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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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