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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