armenians

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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ARMENIANS SPEAK WITH A FORKED TONGUE
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I don't believe everything I am told.
Neither do I believe everything I read in the papers,
especially if it's favorable to someone;
in which case what I want to know is:
How much is he being paid for saying these things?
People lie.
People lie all the time, not only because they don't know the truth
or if they know it, it happens to be against them,
but because they feel more comfortable when they lie.
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We all lie when it comes to our problems,
and the greatest liar is he who says,
“We need solutions.”
Because that's the last thing we want.
Have you ever met a bishop willing to resign his position
or vacate his cathedral for the sake of solidarity?
Have you ever met a national benefactor
willing to utter a single word
against the worship of money?
Have you ever met a boss
who was not a loud-mouth megalomaniacal narcissist
all sound and fury signifying nothing?
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I doubt if there is a single Armenian today
who does not know what our problems and their solutions are.
Even a child knows where divisions are the problems,
solidarity is the solution.
Where worship of money is the problem,
respect for ideas is the solution.
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Our greatest intellectual of recent times was no doubt Gostan Zarian,
whose life and work prove that
we have no use for intellectuals and their ideas.
What we need is a messianic figure willing to be crucified.
But even then there is no guarantee
that will be the end of our problems.
Remember the brief life and career of another messiah
who was accused of blasphemy by his own people
and continues to be rejected by them even today,
after they have had two thousand years
to reconsider their position on the subject.
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Thursday, July 2, 2009
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PLATO, OSHAGAN, AND ZARIAN
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Everything I write is a paraphrase. I am as original as a cook who combines ingredients available in all supermarkets. If the result is edible or if what I say make sense, I am satisfied. I leave originality to my betters.
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Plato was a great philosopher, and according to some, the greatest. A 20th-century English philosopher (may have been Whitehead) once said that all of Western philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato. Was Plato an original thinker? We know that most of his DIALOGUES are based on the conversations of his teacher, Socrates. As for Socrates, very probably most of his ideas came from predecessors, who, like himself, never wrote a single line. To say otherwise is to imply that for almost a thousand years Greeks did not think, speak, discuss, and contradict one another.
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According to the Oshagans (pere et fils) Zarian was a plagiarist. What was their intention in saying that? To warn the nation not to be taken in by a charlatan or to establish themselves as the alpha males of 20th-century Armenian literature? If Zarian was a charlatan, what about the bosses, bishops, and benefactors whose support they (the Oshagans) enjoyed?
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An academic by the name of Stern (I forget his first name) once wrote a detailed study with copious footnotes and a bibliography, in which (unlike the Oshagans) he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything Sartre wrote can be traced to an illustrious predecessor. Result? Who speaks of Stern today?
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If you want originality, read the Oshagans (whose works are being translated into English, I am told). But if you want to understand what's happening to us today, read Zarian.
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Friday, July 3, 2009
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ON ARMENIANS
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There is a brown-noser and a bastard in all of us – the brown-noser is reserved for odars, the bastard for our fellow Armenians. Somewhere between the two there is a human being, but he is well-hidden.
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We will think twice before contradicting an odar, but we will contradict, insult, and crap on a fellow Armenian as if it were our patriotic duty.
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An Armenian is never as smart as he thinks he is. But that's not his real problem. His real problem is that he is incapable of imagining how unspeakably stupid he can be.
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Nikol Aghbalian is right, we are a tribal people; or, in the words of Gostan Zarian, our concept of nation begins and ends with our mountain, our valley, our village, our church, and our chickens.
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Dissatisfied with what you have just read? Your refund is in the mail.
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Saturday, July 4, 2009
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UNTITLED
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Criticizing odars is a waste of time.
They have critics of their own.
They don't need our 2 cents.
They might even tell you to go back where you came from.
I speak from experience.
If by criticizing others we try to cover up our own problems
on the grounds that nobody is perfect,
we delude ourselves.
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We may not know all there is to know about our past.
Nobody does.
But we should know one things for certain
even if it may be hard for some of us to admit it.
We should know that what we were told in our formative years,
what we read in our papers today,
and what our speechifiers and sermonizers tell us,
is irrelevant nonsense.
We should know that the dark pages in our history
are not tragedies but blunders,
and only when we see them as such
may we arrest our downward spiral
and be born again as a nation.
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