
Easy! De-Ottomanize, de-Stalinize, and de-tribalize.
What could be easier?
What's hard is convincing our men at the top that, very much like their counterparts in Washington and Wall Street, they are not la crème de la crème but la crème de la scum.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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AN ALIEN CULTURE
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During the war in Vietnam Americans were accused of genocide by a number of learned observers, among them Jean-Paul Sartre (see his ON GENOCIDE).
In his GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR (New York, 2008), Paul Theroux writes that whenever he identified himself as an American in Vietnam, he met with smiles and friendliness -- “no moralizing, no frowns, no scolding. Almost all the Vietnamese I met were like this – not backward-looking and vindictive scolds muttering, 'Never forget!' but compassionate souls, getting on with their lives, hopeful and humane.”
Elsewhere: “Travel in Vietnam for an American was a lesson in humility. They had lost two million civilians and a million soldiers, and we had lost more than 58,000 men and women. They did not talk about it on a personal level, at least not in a blaming way. It was not you, they said, it was your government...Blaming and complaining and looking for pity are regarded as weak traits in Vietnamese culture, revenge is wasteful. They won the war against us because they were tenacious, united, and resourceful, and that was also how they were building their economy.”
While in Tokyo, a Japanese writer tells him: “We admired MacArthur – we still do. He's like a father figure.”
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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NOT ALL QUESTIONS HAVE ANSWERS
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Unlike most of my fellow countrymen, I was born a total ignoramus, and even after a lifetime of study and reflection, my area of ignorance is so vast that what I know might as well be a grain of sand on a beach that stretches from here to the horizon.
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I learn something every day, which may suggest I have spoken as an ignoramus so many times that you would be a fool to take me seriously.
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Who could be more ignorant that a man with all the answers? And who could be more prone to error that he who asserts infallibility?
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Einstein said the universe is comprehensible but after decades of hard thinking he failed to explain it.
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Heidegger said so far no philosopher has been successful in answering the question, why things exist?
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We like to say people have the government they deserve. But I suggest no one guilty of petty larceny deserves to fry.
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If the future of our nation is more important than the past, and if we have a better chance to resolve our differences as friends rather than as enemies, why should we not call Turks our brothers?
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