Thursday, December 24, 2009
**********************************
WE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD
***************************************************
We are few.
We are weak.
We are vulnerable,
Therefore, we are divided.
Which is like saying:
“I think.
Therefore I am not.”
*
In our environment,
the devils come disguised as angels.
I once heard a bishop say:
“We are for unity.
It's the opposition that is against it.”
Did he believe what he said?
I am not sure.
But his audience did,
on the grounds that God does not lie.
Neither does a man of God.
*
Hitler knew what he was talking about when he said,
“The bigger the lie, the more believable it will be.”
*
We are divided.
So what if we cease to exist?
*
Cease to exist? No way!
We have existed for thousands of years.
We must be doing something right.
You call a thousand years of subservience to scum existence?
You call a series of massacres and a genocide existence?
I call it worse than death.
*
Liars are not born but made
and they are made by dupes.
Who is guiltier, a liar or his audience of dupes?
*
You can rate the IQ of a nation
by the lies of its sermonizers and speechifiers.
*
We have two kinds of mortal enemies:
those who want to kill us
and those who want us to commit suicide.
We never had it so good.
#
Friday, December 25, 2009
**********************************
RAFFI'S WARNING AND
CHARENTS'S MESSAGE
***************************************************
To prove to a visiting Venetian painter what the neck of a beheaded man really looks like, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, also known as the Lawgiver, had a prisoner brought before him and beheaded.
It is said that the Venetian painter was so shocked by the bloody spectacle that he left that same night under cover of darkness.
That is the difference between that Venetian painter and us.
The Venetian left.
We stayed
We stayed even after Raffi warned us the Ottoman Empire was no place for us because Turks had no respect for human life.
We ignored Raffi's warning in the 19th century as we ignore today Charents's final message concerning our “salvation.” By “we” I mean less the people and more the leaders who speechify during the day about survival and turn into gravediggers under cover of darkness at night.
*
In my next commentary I will explain why “treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi).
#
Saturday, December 26, 2009
**********************************
TREASON & HEROISM
***************************************************
A nation or a community run by traitors will constantly emphasize the importance of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism. In such an environment, heroes will invariably outnumber traitors.
*
Traitors don't think of themselves as traitors. They think of themselves as patriots who are doing what must be done to safeguard the survival of the nation. But since in politics, as in war, there are either winners or losers, losers will be classified as traitors by their political adversaries.
Case in point: After the liberation of France, both Petain (a hero of World War I) and Laval were condemned to death by a French tribunal on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Nazis and they were therefore traitors.
*
Were Krikor Zohrab and Anastas Mikoyan traitors or heroes?
If we judge them by their actions alone (as the French tribunal chose to do) they do not qualify as heroes. Zohrab saved Talaat's life from the Sultan's secret police; and Mikoyan carried out the Stalinist purges in Armenia so thoroughly that to this day only unprincipled mediocrities survive. In other words, their actions resulted in defeat and tragedy.
*
Are our dividers in the Diaspora today heroes or traitors? If we judge them by the Biblical dictum “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” and by Charents's final “message,” they cannot be said to be heroic figures.
*
One could of course explain and justify the actions of traitors by pleading extenuating circumstances, which might as well be inadmissible in our context.
The fact remains that both Zohrab and Mikoyan were not just wrong, they were catastrophically wrong, and both paid a heavy price for their blunder. Zohrab was murdered by order of the same man whose life he saved by risking his own, and Mikoyan spent the final years of his life in constant fear to such a degree that he slept with a revolver under his pillow with the intention of killing himself if they ever came to arrest him in the middle of the night.
As for the nation: I will let you decide whether their actions contributed to our collective profile as winners or losers.
#
Sunday, December 27, 2009
**********************************
AN INVITATION TO THE BEHEADING
***************************************************
The French have a saying: “This little beast is nasty; when attacked, it defends itself.” Except that in our case, the little beast was a wounded tiger with nine lives, and we were no better than a toothless lapdog.
We were slaughtered because we have been thrice cursed with “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders” (Avedik Issahakian); and ever since these brainless leaders have been trying to convince us there is nothing wrong with them; it's the rest of the world that's rotten; and what is even more unbelievable is that we believe them.
We lost because we believed the Christian West would not allow the massacre of brothers by bloodthirsty infidels – notwithstanding the fact that the West had already allowed a series of massacres to take place without lifting a finger (see VISIONS OF ARARAT: WRITINGS ON ARMENIA by Christopher Walker [New York, 1997]).
We were slaughtered because our Christian brothers in the West were at war and too busy slaughtering one another to give a damn about an obscure tribe of Christians being slaughtered by infidels on another continent (see the Preface of G.B. Shaw's ANDROCLES AND THE LION).
We lost because “we were tiny islands in a Turkish sea” (Hagop Oshagan).
We lost because our revolutionaries were long on enthusiasm and short on experience. One contemporary scholar refers to them as “twenty somethings” (see Michael Bobelian, CHILDREN OF ARMENIA [New York, 2009]).
We lost because we underestimated the strength and determination of the Turks to defend their 600-year old homeland.
We lost because we believed in the professed brotherly love of serial killers. (Consider the case of Zohrab saving Talaat's life by risking his own.)
We lost because we were divided. (See the correspondence between our revolutionaries and Artin Dadian in Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993).
We were slaughtered because we have been fed “a steady and monotonous diet of shameless flattery and transparent lies” (Stepan Voskanian).
We were slaughtered because our conception of history has been shaped by “deceivers... the smoke of incense, and the sound of sharagans” (Nigoghos Sarafian).
Far from being an unexpected and unforeseeable Tragedy that “fell on us like a thief in the night,” our genocide might as well have been “an invitation to the beheading) (Nabokov).
#
Monday, December 28, 2009
**********************************
THIS AND THAT
***************************************************
Patriotism is an irrefutable argument only to patriots.
So is fascism to fascists.
*
If faith and truth were one, we would have only one religion and no jihads.
Faith guarantees nothing.
To say that faith is beyond criticism is to justify a big lie with a bigger lie.
*
Deceivers exist because deception works.
It is astonishing the number of great men who were taken in by Hitler and Stalin, both of whom made a mafia godfather look like a benevolent uncle.
*
To an overly sensitive person, a wrong word can be as catastrophic as a volcanic eruption or an earthquake.
*
Turning points in one's life may happen not in noteworthy events but in insignificant occurrences that may at first escape notice.
*
To most Armenians the Genocide is only a page in our history – the darkest page, granted, but still only a page.
Books, including history books, are one thing, life another.
The average Armenian is much more seriously wounded by an insult than by any single page in history.
*
To ignore or cover up our problems is also to reject in advance all possible solutions.
*
We will mature as a nation only when we take ideas as seriously as money.
#
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
**********************************
MY QUARREL
***************************************************
It is not safe to stand between a hungry lion and his kill.
Likewise, between a crowd and its cherished illusions.
*
I write what I think because deep down I know no matter what I say, I will be ignored. That's the way it has been in the past, and I see no evidence to suggest that things may not continue on the same path in the future.
*
My quarrel, my real quarrel, is not with my fellow men. My quarrel is with myself for allowing deceivers to brainwashed me in the name of a false deity or big lies.
*
They emphasize the importance of love because they are hateful and they know it. Was it love that drove Jesus to use the whip against the money-changers in the temple?
Was it love that drove the Orthodox Church in Russia to excommunicate Tolstoy, or the Catholic Church to torture and massacre heretics?
To those who say that was then and this is now: may I remind them that the Russian Church, like our own Etchmiadzin, went on to legitimize Stalin's regime, and the Catholic clergy engaged in serial child molestation.
*
Dupes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but leaders with the moral quotient of swine.
*
I call an enemy a friend if what he says enhances my understanding of my fellow men and myself.
#
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
**********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***************************************************
The original aim of nationalism was to liberate the nation from the tyranny of imperial powers. In theory. In practice, however, it simply replaced one tyranny with another. That's the way it is with organized religions, ideologies, and mass movements: they begin as liberation and end as oppression.
*
Analysis and flattery (or propaganda) are mutually exclusive concepts. You can have either one or the other. You cannot have both.
*
On more than one occasion I have heard it said, “If you criticize benefactors, they will stop giving.” I have never heard anyone say, “If we starve writers, they will stop writing.” Which may suggest, money is everything, ideas nothing. Which may also explain why as a nation we are so brain-dead that even the Turks are ahead of us. This assertion may outrage some, but not as much as it outraged me when I first heard it about forty years ago.
*
Our editors and activists have been dishing out anti-Turkish venom for such a long time that it has acquired the authority of a Decalogue.
*
There is a kind of vulgar bluntness that is the soul of elegance.
*
Speaking of his fellow Americans, Thoreau once said: “The greater part of what they call good I believe in my soul to be bad.”
*
Anonymous: “A live dog is better than a dead lion.”
#
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
comments
Sunday, December 20, 2009
**********************************
LIES
*****************************
Lies. I was brought up on lies - lies spoken in the name of patriotism and self-esteem, but lies all the same.
I was told being an Armenian was a rare privilege.
I went into the world thinking the world owed me something - respect, sympathy, apology, admiration.
I soon discovered the world had no time or interest in taking notice of my existence. The world didn't give a damn about me.
The world didn't even know who Armenians were.
That's when I began to understand why some smart Armenians changed their names and assimilated.
Others preferred to stay away from their fellow countrymen.
Still others of mixed parentage hid their Armenian fraction.
What the hell was going on here?
Was the world full of ignoramuses and traitors?
It took me a while to realize that the world was what it has always been; and that I was the ignorant one in thinking there was something special in being an Armenian.
I know now that we are a people like any other people, or we would be, if we didn't try so damn hard to appear better or superior.
One could even say that, what makes some of us inferior is thirst for superiority.
#
Monday, December 21, 2009
**********************************
ACADEMICS
*****************************
Never judge a nation by its history as written by its own historians. A Turk who believes in Turkish historians is as much of a dupe as an Armenian who believes in Armenian historians.
All historians write with a bias, and I don't just mean nationalist, racist, or religious bias. Case in point: in a recent edition of the ENCYCLPAEDIA BRITANNICA the entry on Talaat, as written by a Turcophile historian, mentions only one violent death, Talaat's own by an Armenian assassin.
How to explain this outrage? Very easily:
(one) the historian treated the Turks as useful political allies of his own nation;
(two) there are many more potential buyers of the Encyclopedia in Turkey than in Armenia;
(three) since academics these days are a dime-a-dozen and the competition is fierce, they are willing to write anything for thirty pieces of silver.
I am not saying this particular academic is a bad man and a shameless liar willing to prostitute his discipline and expertise. I am saying, we live in a world with the moral standards of a bordello, and Armenians are no better (see below).
It is to be noted that this particular academic cannot plead ignorance of the Armenian genocide in view of the fact that in one of his first books on Turkey he mentions and discusses the Genocide in some detail. My guess is, that's when the Turks invited him to Turkey, gave him the red-carpet treatment, and made him see the light. They did the same thing to Toynbee with the same result, but not quite. Though he became a Turcophile, Toynbee never denied the Armenian genocide, but he did deny the republication of his book on the Genocide.
And speaking of red-carpet treatment, and this time by Reds: A prominent Tashnak leader was once invited to Yerevan by the Soviets and returned to America a chic Bolshevik. Whenever I would publish an anti-Soviet commentary in our weeklies, he would write me poison-pen letters and call me nasty names.
#
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
**********************************
BIG EGOS & SMALL DICKS
*****************************
An Armenian knows better not because he is wiser, older, more experienced, or more widely read, but because he assumes his fellow Armenians to be dumber than he is.
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say, “With Armenians like you, who needs sultans and commissars?”
*
No matter how hard I try I cannot pretend to be a proud Armenian. Proud of what, may I ask? A thousands years of subservience to scum? – and I don't just mean foreign scum.
*
Jacques Chirac: “Sumo wrestling is a fine art, which is not always the case with political combat.”
*
Life has a way of cutting down to size anyone whose assessment of himself exceeds his real worth.
*
The reason why some men have big egos is that (according to Freud, Jung, and Adler, who agree on nothing but agree on this) they have small dicks.
#
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
**********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
*****************************
“If he speaks as if he were somebody, let's treat him like a nobody to bring him down to our own level.”
*
The secret of success consists not in cultivating your own garden but in inventing it.
*
You can tell he has a college degree because he uses words like dichotomy, existential, and paradigm.
*
Ideas? If you have the money, you can hire philosophers (provided they are not Marxists) and theologians who don't take the Scriptures literally and believe Capital to be a blessing from god.
*
The world has no interest in someone who knows a great deal about a great many things. The world is more interested and more willing to reward someone who knows everything about one thing.
*
If the liquid in the glass is poison, it makes no difference whether it is half empty or half full.
*
A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma over love and charity, is an invention of the devil.
#
**********************************
LIES
*****************************
Lies. I was brought up on lies - lies spoken in the name of patriotism and self-esteem, but lies all the same.
I was told being an Armenian was a rare privilege.
I went into the world thinking the world owed me something - respect, sympathy, apology, admiration.
I soon discovered the world had no time or interest in taking notice of my existence. The world didn't give a damn about me.
The world didn't even know who Armenians were.
That's when I began to understand why some smart Armenians changed their names and assimilated.
Others preferred to stay away from their fellow countrymen.
Still others of mixed parentage hid their Armenian fraction.
What the hell was going on here?
Was the world full of ignoramuses and traitors?
It took me a while to realize that the world was what it has always been; and that I was the ignorant one in thinking there was something special in being an Armenian.
I know now that we are a people like any other people, or we would be, if we didn't try so damn hard to appear better or superior.
One could even say that, what makes some of us inferior is thirst for superiority.
#
Monday, December 21, 2009
**********************************
ACADEMICS
*****************************
Never judge a nation by its history as written by its own historians. A Turk who believes in Turkish historians is as much of a dupe as an Armenian who believes in Armenian historians.
All historians write with a bias, and I don't just mean nationalist, racist, or religious bias. Case in point: in a recent edition of the ENCYCLPAEDIA BRITANNICA the entry on Talaat, as written by a Turcophile historian, mentions only one violent death, Talaat's own by an Armenian assassin.
How to explain this outrage? Very easily:
(one) the historian treated the Turks as useful political allies of his own nation;
(two) there are many more potential buyers of the Encyclopedia in Turkey than in Armenia;
(three) since academics these days are a dime-a-dozen and the competition is fierce, they are willing to write anything for thirty pieces of silver.
I am not saying this particular academic is a bad man and a shameless liar willing to prostitute his discipline and expertise. I am saying, we live in a world with the moral standards of a bordello, and Armenians are no better (see below).
It is to be noted that this particular academic cannot plead ignorance of the Armenian genocide in view of the fact that in one of his first books on Turkey he mentions and discusses the Genocide in some detail. My guess is, that's when the Turks invited him to Turkey, gave him the red-carpet treatment, and made him see the light. They did the same thing to Toynbee with the same result, but not quite. Though he became a Turcophile, Toynbee never denied the Armenian genocide, but he did deny the republication of his book on the Genocide.
And speaking of red-carpet treatment, and this time by Reds: A prominent Tashnak leader was once invited to Yerevan by the Soviets and returned to America a chic Bolshevik. Whenever I would publish an anti-Soviet commentary in our weeklies, he would write me poison-pen letters and call me nasty names.
#
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
**********************************
BIG EGOS & SMALL DICKS
*****************************
An Armenian knows better not because he is wiser, older, more experienced, or more widely read, but because he assumes his fellow Armenians to be dumber than he is.
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say, “With Armenians like you, who needs sultans and commissars?”
*
No matter how hard I try I cannot pretend to be a proud Armenian. Proud of what, may I ask? A thousands years of subservience to scum? – and I don't just mean foreign scum.
*
Jacques Chirac: “Sumo wrestling is a fine art, which is not always the case with political combat.”
*
Life has a way of cutting down to size anyone whose assessment of himself exceeds his real worth.
*
The reason why some men have big egos is that (according to Freud, Jung, and Adler, who agree on nothing but agree on this) they have small dicks.
#
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
**********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
*****************************
“If he speaks as if he were somebody, let's treat him like a nobody to bring him down to our own level.”
*
The secret of success consists not in cultivating your own garden but in inventing it.
*
You can tell he has a college degree because he uses words like dichotomy, existential, and paradigm.
*
Ideas? If you have the money, you can hire philosophers (provided they are not Marxists) and theologians who don't take the Scriptures literally and believe Capital to be a blessing from god.
*
The world has no interest in someone who knows a great deal about a great many things. The world is more interested and more willing to reward someone who knows everything about one thing.
*
If the liquid in the glass is poison, it makes no difference whether it is half empty or half full.
*
A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma over love and charity, is an invention of the devil.
#
Saturday, December 19, 2009
presence
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
**********************************
THE ARMENIAN PRESENCE
******************************************************
In the last five books that I checked out from the library, I ran into Armenians in all of them.
*
In NATASHA & OTHER STORIES by David Bezmozgis (New York, 2004) there is a student identified as an “Armenian” and named "Arnan" (probably Arman).
*
In Ted Sorensen's political memoirs, COUNSELOR (New York, 2008), the Armenian mentioned and discussed is Anastas Mikoyan.
*
In Edmund Wilson's LITERARY ESSAYS & REVIEWS OF THE 1930s & 1940s (New York, 2007) there are two pieces on Saroyan, one of which is a review of THE ADVENTURES OF WESLEY JACKSON and the other a long overview of Saroyan's works, where we are told Saroyan was more influenced by Hemingway and less by Sherwood Anderson.
*
In VENICE: PURE CITY (London, 2009) by the prolific Peter Ackroyd we read about the Armenian island of San Lazzaro, “Where Byron travelled to learn the Armenian language as a way of exercising his mind among the more sensual pleasures of Venice.” The next sentence reads: “There as a colony of Turkish merchants, established as the Fondaco dei Turchi, where a school for the teaching of Arabic was maintained.”
*
In THE RICHNESS OF LIFE: THE ESSENTIAL STEPHEN JAY COULD (New York, 2006) the Armenian is George E. Boyajian, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a study “on ammonite suture lines.”
Elsewhere Gould speaks of “our cursed tribal tendency to factionalize, fight, and then, so often in righteous certainty, to define our opponents as vermin and try to expunge either their doctrines (by censorship and fire) or their very being (genocide).”
#
Thursday, December 17, 2009
**********************************
REVOLUTIONS
******************************************************
When a revolution succeeds, the revolutionaries turn against one another and engage in cannibalism. This is what happened with the French and Russian revolutions.
When a revolution fails, it becomes a footnote.
But when a revolution results in genocide, it traumatizes the brain so severely that reality becomes a blur, and the line that separates fact from illusion is obliterated.
*
The study of history deals not only with what others have done to us, but also with what we have done to ourselves. To emphasize one at the expense of the other is to distort our perception of reality.
*
Our history is not just a catalog of crimes committed against us by others, it is also a much longer catalog of miscalculations and blunders committed by us.
*
God does not extend His support to those who don't support one another.
*
The first step in all solutions to our problems: To approach a new idea with an open mind.
*
The greatest truths are also the simplest.
*
I repeat myself?
Why shouldn't I?
TV commercials repeat themselves all the time.
And it works.
It must!
If it didn't, they wouldn't waste millions on them.
#
Friday, December 18, 2009
**********************************
POWER & MONEY
******************************************************
Nothing can be more deceptive and dangerous than to believe the religion and history taught in schools. If Americans, Armenians, Turks, and any other nationality you care to mention were not duped as children into believing what they are taught to believe, they would no longer be loyal, that is to say subservient, subjects of their rulers. Which means, they would refuse to pay taxes (which is something they would like to do in any case) and even more important, in time of war, they would do their utmost to avoid being conscripted.
All rulers know this and none of them would even consider changing things even if it means continuing to legitimize ignorance, prejudice, lies, hatred, wars, and massacres.
That is why to speak the truth in a world of liars and dupes is considered a capital offense. That is also why to seek wisdom means to provoke persecution, exile, execution, and assassination.
On the day mankind sees the light, we will have only one God and one history, as opposed to ten thousand lies.
If mankind prefers to live in darkness, it may be because the exercise of power has always been more enticing than knowledge and understanding.
It is amazing the things people do for money. Even more amazing is the things they do for power. And power is like money in that one can never have enough of it.
#
Saturday, December 19, 2009
**********************************
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE
******************************************************
My greatest blunders were committed with total unawareness.
So much so that it didn't even occur to me to question their moral validity.
That doesn't make me feel less guilty today.
If anything, the opposite is the case.
I know now that I cannot plead not guilty
by reason of ignorance of the law.
Jung is right: unawareness is the greatest sin.
*
Lies have a propensity to generate more lies.
It is not at all unusual for a single Big Lie
to kill six million truths
and as many innocent lives with a clear conscience.
*
To be unable to read between the lines
is also a form of illiteracy.
*
To say or think “i am smart,”
is the surest symptom of arrested development,
and in some cases,
advanced moronism.
*
The hardest thing to master in the art of writing
is the art of deleting.
#
**********************************
THE ARMENIAN PRESENCE
******************************************************
In the last five books that I checked out from the library, I ran into Armenians in all of them.
*
In NATASHA & OTHER STORIES by David Bezmozgis (New York, 2004) there is a student identified as an “Armenian” and named "Arnan" (probably Arman).
*
In Ted Sorensen's political memoirs, COUNSELOR (New York, 2008), the Armenian mentioned and discussed is Anastas Mikoyan.
*
In Edmund Wilson's LITERARY ESSAYS & REVIEWS OF THE 1930s & 1940s (New York, 2007) there are two pieces on Saroyan, one of which is a review of THE ADVENTURES OF WESLEY JACKSON and the other a long overview of Saroyan's works, where we are told Saroyan was more influenced by Hemingway and less by Sherwood Anderson.
*
In VENICE: PURE CITY (London, 2009) by the prolific Peter Ackroyd we read about the Armenian island of San Lazzaro, “Where Byron travelled to learn the Armenian language as a way of exercising his mind among the more sensual pleasures of Venice.” The next sentence reads: “There as a colony of Turkish merchants, established as the Fondaco dei Turchi, where a school for the teaching of Arabic was maintained.”
*
In THE RICHNESS OF LIFE: THE ESSENTIAL STEPHEN JAY COULD (New York, 2006) the Armenian is George E. Boyajian, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a study “on ammonite suture lines.”
Elsewhere Gould speaks of “our cursed tribal tendency to factionalize, fight, and then, so often in righteous certainty, to define our opponents as vermin and try to expunge either their doctrines (by censorship and fire) or their very being (genocide).”
#
Thursday, December 17, 2009
**********************************
REVOLUTIONS
******************************************************
When a revolution succeeds, the revolutionaries turn against one another and engage in cannibalism. This is what happened with the French and Russian revolutions.
When a revolution fails, it becomes a footnote.
But when a revolution results in genocide, it traumatizes the brain so severely that reality becomes a blur, and the line that separates fact from illusion is obliterated.
*
The study of history deals not only with what others have done to us, but also with what we have done to ourselves. To emphasize one at the expense of the other is to distort our perception of reality.
*
Our history is not just a catalog of crimes committed against us by others, it is also a much longer catalog of miscalculations and blunders committed by us.
*
God does not extend His support to those who don't support one another.
*
The first step in all solutions to our problems: To approach a new idea with an open mind.
*
The greatest truths are also the simplest.
*
I repeat myself?
Why shouldn't I?
TV commercials repeat themselves all the time.
And it works.
It must!
If it didn't, they wouldn't waste millions on them.
#
Friday, December 18, 2009
**********************************
POWER & MONEY
******************************************************
Nothing can be more deceptive and dangerous than to believe the religion and history taught in schools. If Americans, Armenians, Turks, and any other nationality you care to mention were not duped as children into believing what they are taught to believe, they would no longer be loyal, that is to say subservient, subjects of their rulers. Which means, they would refuse to pay taxes (which is something they would like to do in any case) and even more important, in time of war, they would do their utmost to avoid being conscripted.
All rulers know this and none of them would even consider changing things even if it means continuing to legitimize ignorance, prejudice, lies, hatred, wars, and massacres.
That is why to speak the truth in a world of liars and dupes is considered a capital offense. That is also why to seek wisdom means to provoke persecution, exile, execution, and assassination.
On the day mankind sees the light, we will have only one God and one history, as opposed to ten thousand lies.
If mankind prefers to live in darkness, it may be because the exercise of power has always been more enticing than knowledge and understanding.
It is amazing the things people do for money. Even more amazing is the things they do for power. And power is like money in that one can never have enough of it.
#
Saturday, December 19, 2009
**********************************
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE
******************************************************
My greatest blunders were committed with total unawareness.
So much so that it didn't even occur to me to question their moral validity.
That doesn't make me feel less guilty today.
If anything, the opposite is the case.
I know now that I cannot plead not guilty
by reason of ignorance of the law.
Jung is right: unawareness is the greatest sin.
*
Lies have a propensity to generate more lies.
It is not at all unusual for a single Big Lie
to kill six million truths
and as many innocent lives with a clear conscience.
*
To be unable to read between the lines
is also a form of illiteracy.
*
To say or think “i am smart,”
is the surest symptom of arrested development,
and in some cases,
advanced moronism.
*
The hardest thing to master in the art of writing
is the art of deleting.
#
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
notes
Sunday, December 13, 2009
**********************************
THE “S” WORD
******************************************************
All this nonsense about needing solutions is a lot of b.s.
Everyone knows that men of God and capital (make it Capital and god) know better. If they didn't, they wouldn't be where they are. Solutions doesn't even make it as the last item on their wish list. What they want and what they get from their brown-nosers and dupes is gratitude and subservience.
*
If a liar believes in his own lies, he will also assume he is a lover of truth.
*
In all of us ignorance exceeds knowledge, and most of what we know is based either on hearsay or is an extension of a belief system, that is to say, propaganda.
*
Whenever they can't blame it on the Turks and the West, they blame it on the opposition. They sure know how to cover their ass.
*
You cannot reason with the brainwashed. You can only try to deprogram them, which can be as difficult as changing a wolf to a lamb, and in our case, vice versa.
*
Benefactors like to parade as supporters of literature, but since their favorite reading matter is financial statements, they delegate the job to their brown-nosers. Which may explain the unbearable stench of mediocrity emanating from our contemporary literature.
#
Monday, December 14, 2009
**********************************
O CANADA
******************************************************
During a recent visit to an Armenian community center in Toronto, the Minister of Immigration delivered a speech in which he reminded his audience that the Canadian government had recognized the reality of the Armenian genocide, but that it also expected all Armenian-Canadians to be nice to Turks because Canada is a multicultural country, which means everyone must live in friendship and peace with everyone else. The audience responded with blank expressions. And I thought:
How can we be nice to Turks if we cannot even be nice to our fellow Armenians?
*
In a recent issue of the NEW YORKER, Newt Gingrich was identified as “the Republican Party's putative sage.” Gingrich, it will be remembered, once named Kemal Atatürk as his role model. I have every reason to suspect that if he runs for president in 2012 and promises to recognize the Armenian genocide, Armenians will vote for him not because they believe in his promise but because they care much more about lower taxes than Genocide recognition. Never underestimate the cunning of greedy fools.
*
As a child whenever I did something wrong I was punished. And now that I am old I am silenced by the old and insulted by the young for exposing misconduct. Perhaps one reason I understand my fellow countrymen so well is that I am, very much like them, a perennial loser, with one noteworthy difference: I see no reason why I should fool myself and others into thinking otherwise. It is easy for a fool to fool himself, but more difficult to fool those who may well be smarter than he.
*
Today's quote in my morning paper is by Adlai Stevenson and it reads: “My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
I am safe today, it is true. It is also true that I owe my safety not to my fellow Armenians but to my country of adoption.
#
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
**********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
******************************************************
Moral superiority, especially the self-anointed kind, is such a cheap commodity that even the penniless can afford it. Even primitive Brazilian jungle tribes have myths whose sole aim is to assert their moral superiority. May I confess that I am so tired of being a morally superior loser that my secret ambition now is to be a morally inferior winner.
*
Only the brain-dead think they know and understand all they need to know and understand. Self-satisfaction is a tomb.
*
The brain-dead cannot think. They can only say “yes, sir!” to the unthinking.
*
Every civilized and progressive nation has a set of laws whose sole aim is to protect the people from their leaders. Since we never had such laws, most abuses of power in our institutions and bureaucracies have gone unexposed, and when exposed, unpunished. I tremble to think what will happen on the day the average patriotic Armenian discovers this fact.
*
You cannot argue with somebody who thinks you are nobody.
*
There are many forms of cowardice, surely one of the worst must be fear of free speech.
*
Every Armenian is infatuated with the aroma of his own b.s.
#
**********************************
THE “S” WORD
******************************************************
All this nonsense about needing solutions is a lot of b.s.
Everyone knows that men of God and capital (make it Capital and god) know better. If they didn't, they wouldn't be where they are. Solutions doesn't even make it as the last item on their wish list. What they want and what they get from their brown-nosers and dupes is gratitude and subservience.
*
If a liar believes in his own lies, he will also assume he is a lover of truth.
*
In all of us ignorance exceeds knowledge, and most of what we know is based either on hearsay or is an extension of a belief system, that is to say, propaganda.
*
Whenever they can't blame it on the Turks and the West, they blame it on the opposition. They sure know how to cover their ass.
*
You cannot reason with the brainwashed. You can only try to deprogram them, which can be as difficult as changing a wolf to a lamb, and in our case, vice versa.
*
Benefactors like to parade as supporters of literature, but since their favorite reading matter is financial statements, they delegate the job to their brown-nosers. Which may explain the unbearable stench of mediocrity emanating from our contemporary literature.
#
Monday, December 14, 2009
**********************************
O CANADA
******************************************************
During a recent visit to an Armenian community center in Toronto, the Minister of Immigration delivered a speech in which he reminded his audience that the Canadian government had recognized the reality of the Armenian genocide, but that it also expected all Armenian-Canadians to be nice to Turks because Canada is a multicultural country, which means everyone must live in friendship and peace with everyone else. The audience responded with blank expressions. And I thought:
How can we be nice to Turks if we cannot even be nice to our fellow Armenians?
*
In a recent issue of the NEW YORKER, Newt Gingrich was identified as “the Republican Party's putative sage.” Gingrich, it will be remembered, once named Kemal Atatürk as his role model. I have every reason to suspect that if he runs for president in 2012 and promises to recognize the Armenian genocide, Armenians will vote for him not because they believe in his promise but because they care much more about lower taxes than Genocide recognition. Never underestimate the cunning of greedy fools.
*
As a child whenever I did something wrong I was punished. And now that I am old I am silenced by the old and insulted by the young for exposing misconduct. Perhaps one reason I understand my fellow countrymen so well is that I am, very much like them, a perennial loser, with one noteworthy difference: I see no reason why I should fool myself and others into thinking otherwise. It is easy for a fool to fool himself, but more difficult to fool those who may well be smarter than he.
*
Today's quote in my morning paper is by Adlai Stevenson and it reads: “My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
I am safe today, it is true. It is also true that I owe my safety not to my fellow Armenians but to my country of adoption.
#
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
**********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
******************************************************
Moral superiority, especially the self-anointed kind, is such a cheap commodity that even the penniless can afford it. Even primitive Brazilian jungle tribes have myths whose sole aim is to assert their moral superiority. May I confess that I am so tired of being a morally superior loser that my secret ambition now is to be a morally inferior winner.
*
Only the brain-dead think they know and understand all they need to know and understand. Self-satisfaction is a tomb.
*
The brain-dead cannot think. They can only say “yes, sir!” to the unthinking.
*
Every civilized and progressive nation has a set of laws whose sole aim is to protect the people from their leaders. Since we never had such laws, most abuses of power in our institutions and bureaucracies have gone unexposed, and when exposed, unpunished. I tremble to think what will happen on the day the average patriotic Armenian discovers this fact.
*
You cannot argue with somebody who thinks you are nobody.
*
There are many forms of cowardice, surely one of the worst must be fear of free speech.
*
Every Armenian is infatuated with the aroma of his own b.s.
#
Saturday, December 12, 2009
nice
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
**********************************
SHUT UP AND TALK!
******************************************************
“Those who know don't talk;
those who talk don't know.”
I don't know and if I talk
it's only against those who know even less.
*
According to Garcia Marquez
everyone has three lives:
“a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”
The same applies to nations.
But in our case even our public life is secret.
*
One good thing about my choice of occupation is that
the alternative is working for money
and I can't imagine anything more repellent.
*
To be politically correct, they call it Islamophobia,
but I don't think that's what it is --
if we judge Islam by its history and number of victims
as opposed to the propaganda of its imams.
*
Everyone speaks of solutions,
no one even mentions implementation
and, in our case, that's where the devil resides.
#
Thursday, December 10, 2009
**********************************
REFLECTIONS
******************************************************
An intelligent man does not overestimate his IQ.
Only idiots do that.
*
Forgive my careless choice of words.
Far better men than myself
have chosen their words far more carefully
without any results.
Ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice
are not open to diplomatic suggestions,
polite circumlocutions, and courteous petitions.
*
Not all nationalist historians are patriots
in the same way that not all garbage collectors love garbage.
*
As a physician deals with disease
a reasonable man deals with unreason –
with one difference:
the unreasonable will insult you.
*
In America, when they say god,
they mean Gold;
and when fanatics in the Middle East say God,
they mean the Devil.
“Allawa akhbar” in Arabic means
“The Devil is great!”
*
It makes little sense to support one side against the other
when both sides belong to the dustbin of history.
*
When the old fight,
it is the young who die.
When the rich fight,
it is the poor who die.
If it were up to the old and the rich
to do the dying,
we would have no more wars.
#
Friday, December 11, 2009
**********************************
USES AND ABUSES OF PATRIOTISM
******************************************************
Patriotism does not mean loyalty to the leadership, especially a leadership that has not been democratically elected and is therefore self-appointed and non-representative, as our leadership has been throughout our millennial existence. Loyalty to such a leadership is not patriotism but subservience to despotism.
*
The mightier the country the more arrogant its citizens. This rule has one exception: Armenia.
*
The lower the self-esteem, the higher the need to emphasize the positive.
*
To justify his hatred for his fellow countrymen, an Armenian will identify them as Turks in disguise. I will never forget the elder statesman who once said to me: “We have men within our organizations who are Turkish agents. They speak Armenian fluently, they know our history and all there is to know about us, but don't make them fool you: they are Turks as surely as two plus two makes four.”
*
What is the difference between an Armenian who uses his tongue like a yataghan and an executioner? The executioner thinks of himself as a law-and-order man. The Armenian believes his superior brand of patriotism allows him to engage in verbal massacre – the real thing being against the law...
*
Freedom and patriotism are weasel words: they can be defined in a number of contradictory ways. Freedom could also mean the freedom to deceive, exploit, and enslave. And what could be more absurd than to say my patriotism is good but my enemy’s patriotism is bad?
#
Saturday, December 12, 2009
**********************************
HAVE A NICE DAY!
******************************************************
No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. Only a self-satisfied ignoramus will think otherwise.
*
We may use the same words but we don't mean the same thing. To the poor the word “bread” in “Give us this day our daily bread,” means bread; to the rich it means enough money to buy several bakeries.
*
The rich know how to manipulate and exploit; and the poor know how to pretend to be grateful to bloodsucking buggers.
*
Their divide-and-rule tactics have been so successful that we remain divided even after they have ceased to rule.
*
They tell me I write as I do because I am failure. What a nightmare it must be to them to think that some day I may achieve success.
*
More often than not a majority is nothing but a conspiracy of idiots.
*
I no longer read our pundits or listen to our speechifiers because I ascribe all our misfortunes to their empty verbiage.
*
A true story: In search of his roots, an Armenian-American returned from the Homeland a thoroughly disappointed man because they didn't serve his favorite brand of cereal for breakfast.
*
MEMO TO A YOUNG WRITER
**************************************
When brainwashed idiots enjoy reading you, you can be sure of one thing: You are in deep sh*t.
#
**********************************
SHUT UP AND TALK!
******************************************************
“Those who know don't talk;
those who talk don't know.”
I don't know and if I talk
it's only against those who know even less.
*
According to Garcia Marquez
everyone has three lives:
“a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”
The same applies to nations.
But in our case even our public life is secret.
*
One good thing about my choice of occupation is that
the alternative is working for money
and I can't imagine anything more repellent.
*
To be politically correct, they call it Islamophobia,
but I don't think that's what it is --
if we judge Islam by its history and number of victims
as opposed to the propaganda of its imams.
*
Everyone speaks of solutions,
no one even mentions implementation
and, in our case, that's where the devil resides.
#
Thursday, December 10, 2009
**********************************
REFLECTIONS
******************************************************
An intelligent man does not overestimate his IQ.
Only idiots do that.
*
Forgive my careless choice of words.
Far better men than myself
have chosen their words far more carefully
without any results.
Ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice
are not open to diplomatic suggestions,
polite circumlocutions, and courteous petitions.
*
Not all nationalist historians are patriots
in the same way that not all garbage collectors love garbage.
*
As a physician deals with disease
a reasonable man deals with unreason –
with one difference:
the unreasonable will insult you.
*
In America, when they say god,
they mean Gold;
and when fanatics in the Middle East say God,
they mean the Devil.
“Allawa akhbar” in Arabic means
“The Devil is great!”
*
It makes little sense to support one side against the other
when both sides belong to the dustbin of history.
*
When the old fight,
it is the young who die.
When the rich fight,
it is the poor who die.
If it were up to the old and the rich
to do the dying,
we would have no more wars.
#
Friday, December 11, 2009
**********************************
USES AND ABUSES OF PATRIOTISM
******************************************************
Patriotism does not mean loyalty to the leadership, especially a leadership that has not been democratically elected and is therefore self-appointed and non-representative, as our leadership has been throughout our millennial existence. Loyalty to such a leadership is not patriotism but subservience to despotism.
*
The mightier the country the more arrogant its citizens. This rule has one exception: Armenia.
*
The lower the self-esteem, the higher the need to emphasize the positive.
*
To justify his hatred for his fellow countrymen, an Armenian will identify them as Turks in disguise. I will never forget the elder statesman who once said to me: “We have men within our organizations who are Turkish agents. They speak Armenian fluently, they know our history and all there is to know about us, but don't make them fool you: they are Turks as surely as two plus two makes four.”
*
What is the difference between an Armenian who uses his tongue like a yataghan and an executioner? The executioner thinks of himself as a law-and-order man. The Armenian believes his superior brand of patriotism allows him to engage in verbal massacre – the real thing being against the law...
*
Freedom and patriotism are weasel words: they can be defined in a number of contradictory ways. Freedom could also mean the freedom to deceive, exploit, and enslave. And what could be more absurd than to say my patriotism is good but my enemy’s patriotism is bad?
#
Saturday, December 12, 2009
**********************************
HAVE A NICE DAY!
******************************************************
No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. Only a self-satisfied ignoramus will think otherwise.
*
We may use the same words but we don't mean the same thing. To the poor the word “bread” in “Give us this day our daily bread,” means bread; to the rich it means enough money to buy several bakeries.
*
The rich know how to manipulate and exploit; and the poor know how to pretend to be grateful to bloodsucking buggers.
*
Their divide-and-rule tactics have been so successful that we remain divided even after they have ceased to rule.
*
They tell me I write as I do because I am failure. What a nightmare it must be to them to think that some day I may achieve success.
*
More often than not a majority is nothing but a conspiracy of idiots.
*
I no longer read our pundits or listen to our speechifiers because I ascribe all our misfortunes to their empty verbiage.
*
A true story: In search of his roots, an Armenian-American returned from the Homeland a thoroughly disappointed man because they didn't serve his favorite brand of cereal for breakfast.
*
MEMO TO A YOUNG WRITER
**************************************
When brainwashed idiots enjoy reading you, you can be sure of one thing: You are in deep sh*t.
#
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
safe
Sunday, December 6, 2009
**********************************
SAFE ASSUMPTIONS
******************************************************
The chances are everything you were taught as a child when you couldn't yet think for yourself is a lie.
*
Any idea that divides our fellow men into them and us is based on a fallacy.
*
They did to us what we would have done to them. Our so-called moral superiority is nothing but an extension of military inferiority.
*
If reason is against us we drown it in an avalanche of empty verbiage.
Where there are too many long-winded speechifiers there are as many lies.
*
Where speechifiers are a dominant minority, dialogue will be seen as suspect.
*
The bigger the mouth, the smaller the brain.
*
Freedom of thought begins on the day we teach ourselves to say “No, sir!” to those who expect us to say “Yes, sir!”
*
Anything that justifies wars and massacres is wrong and anyone who justifies them is a liar.
*
I may know something you don't know, but that doesn't make me better or wiser.
*
The worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by fools who thought they knew better or they had God on their side.
#
Monday, December 7, 2009
**********************************
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
******************************************************
In a message to the Venetians, Pius II wrote in 1458:
“How much of your ancient character have you lost
as a result of too much intercourse with the Turks!”
Makes you think, doesn't it?
*
“La donna e mobile” says a famous Verdi aria.
So are (alas!) Armenian friends.
I have made and lost friends on the flimsiest of reasons.
I have made friends because I was Armenian,
and I have lost friends because
I did not share their anti-Semitism.
*
“An Armenian loves to eat
and he eats to hate,”
says an Armenian song.
And speaking of eating and hating:
“One Armenian eats one chicken,
two Armenians eat two chickens,
three Armenians eat each other.”
*
In a letter from a friend:
"If, as you say, Armenian literature is a dead end,
why not give it up?"
I write for two totally non-literary reasons:
to fight boredom and
to acquire friends;
and with every book I have published,
I have acquired a new friend;
also made not two but twenty-two enemies?
*
Raffi: "Even those among us
who have taken it upon themselves
to educate the people
are nothing but uneducated ignoramuses."
#
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
**********************************
DECEPTION
******************************************************
If no one deceives us,
we deceive ourselves into thinking
we are the center of the universe
and what we think and say matters.
*
Deception works because we like to be deceived.
We like to be deceived so much that
we are more than willing to compensate our deceivers.
Some of the most highly paid men today
are professional, full-time deceivers.
They call themselves consultants,
public relations men, spin doctors,
advertisers, diplomats, lawyers, historians,
social engineers, chief executive officers, pundits,
senators and heads of state.
In the Vatican they are identified as
“propagators of the faith.”
Their counterparts in America
call themselves televangelists.
In Nazi Germany they worked for Dr Goebbels
and it's amazing the kind of people
that were taken in by their lies.
*
Do deceivers believe in their own lies?
If they do, they are dupes.
If they don't, they are crooks with a forked tongue.
In either case they deserve our contempt and ridicule.
*
Anyone who pretends to know and understand
more than he does is a deceivers.
And anyone who says “yes, sir!”
to someone he views as infallible is a dupe.
*
Chekhov was right when he said:
“If I cannot answer the most important questions,
am I not deceiving my readers?”
*
Today's quotations in my morning paper
is by Elbert Hubbard and it reads:
“Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
#
**********************************
SAFE ASSUMPTIONS
******************************************************
The chances are everything you were taught as a child when you couldn't yet think for yourself is a lie.
*
Any idea that divides our fellow men into them and us is based on a fallacy.
*
They did to us what we would have done to them. Our so-called moral superiority is nothing but an extension of military inferiority.
*
If reason is against us we drown it in an avalanche of empty verbiage.
Where there are too many long-winded speechifiers there are as many lies.
*
Where speechifiers are a dominant minority, dialogue will be seen as suspect.
*
The bigger the mouth, the smaller the brain.
*
Freedom of thought begins on the day we teach ourselves to say “No, sir!” to those who expect us to say “Yes, sir!”
*
Anything that justifies wars and massacres is wrong and anyone who justifies them is a liar.
*
I may know something you don't know, but that doesn't make me better or wiser.
*
The worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by fools who thought they knew better or they had God on their side.
#
Monday, December 7, 2009
**********************************
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
******************************************************
In a message to the Venetians, Pius II wrote in 1458:
“How much of your ancient character have you lost
as a result of too much intercourse with the Turks!”
Makes you think, doesn't it?
*
“La donna e mobile” says a famous Verdi aria.
So are (alas!) Armenian friends.
I have made and lost friends on the flimsiest of reasons.
I have made friends because I was Armenian,
and I have lost friends because
I did not share their anti-Semitism.
*
“An Armenian loves to eat
and he eats to hate,”
says an Armenian song.
And speaking of eating and hating:
“One Armenian eats one chicken,
two Armenians eat two chickens,
three Armenians eat each other.”
*
In a letter from a friend:
"If, as you say, Armenian literature is a dead end,
why not give it up?"
I write for two totally non-literary reasons:
to fight boredom and
to acquire friends;
and with every book I have published,
I have acquired a new friend;
also made not two but twenty-two enemies?
*
Raffi: "Even those among us
who have taken it upon themselves
to educate the people
are nothing but uneducated ignoramuses."
#
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
**********************************
DECEPTION
******************************************************
If no one deceives us,
we deceive ourselves into thinking
we are the center of the universe
and what we think and say matters.
*
Deception works because we like to be deceived.
We like to be deceived so much that
we are more than willing to compensate our deceivers.
Some of the most highly paid men today
are professional, full-time deceivers.
They call themselves consultants,
public relations men, spin doctors,
advertisers, diplomats, lawyers, historians,
social engineers, chief executive officers, pundits,
senators and heads of state.
In the Vatican they are identified as
“propagators of the faith.”
Their counterparts in America
call themselves televangelists.
In Nazi Germany they worked for Dr Goebbels
and it's amazing the kind of people
that were taken in by their lies.
*
Do deceivers believe in their own lies?
If they do, they are dupes.
If they don't, they are crooks with a forked tongue.
In either case they deserve our contempt and ridicule.
*
Anyone who pretends to know and understand
more than he does is a deceivers.
And anyone who says “yes, sir!”
to someone he views as infallible is a dupe.
*
Chekhov was right when he said:
“If I cannot answer the most important questions,
am I not deceiving my readers?”
*
Today's quotations in my morning paper
is by Elbert Hubbard and it reads:
“Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
#
Saturday, December 5, 2009
words
Thursday, December 3, 2009
**********************************
COMPASSION
******************************************************
Yesterday, when I said something to the effect that the majority of philosophers, beginning with Socrates, met a violent end, a gentle reader took it upon himself to point out that I had nothing to worry about. I am, of course, fully aware of the fact that Armenians do not as a rule condemn their writers to death. They only betray them to the authorities, even when the authorities happen to be bloodthirsty barbarians like Talaat and Stalin. After all, it is not for nothing that we are universally respected as the first nation that converted to Christianity, a religion based on compassion, which is a word we don't have in Armenian, and if we do, we never use it. My own dictionary translates it as "koot," which means pity rather than compassion, which means suffering with.
*
Propaganda allows bloodthirsty barbarians to say their aim is to advance the cause of civilization. As for their victims, propaganda allows them the luxury of bragging about their moral superiority.
*
If individual freedom is God's gift to us, as theologians are eager to explain, why is He more protective of the barbarian's freedom and less of the victim's? Is it conceivable that the Almighty is an unequal opportunity defender in Whose eyes the barbarian's freedom is of greater concern than the freedom of the defenseless victim?
*
Mao said, “Let one hundred flowers bloom, let one hundred schools of thought contend.”
Napoleon said, “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
Mao spoke like Mao but acted like Napoleon.
That's politics for you. You tell them what they want to hear and do what you have to do even when what you have to do stands in direct contradiction to what you tell them.
*
Propaganda is a win-win proposition, or a lottery in which everyone wins the first prize.
#
Friday, December 4, 2009
**********************************
THIS AND THAT
******************************************************
Repetition is the most powerful tool of persuasion. Commercials, slogans, prayers, sermons, and speeches rely on repeating a handful of predictable lines and ideas.
If thinkers have been unpopular with their contemporaries it may be because they refused to repeat what everyone wanted to hear.
*
There are those who believe patriotism consists in emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative. If a doctor were to behave like a patriot, the mortality of his patients would escalate dramatically.
*
The man who has stolen a billion dollars will plead not guilty, hire a dream team of lawyers, and cut a deal with the prosecution.
*
What could be more cowardly than insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance?
*
One of the worst mistakes I have made in my life is treating some of my fellow men as if they were human.
#
Saturday, December 5, 2009
**********************************
WANTED: WORDS
******************************************************
We don't have a word for compassion, and if we do, we never use it – at least I have never heard anyone use it, which may suggest we think of it as an irrelevant abstraction devoid of all cash value.
Life has taught us to think in terms of you are either with us or against us and if you are against us you might as well be a Turk in disguise. By life, I mean of course our former masters – be they Soviet, Ottoman, or any other Asiatic barbarian you care to mention.
Deviate a fraction of an inch from the line established from above and you are toast. I can tell that by the kind of insults hurled in my direction by gentle readers who operate on the assumption that as men of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) our bosses, bishops, and benefactors must know better than a lowly scribbler who can't even make ends meet.
If we don't have words for honesty, compassion, and compromise, let's borrow them. Nothing wrong in borrowing. Most of our words are borrowed from other languages to begin with. But if we have words for them, let's resurrect them by all means, and even more important, let's use and practice them. A nation of dishonest, uncompromising men devoid of all compassion is a nation on its way to the devil – if not already there.
#
**********************************
COMPASSION
******************************************************
Yesterday, when I said something to the effect that the majority of philosophers, beginning with Socrates, met a violent end, a gentle reader took it upon himself to point out that I had nothing to worry about. I am, of course, fully aware of the fact that Armenians do not as a rule condemn their writers to death. They only betray them to the authorities, even when the authorities happen to be bloodthirsty barbarians like Talaat and Stalin. After all, it is not for nothing that we are universally respected as the first nation that converted to Christianity, a religion based on compassion, which is a word we don't have in Armenian, and if we do, we never use it. My own dictionary translates it as "koot," which means pity rather than compassion, which means suffering with.
*
Propaganda allows bloodthirsty barbarians to say their aim is to advance the cause of civilization. As for their victims, propaganda allows them the luxury of bragging about their moral superiority.
*
If individual freedom is God's gift to us, as theologians are eager to explain, why is He more protective of the barbarian's freedom and less of the victim's? Is it conceivable that the Almighty is an unequal opportunity defender in Whose eyes the barbarian's freedom is of greater concern than the freedom of the defenseless victim?
*
Mao said, “Let one hundred flowers bloom, let one hundred schools of thought contend.”
Napoleon said, “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
Mao spoke like Mao but acted like Napoleon.
That's politics for you. You tell them what they want to hear and do what you have to do even when what you have to do stands in direct contradiction to what you tell them.
*
Propaganda is a win-win proposition, or a lottery in which everyone wins the first prize.
#
Friday, December 4, 2009
**********************************
THIS AND THAT
******************************************************
Repetition is the most powerful tool of persuasion. Commercials, slogans, prayers, sermons, and speeches rely on repeating a handful of predictable lines and ideas.
If thinkers have been unpopular with their contemporaries it may be because they refused to repeat what everyone wanted to hear.
*
There are those who believe patriotism consists in emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative. If a doctor were to behave like a patriot, the mortality of his patients would escalate dramatically.
*
The man who has stolen a billion dollars will plead not guilty, hire a dream team of lawyers, and cut a deal with the prosecution.
*
What could be more cowardly than insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance?
*
One of the worst mistakes I have made in my life is treating some of my fellow men as if they were human.
#
Saturday, December 5, 2009
**********************************
WANTED: WORDS
******************************************************
We don't have a word for compassion, and if we do, we never use it – at least I have never heard anyone use it, which may suggest we think of it as an irrelevant abstraction devoid of all cash value.
Life has taught us to think in terms of you are either with us or against us and if you are against us you might as well be a Turk in disguise. By life, I mean of course our former masters – be they Soviet, Ottoman, or any other Asiatic barbarian you care to mention.
Deviate a fraction of an inch from the line established from above and you are toast. I can tell that by the kind of insults hurled in my direction by gentle readers who operate on the assumption that as men of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) our bosses, bishops, and benefactors must know better than a lowly scribbler who can't even make ends meet.
If we don't have words for honesty, compassion, and compromise, let's borrow them. Nothing wrong in borrowing. Most of our words are borrowed from other languages to begin with. But if we have words for them, let's resurrect them by all means, and even more important, let's use and practice them. A nation of dishonest, uncompromising men devoid of all compassion is a nation on its way to the devil – if not already there.
#
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
more...
Notes: Sunday, November 29, 2009
**********************************
ON SELF-ASSESSMENT
******************************************************
Popes, imams, dupes, and fanatics – that is to say, the majority of mankind – are never wrong. They may say “man is a fallible creature,” but they believe it doesn't apply to them. To everyone else, yes. To them, hell no!
*
If Mt. Ararat were allowed to assess its own height, it would say it is higher than Everest.
Mt. Ararat?
Make it, a hill of beans.
Even better, make it a pile of sh-t!
*
The greater the number of doubts, the greater the number of aggressively asserted certainties.
*
Power and propaganda are Siamese twins. Separate them and they both die.
*
One reason why imperial powers like Russia and the United States oppose democratic reforms in other countries, including our own, is that they hate to be at the whim of the people. Another reason: corrupt regimes are more easily bribed, blackmailed, and manipulated.
*
Why did Nobel Prize winners like Knut Hamsun and Sartre support Stalin and Hitler? My only answer: where emotions enter, common sense exits. Both Hamsun and Sartre saw only the positive in an alien system and the negative in their own.
#
Monday, November 230, 2009
**********************************
REFLECTIONS OF A CYNIC
******************************************************
To commemorate the massacre of 70,000 Protestants in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck. So much for religious tolerance, Christian charity, and Papal infallibility.
*
When two men speak badly of each other, I am tempted to believe both . When they praise each other, I smell a conspiracy.
*
Armenian anti-Semites say the Young Turks were Semites. Speaking for myself, I am less interested in knowing what others (be they Semites or goyim) did to us, and more interested in knowing what we, or rather our leadership, did for us.
If they did something, what exactly?
If nothing, what kind of leaders do nothing but pull their dick in time of crisis?
*
Blaming our misfortunes on others is a dead end because it only reinforces our image as perennial losers and victims. Recognizing our blunders and learning from them however may teach us not to behave like idiots in the future.
*
Hugo Grotius was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher whose famous last words were: “By understanding many things, I have accomplished nothing.”
Speaking of understanding, my favorite famous last words are Hegel's: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me.”
*
Karl Marx understood Hegel, and those who read and understand Marx call themselves Marxists. But Marx himself said he was not a Marxist, probably because he knew where there is an -ism, or an ideology, or a belief system, there will also be swine like the above-mentioned pope, who not only did nothing to stop the massacres but celebrated the occasion as a victory.
*
What does the papacy and our leadership share in common? The pope struck a medal, our leaders raise monuments and build museums.
#
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
**********************************
WORTH REPEATING
& REMEMBERING
******************************************************
“An Armenian's tongue is sharper than a Turk's yataghan.” (Zarian)
*
“Soft words can break bones.” (Anonymous)
*
“Where Armenian blood flows, look for an Armenian hatchet.” (Raffi)
*
“You want to save your fellow men?
Prepare yourself to be crucified.” (Raffi)
*
“A nation's history is an extension of its character.” (Nejdeh)
*
“Armenian literature is a cemetery and
writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as going to a funeral.” (Massikian)
*
“Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom.
We are now afraid of free speech.” (Garabents)
*
“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” (Zarian)
*
“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds,
divisiveness of evil ones.” (Yeghishé)
*
“You must burn in order to enlighten.” (Toumanian)
*
“Let us learn to be human by observing animals.” (Aramais Sahakian)
*
“A hungry vegetarian can be as dangerous as a carnivore.” (Yeznig Palig)
*
“Teaching consists in opening the mind.
The mouth will open by itself.” (Avedik Issahakian)
#
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
**********************************
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
******************************************************
In an environment where no one thinks, thinking becomes a risky business. Socrates was not the only thinker who was condemned to death by a so-called enlightened and progressive democracy. You may be surprised to learn that the overwhelming majority of thinkers did not die a natural death but were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, burned alive, beheaded, committed suicide, and executed; or like Plato, Aristotle, and Voltaire, lived in fear of their life. For more on this subject see THE BOOK OF DEAD PHILOSOPHERS by Simon Critchley (London, 2008).
*
The shortest list in the world? That of great Armenian statesmen.
*
In judging others, I judge myself, or an aspect of myself that continues to reside within me even if only as a memory.
*
I have many doubts about many things but about one thing I am certain: those I have insulted will neither forgive nor forget me.
*
I condemn no one by calling them fools, dupes, and swine.
I have been called worse names and I feel just fine.
#
**********************************
ON SELF-ASSESSMENT
******************************************************
Popes, imams, dupes, and fanatics – that is to say, the majority of mankind – are never wrong. They may say “man is a fallible creature,” but they believe it doesn't apply to them. To everyone else, yes. To them, hell no!
*
If Mt. Ararat were allowed to assess its own height, it would say it is higher than Everest.
Mt. Ararat?
Make it, a hill of beans.
Even better, make it a pile of sh-t!
*
The greater the number of doubts, the greater the number of aggressively asserted certainties.
*
Power and propaganda are Siamese twins. Separate them and they both die.
*
One reason why imperial powers like Russia and the United States oppose democratic reforms in other countries, including our own, is that they hate to be at the whim of the people. Another reason: corrupt regimes are more easily bribed, blackmailed, and manipulated.
*
Why did Nobel Prize winners like Knut Hamsun and Sartre support Stalin and Hitler? My only answer: where emotions enter, common sense exits. Both Hamsun and Sartre saw only the positive in an alien system and the negative in their own.
#
Monday, November 230, 2009
**********************************
REFLECTIONS OF A CYNIC
******************************************************
To commemorate the massacre of 70,000 Protestants in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck. So much for religious tolerance, Christian charity, and Papal infallibility.
*
When two men speak badly of each other, I am tempted to believe both . When they praise each other, I smell a conspiracy.
*
Armenian anti-Semites say the Young Turks were Semites. Speaking for myself, I am less interested in knowing what others (be they Semites or goyim) did to us, and more interested in knowing what we, or rather our leadership, did for us.
If they did something, what exactly?
If nothing, what kind of leaders do nothing but pull their dick in time of crisis?
*
Blaming our misfortunes on others is a dead end because it only reinforces our image as perennial losers and victims. Recognizing our blunders and learning from them however may teach us not to behave like idiots in the future.
*
Hugo Grotius was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher whose famous last words were: “By understanding many things, I have accomplished nothing.”
Speaking of understanding, my favorite famous last words are Hegel's: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me.”
*
Karl Marx understood Hegel, and those who read and understand Marx call themselves Marxists. But Marx himself said he was not a Marxist, probably because he knew where there is an -ism, or an ideology, or a belief system, there will also be swine like the above-mentioned pope, who not only did nothing to stop the massacres but celebrated the occasion as a victory.
*
What does the papacy and our leadership share in common? The pope struck a medal, our leaders raise monuments and build museums.
#
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
**********************************
WORTH REPEATING
& REMEMBERING
******************************************************
“An Armenian's tongue is sharper than a Turk's yataghan.” (Zarian)
*
“Soft words can break bones.” (Anonymous)
*
“Where Armenian blood flows, look for an Armenian hatchet.” (Raffi)
*
“You want to save your fellow men?
Prepare yourself to be crucified.” (Raffi)
*
“A nation's history is an extension of its character.” (Nejdeh)
*
“Armenian literature is a cemetery and
writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as going to a funeral.” (Massikian)
*
“Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom.
We are now afraid of free speech.” (Garabents)
*
“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” (Zarian)
*
“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds,
divisiveness of evil ones.” (Yeghishé)
*
“You must burn in order to enlighten.” (Toumanian)
*
“Let us learn to be human by observing animals.” (Aramais Sahakian)
*
“A hungry vegetarian can be as dangerous as a carnivore.” (Yeznig Palig)
*
“Teaching consists in opening the mind.
The mouth will open by itself.” (Avedik Issahakian)
#
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
**********************************
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
******************************************************
In an environment where no one thinks, thinking becomes a risky business. Socrates was not the only thinker who was condemned to death by a so-called enlightened and progressive democracy. You may be surprised to learn that the overwhelming majority of thinkers did not die a natural death but were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, burned alive, beheaded, committed suicide, and executed; or like Plato, Aristotle, and Voltaire, lived in fear of their life. For more on this subject see THE BOOK OF DEAD PHILOSOPHERS by Simon Critchley (London, 2008).
*
The shortest list in the world? That of great Armenian statesmen.
*
In judging others, I judge myself, or an aspect of myself that continues to reside within me even if only as a memory.
*
I have many doubts about many things but about one thing I am certain: those I have insulted will neither forgive nor forget me.
*
I condemn no one by calling them fools, dupes, and swine.
I have been called worse names and I feel just fine.
#
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