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Thursday, April 16, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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You may have noticed that, when an intelligent man behaves stupidly, the reasons he invents to justify his conduct will be even more stupid.
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A fanatic will always have more enemies than a moderate because he will arouse hostility among fanatics in the opposite camp as well as moderates in his own.
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Even when our predictions come true they do so in such an unexpected manner or context that their accuracy becomes irrelevant.
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It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian civilization and to practice Ottoman barbarism.
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Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy propaganda and a total absence of ideas.
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In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans: the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans.
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The nobler the idea or ideology, the more crooks it will attract.
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Friday, April 17, 2009
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CONTEMPT
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A couple of weeks ago I was exposed to a long televised lecture on solidarity and the primacy of Etchmiadzin by a former members of the Communist Party from the Homeland, that is to say, a full-time professional divider and atheist.
Because as an orphan during World War I my mother was brought up as a Catholic by nuns, my schoolmates made fun of me and treated me as a lesser Armenian, perhaps even a coward and a renegade, all because, it seems, during the massacres, when Turkish soldiers came to arrest Armenians, the Catholics would say, “I am not an Armenian, I am a Catholic.”
A loud-mouth taxi-driver uncle of mine held me in visible contempt and even ridicule because I dared to have ambitions beyond his attainments.
The secretary of a so-called cultural foundation, himself a writer and teacher, once screamed at me: “How dare you criticize us? Just who the hell do you think you are?”
In recounting these very few but representative anecdotes, my aim here is not to preach mutual respect – that would be highly premature – but to provide an objective assessment of our present situation that may lead to an enhanced awareness of where we stand as a community and as a nation.
To those who tell me I write about our problems but fail to provide solutions, I add the following solutions to this particular problem: If you want to be loved, don't make yourself hateful; and if you want to be thought of as a smart Armenian, don't behave like a damn fool.
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Saturday, April 18, 2009
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MY FAVORITE BIBLICAL ONE-LINERS
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“Where there is no vision the people perish.”
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“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
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“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
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ON CONTRADICTIONS
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There are two kinds of contradictions: (one) the kind that leads to compromise and synthesis, and (two) the dead-end, dogmatic, or Armenian kind that arrests progress because reason is replaced with ego. Result: no vision, a house divided, death and destruction – that is, the Kingdom of the Devil.
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HEADLINE
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“I am proud of my Armenian ass,” reads the headline of an article about an attractive wench in one of our weeklies. This vulgar boast is preferable to me to still another headline by one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.
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QUESTION
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What is the difference between pride in one's ass and pride in one's ego?
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ANSWER
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One way to sum up the plot of Homer's ILIAD is to say it is about a war of egos over the abduction of an ass that resulted in the destruction of Troy and the death of countless “esh nahadags.” Because he was blind, Homer could not see this aspect of his story. As a result, he glorified militarism and heroism.
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