April 25, 2010
***************************************************
COMPASSION
**************************************
Compassion, I am told, is a missing ingredient in my commentaries. What I am not told is, compassion for whom? The victim or the victimizer, the deceiver or his dupe?
*
A critic is judged by his degree of objectivity; a sermonizer by his compassion (which means suffering with); a physician, on the other hand, is judged by the accuracy of his diagnoses; and a lawyer by his ability to prove the innocent guilty (if he is with the prosecution) and the guilty innocent (if he is with the defense).
What I am trying to say here is that, all lines of work have their own specific and narrow aims, and it would be a mistake for a critic to muscle in the territory of sermonizers, or for that matter, for a lawyer to discard his whig, don a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck, walk into a hospital and pretend to know what he is talking about.
*
As Armenians, shall we ascribe all our problems to our writers and critics for their lack of compassion? Like the rest of mankind, we too have been exposed to sermonizers for almost two millennia now. What has been the result? More lies, more corruption, more incompetence, more victims, more blunders, and more propaganda. As they say in Washington: “You want a friend who will love you even if you are an s.o.b. or a dealer in b.s. (caca de toro), get a dog!”
#
April 26, 2010
***************************************************
AND ANOTHER THING
**************************************
Underestimating the opposition might as well be synonymous with defeat.
At the turn of the last century the Ottoman Empire was labeled “the Sick Man of Europe.” That's when our revolutionaries decided to challenge its might and went as far as daring the Sultan to massacre us, assuming if he was foolish enough to do so, the Great Powers of the West and the Czar of all the Russias would fall on him like a ton of bricks. No one said the Empire was less like a sick man and more like a wounded tiger, that is to say, at its most dangerous phase.
Our greatest enemy then and now is not the Turk but our damaged perception of reality.
*
And now, consider the case of Palestinians today: they too underestimated the opposition when they chose to go on the warpath. They thought, as Muslims – once upon a time mighty warriors and empire builders – they outnumbered Jews a thousand to one. Besides, who were these Jews who dared to occupy their lands? Nothing but scrawny money-changers who had not fought and won a single war during the last two thousand years.
*
How right are those of my readers who tell me I should get busy flattering egos instead of exposing derrières and questioning the integrity of our leaders, their institutions, and their fund-raising campaigns?
And speaking of fund-raising: If the deciding vote is cast by the bottom line, it only means the decision-makers think not with their brains (assuming they have any) but with their bottoms.
*
It has been said, “We begin to grow up on the day someone we love dies.”
We died.
What have our leaders learned?
Did they ever love us?
#
April 27, 2010
***************************************************
AS OTHERS SEE US
**************************************
Last night on the evening news on TV there was talk of organized Armenian gangs in Los Angeles. Now a few more million people know we are not what we pretend to be.
But then who is?
And yet, we keep brainwashing our children to believe we are better and silencing those who dare to disagree.
We need a positive outlook on life, we are told by negative individuals. And by negative individuals I mean Panchoonies, Jack S. Avanakians, and their dupes whose main concern is covering up who they really are and what they are really up to. In other words, Armenians who speak in the name of Armenianism and practice Ottomanism and Sovietism.
By negative individuals I mean cowards who are afraid to take a good look at themselves in the mirror – afraid of what they may see there.
To cover up their treason, they speechify on patriotism.
Our organized criminal gangs: where did they learn their trade?
By observing our “betters” of course -- that is to say, our commissars in the Homeland, and in the Diaspora, our bosses and bishops – or our mini-sultans and crypto-imams.
How to reconcile our criminal gangs with our demand for Genocide recognition?
That indeed is the question.
All nations have their share of criminal gangs.
If true, then let us have the decency to admit once and for all that we are no better than the rest of mankind, including Turks. And if, unlike Turks, we are not guilty of genocide, it's not because we are better. Because to say we are better than Turks is to confuse military inferiority with moral superiority.
And now, let us pray, if we still have a prayer.
#
April 28, 2010
***************************************************
THE ENEMY WITHIN
**************************************
We were defeated because our enemies outnumbered us.
True or false?
To imply that God created more Turks than Armenians is to accuse Him of being pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian. Like all nations and empires Turks too began their career as a collection of small tribes. With one difference. They were successful in forging alliances with one another. Forging alliances has never been our forte. Being subservient to barbarians comes more easily to us than coming to terms with our own brothers.
*
We are told geography is destiny. We were divided because of our mountains and valleys.
Consider the case of North-American Indians: not only they lived on flatlands but they also outnumbered white men. And yet they lost. They lost because they were divided. Too many chiefs...
*
If in crime it's “cherchez la femme,” in politics it's “cherchez the enemy within.” If, on the other hand, you put the blame on others (another line of thinking popular with us) you condemn yourself to die an ignoramus.
*
More cases in point:
Hitler won at first because he was successful in uniting the German-speaking people. But he lost because he divided his fellow Germans into friends and enemies. As a result, he lost some of the most creative minds in his realm.
Something similar could be said of Stalin's USSR. It was not American capitalism or the Pope of Rome that defeated Communism, but Stalin.
*
Is my criticism wrong because I don't understand my fellow Armenians?
Nobody is perfect. If you read only infallible writers, you should stick to Papal Encyclicals. If I am wrong, the next question we should ask is: Are our propagandists right?
As for understanding my fellow Armenians: I don't have to understand why they think as they do because I too was brought up to think like them. I have been there.
A layman may be forgiven for believing what he is brainwashed to believe. But he cannot and should not be forgiven for thinking he knows better and what he knows is the alpha and omega of human knowledge and wisdom. That's neither knowledge nor wisdom but arrogance or hubris, which is invariably punished by the gods.
#
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
contradictions
April 22, 2010
***************************************************
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
**************************************
Herbert von Karajan's biographers (and there are several of them) tell us he was of Greek descent (real name Karayannis = Blackjohn), but there are Armenians today who believe he was Armenian. The evidence? The last syllable of his surname, of course. What other evidence does anyone need?
An Armenian writer (may he rest in peace) who is accorded an entry in the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, in an angry letter to me: “I have published a book on Armenian celebrities and Karajan is in it!”
What could be more irrefutable than that?
It is common knowledge (but only among Armenians) that many Hollywood stars, among them, Gregory Peck, Jack Palance, and Elizabeth Taylor (Ipekian, Palanjian, and Tertsakian respectively) are of Armenian descent.
“Jesus may have been a Jew,” I was once told by an Armenian with a college degree, “but he was Armenian in spirit because Armenians were the first nation to convert to Christianity.”
More recently I was told, if 40% of Armenian words have Iranian roots, it is the Iranians who borrowed from us and not the other way around. The evidence? To make a long story short, we are “the cradle of civilization.”
If true, I wonder why is it that no historian has so far bothered to write a history of our decline and fall? Is it because the roots of our decline and fall are within us? -- and more particularly in our tribalism, ignorance, prejudice, arrogance, and megalomania – and more particularly, the kind of megalomania that allows us to believe anything that flatters our collective ego?
Or is it because, in the words of our own Raffi:
“We are Armenians and we bear God's curse on our foreheads. We demolish our house with our own hands. Mutual intolerance, divisiveness, envy, betrayal, and a thousand other vices have built permanent nests in our hearts.”
Elsewhere:
“If you examine carefully our national misfortunes and the acts of barbarism perpetrated against us by our enemies, you will invariably find an Armenian. Where Armenian blood flows look for for an Armenian hatchet. After digging the foundations and carefully raising his house, an Armenian will tear it down again with his own hands.”
Is this why the cradle has become the grave?
#
April 23, 2010
***************************************************
ARMENIANS ON ARMENIANS
**************************************
As an Armenian, you may say whatever you wish about your fellow Armenians and get away with it on the grounds that (one) as an Armenian you are an expert on the subject, and (two) most Armenians are dupes who know even less than you do. What Ajarian said about the Armenian language (“Who among us can truly claim to know the Armenian language?”) could be said about Armenians -- “Who among us can truly say to understand Armenians?”
An Armenian is a foreign country to another Armenian. Our differences are such that it is as if we were not only members of different tribes but also of races. I remember once when a fellow Armenian and I disagreed and I said, “We must come from different planetary system,” he retorted with “Make it galaxies.”
What you think or say about Armenians may contain particles of truth which may be easily contradicted by someone else's particles. I say and I repeat, feel free to say whatever you wish about Armenians provided you are honestly interested in the subject which, after all, is an integral part of the human condition – not exactly alien territory to many disciplines, among them philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and semantics.
*
A reader has posted a critical comment in which he praises the generosity of our benefactors and attacks the integrity of our bishops on the grounds they are in it only for the money. If true – and it may well be – the questions we must ask are:
If those among us who speak in the name of God are corrupt, what about those who speak in the name of ideology (bosses) or capital (benefactors)?
If the central concern of our bishops is greed, is the central concern of our bosses and benefactors selfless service?
Are we to believe religion is abused but power and wealth are not?
What has been the contribution of capitalism and ideology to the human condition?
An idea should be judged by its history and not its dictionary definition.
A power structure should be judged not by those in power but by its history of abuses. Where there is power, there will be abuses of power. This is as true of the papacy as it is of monarchy, imperialism, communism, capitalism, authoritarianism, and democracy.
#
April 24, 2010
***************************************************
CONTRADICTIONS
**************************************
Nothing can be more misleading than to confuse chauvinism with patriotism, and dissent with treason. Because to do so also means to confuse propaganda with truth, fascism with democracy, and subservience with independence.
*
All leaders, be they political or religious, rely on the propensity of the average dupe to say “Yes, sir!” Leadership without dupes is inconceivable.
*
Fascism and human rights are mutually exclusive concepts. History is very clear on this point. A leader who pretends to have the Keys of the Kingdom, his Kingdom is that of Hell.
*
We are told one reason suffering is an integral part of the human condition is that Adam and Eve ignored God's warning not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, they failed to say “Yes, sir!” and they dared to think for themselves. If you believe that, you will believe anything, including the necessity of just wars, which also means massacres, violations of human rights, and intolerance of free speech.
*
In the eyes of warlike people, all wars are just. Has any nation in the history of mankind ever admitted to have initiated an unjust war? Or, for that matter, has any religious leader ever admitted to believe in a false God? And yet, the world is full of them.
#
***************************************************
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
**************************************
Herbert von Karajan's biographers (and there are several of them) tell us he was of Greek descent (real name Karayannis = Blackjohn), but there are Armenians today who believe he was Armenian. The evidence? The last syllable of his surname, of course. What other evidence does anyone need?
An Armenian writer (may he rest in peace) who is accorded an entry in the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, in an angry letter to me: “I have published a book on Armenian celebrities and Karajan is in it!”
What could be more irrefutable than that?
It is common knowledge (but only among Armenians) that many Hollywood stars, among them, Gregory Peck, Jack Palance, and Elizabeth Taylor (Ipekian, Palanjian, and Tertsakian respectively) are of Armenian descent.
“Jesus may have been a Jew,” I was once told by an Armenian with a college degree, “but he was Armenian in spirit because Armenians were the first nation to convert to Christianity.”
More recently I was told, if 40% of Armenian words have Iranian roots, it is the Iranians who borrowed from us and not the other way around. The evidence? To make a long story short, we are “the cradle of civilization.”
If true, I wonder why is it that no historian has so far bothered to write a history of our decline and fall? Is it because the roots of our decline and fall are within us? -- and more particularly in our tribalism, ignorance, prejudice, arrogance, and megalomania – and more particularly, the kind of megalomania that allows us to believe anything that flatters our collective ego?
Or is it because, in the words of our own Raffi:
“We are Armenians and we bear God's curse on our foreheads. We demolish our house with our own hands. Mutual intolerance, divisiveness, envy, betrayal, and a thousand other vices have built permanent nests in our hearts.”
Elsewhere:
“If you examine carefully our national misfortunes and the acts of barbarism perpetrated against us by our enemies, you will invariably find an Armenian. Where Armenian blood flows look for for an Armenian hatchet. After digging the foundations and carefully raising his house, an Armenian will tear it down again with his own hands.”
Is this why the cradle has become the grave?
#
April 23, 2010
***************************************************
ARMENIANS ON ARMENIANS
**************************************
As an Armenian, you may say whatever you wish about your fellow Armenians and get away with it on the grounds that (one) as an Armenian you are an expert on the subject, and (two) most Armenians are dupes who know even less than you do. What Ajarian said about the Armenian language (“Who among us can truly claim to know the Armenian language?”) could be said about Armenians -- “Who among us can truly say to understand Armenians?”
An Armenian is a foreign country to another Armenian. Our differences are such that it is as if we were not only members of different tribes but also of races. I remember once when a fellow Armenian and I disagreed and I said, “We must come from different planetary system,” he retorted with “Make it galaxies.”
What you think or say about Armenians may contain particles of truth which may be easily contradicted by someone else's particles. I say and I repeat, feel free to say whatever you wish about Armenians provided you are honestly interested in the subject which, after all, is an integral part of the human condition – not exactly alien territory to many disciplines, among them philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and semantics.
*
A reader has posted a critical comment in which he praises the generosity of our benefactors and attacks the integrity of our bishops on the grounds they are in it only for the money. If true – and it may well be – the questions we must ask are:
If those among us who speak in the name of God are corrupt, what about those who speak in the name of ideology (bosses) or capital (benefactors)?
If the central concern of our bishops is greed, is the central concern of our bosses and benefactors selfless service?
Are we to believe religion is abused but power and wealth are not?
What has been the contribution of capitalism and ideology to the human condition?
An idea should be judged by its history and not its dictionary definition.
A power structure should be judged not by those in power but by its history of abuses. Where there is power, there will be abuses of power. This is as true of the papacy as it is of monarchy, imperialism, communism, capitalism, authoritarianism, and democracy.
#
April 24, 2010
***************************************************
CONTRADICTIONS
**************************************
Nothing can be more misleading than to confuse chauvinism with patriotism, and dissent with treason. Because to do so also means to confuse propaganda with truth, fascism with democracy, and subservience with independence.
*
All leaders, be they political or religious, rely on the propensity of the average dupe to say “Yes, sir!” Leadership without dupes is inconceivable.
*
Fascism and human rights are mutually exclusive concepts. History is very clear on this point. A leader who pretends to have the Keys of the Kingdom, his Kingdom is that of Hell.
*
We are told one reason suffering is an integral part of the human condition is that Adam and Eve ignored God's warning not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, they failed to say “Yes, sir!” and they dared to think for themselves. If you believe that, you will believe anything, including the necessity of just wars, which also means massacres, violations of human rights, and intolerance of free speech.
*
In the eyes of warlike people, all wars are just. Has any nation in the history of mankind ever admitted to have initiated an unjust war? Or, for that matter, has any religious leader ever admitted to believe in a false God? And yet, the world is full of them.
#
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
reading
April 18, 2010
***************************************************
WRITING
**************************************
From an interview with Philippe Sollers in the latest issue of LE POINT:
“To know how to write, one must know how to read; and to know how to read, one must know how to live. That's all there is to it.”
*
“It is said that anyone can be a writer because language is a medium at everyone's disposal. Allow me to confide in you if I may: writing is an art.”
*
VICTIMS
************************
Not all victims are nice. I will never forget the young, attractive woman who was so rude to me that I did something I have never done before: I walked out on her. When she went and complained to my employer, he telephoned to explain that she had once killed a man who had tried to rape her.
*
CRITICS AND DUPES
*******************************
There is more merit in being too critical to the point of being wrong than being a dupe. When one is wrong one may be corrected. But the chances of a dupe seeing the light are slim to the point of being non-existent. Racists, fanatics, fascists, and skinheads have existed and will continue to exist even in the most liberal democracies like the United States of America, and even in the most “progressive, civilized, and intelligent” nation like Armenia.
*
TURKS
***************************
If we call Turks swine we run the risk of alienating the good Turks as well as the half-Armenians within Turkey, that is to say, our most important potential allies.
*
If teachers in Turkey have no choice but to use textbooks approved by the state, in what way is the average Turk today guilty or evil?
#
April 19, 2010
***************************************************
EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS
**************************************
With the financial support of the Gulbenkian Foundation, an Irish academic by the name of D.M. Lang once wrote and published a lavishly illustrated book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION. Another academic, J. Strzygowski by name (an Austrian, I think) published a monograph asserting Italian Renaissance architecture is unthinkable without Armenian medieval architecture. Both claims have been rejected by our own academics, among them Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who was later to expose the illegal sale of ancient Armenian manuscripts by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a well-known black marketeer.
*
The sad truth is, there are as many charlatans in academia as there are in politics, organized religions, medicine, and jurisprudence.
Medicine. Last night on 60 MINUTES a con man maintained he could reverse the symptoms and even cure such terminal conditions as pancreatic cancer for the modest sum of $125,000. To prove this assertion he listed an impressive array of credentials, all of which were exposed as phony.
Jurisprudence. Consider its Greek variant which, in its Golden Age, condemned Socrates to death; Roman jurisprudence that crucified our Lord.
More recently British jurisprudence that imprisoned Gandhi; Soviet jurisprudence and its Gulags; German jurisprudence and its concentration camps; and last but far from least, American jurisprudence that, with the blessing of the Church (all denominations) legitimized racism in the South and its countless crimes against humanity.
One may therefore be justified in suspecting that the aim of a justice system (even at its most progressive and civilized stage of development) is to legitimize criminal conduct.
*
Who is taken in by charlatans? Not just the ignorant, the naïve, and the desperate, but also underdogs and victims whose egos have been so mortally wounded that like drowning man they will cling even to the most absurd lie.
Hamlet's assertion that to be an honest man is to be one in ten thousand holds as true today as it did four centuries ago.
*
For more on Lang, Strzygowski, and Sirarpie der Nersessian, see my ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY & CULTURE (New York, 1980) which was published by the AGBU (also known as KGBU in some circles), a textbook that was conceived and written for the purpose of flattering the naïve and the uninformed (beginning with myself).
#
April 20, 2010
***************************************************
READING MANN
**************************************
“The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”
*
Thomas Mann was a contemporary of Hitler who saw him as an enemy of the state as well as his own personal enemy. Like all megalomaniacs (a condition not alien to us) the German dictator thought of himself not only as a great statesman and a messianic figure on the stage of world history, but also a better writer than Mann. His resentment grew exponentially when Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize and his MAGIC MOUNTAIN sold many more copies than MEIN KAMPF. He tried to have him assassinated but failed. Mann escaped to America where he wrote a big book on Jews – the four-volume JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, a magnificent and magisterial retelling of a story from the GENESIS. He also wrote many analytical commentaries in which he tried to understand and explain his fellow Germans. Understanding Germans also meant understanding Hitler and his hold over the nation:
“The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.”
Sounds familiar?
On Hitler as speechifier:
“It is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic in its effect on the masses: a weapon of definitely histrionic even hysterical power, which he thrusts into the nation's wound and turns it round.”
Further down:
“Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
*
Mann and Hitler shared a boundless admiration for Wagner's music. That was enough for Mann to call Hitler “a brother.”
“A brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate.”
Finally, here is Mann on his contemporaries, among them Heidegger (according to some, the greatest philosopher of his time) who were taken in by Hitler in the same way that our own own writers were taken in by Stalin in both the Homeland and the Diaspora:
“...lame-brained sycophant intellectuals who mistook the vilest travesty of Germanism for the real thing – who spinelessly took part in every abjectness, prating the while of 'change in spiritual structure.'”
One must be blind not to see parallels here.
#
April 21, 2010
***************************************************
ON STYLE
**************************************
A rich vocabulary may complicate matters. Speaking for myself, I prefer a limited vocabulary -- as in the Bible or Hemingway. Less confusing. Easier to follow. More accessible. Shakespeare is at his best when he uses monosyllables -- “To be or not to be...”
“For whom the bell tolls.” That's not Hemingway but Donne.
Nabokov on Hemingway: “Bulls, bells, balls.”
Hemingway on writing: “Don't borrow, steal!”
*
If it takes you an entire page to say what could be said in a single line, then the challenge you face is not being right but being readable.
*
ON QUOTATIONS
*********************************
To those who say I quote too much, my answer is: We all quote or paraphrase and, more often than not, garble and misinterpret our sources.
Some of us do their utmost to quote honest witnesses; others prefer charlatans who will corroborate their perjury.
*
ON LIMITATIONS
*********************************
One of the hardest things in life is to know one's limitations. But to most people, their limitations might as well be unknown territory.
*
ON BRAGGARTS
**********************************
As children we were taught to brag about our past achievements. I will never forget the Greek who kept bragging about ancient Greek culture and its many contributions to world civilization to a bored American who finally said: “What else have you done more recently?”
What about us? What else have we done beside dropping our pants?
Once when I asked that question to a loud-mouth Armenian, he replied: “We taught the Azeris a lesson they will never forget.”
In other words, we did to them what they did to us. And I thought, there goes our much vaunted moral superiority down the drain.
*
ON MORTALITY
****************************
It is easy to come to terms with your own mortality; much more difficult to survive the death of someone you love.
#
***************************************************
WRITING
**************************************
From an interview with Philippe Sollers in the latest issue of LE POINT:
“To know how to write, one must know how to read; and to know how to read, one must know how to live. That's all there is to it.”
*
“It is said that anyone can be a writer because language is a medium at everyone's disposal. Allow me to confide in you if I may: writing is an art.”
*
VICTIMS
************************
Not all victims are nice. I will never forget the young, attractive woman who was so rude to me that I did something I have never done before: I walked out on her. When she went and complained to my employer, he telephoned to explain that she had once killed a man who had tried to rape her.
*
CRITICS AND DUPES
*******************************
There is more merit in being too critical to the point of being wrong than being a dupe. When one is wrong one may be corrected. But the chances of a dupe seeing the light are slim to the point of being non-existent. Racists, fanatics, fascists, and skinheads have existed and will continue to exist even in the most liberal democracies like the United States of America, and even in the most “progressive, civilized, and intelligent” nation like Armenia.
*
TURKS
***************************
If we call Turks swine we run the risk of alienating the good Turks as well as the half-Armenians within Turkey, that is to say, our most important potential allies.
*
If teachers in Turkey have no choice but to use textbooks approved by the state, in what way is the average Turk today guilty or evil?
#
April 19, 2010
***************************************************
EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS
**************************************
With the financial support of the Gulbenkian Foundation, an Irish academic by the name of D.M. Lang once wrote and published a lavishly illustrated book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION. Another academic, J. Strzygowski by name (an Austrian, I think) published a monograph asserting Italian Renaissance architecture is unthinkable without Armenian medieval architecture. Both claims have been rejected by our own academics, among them Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who was later to expose the illegal sale of ancient Armenian manuscripts by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a well-known black marketeer.
*
The sad truth is, there are as many charlatans in academia as there are in politics, organized religions, medicine, and jurisprudence.
Medicine. Last night on 60 MINUTES a con man maintained he could reverse the symptoms and even cure such terminal conditions as pancreatic cancer for the modest sum of $125,000. To prove this assertion he listed an impressive array of credentials, all of which were exposed as phony.
Jurisprudence. Consider its Greek variant which, in its Golden Age, condemned Socrates to death; Roman jurisprudence that crucified our Lord.
More recently British jurisprudence that imprisoned Gandhi; Soviet jurisprudence and its Gulags; German jurisprudence and its concentration camps; and last but far from least, American jurisprudence that, with the blessing of the Church (all denominations) legitimized racism in the South and its countless crimes against humanity.
One may therefore be justified in suspecting that the aim of a justice system (even at its most progressive and civilized stage of development) is to legitimize criminal conduct.
*
Who is taken in by charlatans? Not just the ignorant, the naïve, and the desperate, but also underdogs and victims whose egos have been so mortally wounded that like drowning man they will cling even to the most absurd lie.
Hamlet's assertion that to be an honest man is to be one in ten thousand holds as true today as it did four centuries ago.
*
For more on Lang, Strzygowski, and Sirarpie der Nersessian, see my ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY & CULTURE (New York, 1980) which was published by the AGBU (also known as KGBU in some circles), a textbook that was conceived and written for the purpose of flattering the naïve and the uninformed (beginning with myself).
#
April 20, 2010
***************************************************
READING MANN
**************************************
“The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”
*
Thomas Mann was a contemporary of Hitler who saw him as an enemy of the state as well as his own personal enemy. Like all megalomaniacs (a condition not alien to us) the German dictator thought of himself not only as a great statesman and a messianic figure on the stage of world history, but also a better writer than Mann. His resentment grew exponentially when Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize and his MAGIC MOUNTAIN sold many more copies than MEIN KAMPF. He tried to have him assassinated but failed. Mann escaped to America where he wrote a big book on Jews – the four-volume JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, a magnificent and magisterial retelling of a story from the GENESIS. He also wrote many analytical commentaries in which he tried to understand and explain his fellow Germans. Understanding Germans also meant understanding Hitler and his hold over the nation:
“The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.”
Sounds familiar?
On Hitler as speechifier:
“It is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic in its effect on the masses: a weapon of definitely histrionic even hysterical power, which he thrusts into the nation's wound and turns it round.”
Further down:
“Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
*
Mann and Hitler shared a boundless admiration for Wagner's music. That was enough for Mann to call Hitler “a brother.”
“A brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate.”
Finally, here is Mann on his contemporaries, among them Heidegger (according to some, the greatest philosopher of his time) who were taken in by Hitler in the same way that our own own writers were taken in by Stalin in both the Homeland and the Diaspora:
“...lame-brained sycophant intellectuals who mistook the vilest travesty of Germanism for the real thing – who spinelessly took part in every abjectness, prating the while of 'change in spiritual structure.'”
One must be blind not to see parallels here.
#
April 21, 2010
***************************************************
ON STYLE
**************************************
A rich vocabulary may complicate matters. Speaking for myself, I prefer a limited vocabulary -- as in the Bible or Hemingway. Less confusing. Easier to follow. More accessible. Shakespeare is at his best when he uses monosyllables -- “To be or not to be...”
“For whom the bell tolls.” That's not Hemingway but Donne.
Nabokov on Hemingway: “Bulls, bells, balls.”
Hemingway on writing: “Don't borrow, steal!”
*
If it takes you an entire page to say what could be said in a single line, then the challenge you face is not being right but being readable.
*
ON QUOTATIONS
*********************************
To those who say I quote too much, my answer is: We all quote or paraphrase and, more often than not, garble and misinterpret our sources.
Some of us do their utmost to quote honest witnesses; others prefer charlatans who will corroborate their perjury.
*
ON LIMITATIONS
*********************************
One of the hardest things in life is to know one's limitations. But to most people, their limitations might as well be unknown territory.
*
ON BRAGGARTS
**********************************
As children we were taught to brag about our past achievements. I will never forget the Greek who kept bragging about ancient Greek culture and its many contributions to world civilization to a bored American who finally said: “What else have you done more recently?”
What about us? What else have we done beside dropping our pants?
Once when I asked that question to a loud-mouth Armenian, he replied: “We taught the Azeris a lesson they will never forget.”
In other words, we did to them what they did to us. And I thought, there goes our much vaunted moral superiority down the drain.
*
ON MORTALITY
****************************
It is easy to come to terms with your own mortality; much more difficult to survive the death of someone you love.
#
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Massikian
April 15, 2010
***************************************************
READING BARUIR MASSIKIAN,
THE ABOMINABLE NO MAN
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
**************************************
“Armenian literature is a vast cemetery and writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as attending a requiem mass.”
*
A handful of his contemporaries may have heard of him but the rest have every reason to assume that he is a fiction of my own imagination whose raison d'etre is to reinforce my own peculiar views on Armenians and related atrocities. It is to dispel that notion that I have translated below the brief entry on him in the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (volume 7, page 267), by A. Yapujian:
“Armenian author, born in Adana in 1914. He lived in Cairo in 1920. Received his primary education in the Berberian School, Studied law at the University of Paris, philosophy and literature at the University of Brussels. His works include OUR LIFE (1946), BROKEN CROSSES (1959), and PELTING RAIN (1962), which is a collection of humorous tales, and the plays “My Grandson,” “The Cross,” “One Million,” and “Akhjikdes” [literally, “girl-viewing,” a formal visit arranged by match-makers). His operetta ERZRUM RONDO was staged in Cairo, New York, and elsewhere.”
In addition to being a composer he was also an excellent violinist, or so I am told by a personal acquaintance of his.
He died about ten years after the Encyclopedia was published in 1981.
His contempt of Armenian activists, Panchoonies, and Jack S. Avanakians was such that, when several of them approached his deathbed suggesting he bequeath his estate to an Armenian educational foundation (he died single and, as a successful lawyer, he was a wealthy man), he is said to have replied: “I'd much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”
*
“To be an Armenian poet means to be a beggar at the mercy of buggers.”
*
“They asked a thief why he stole, and he replied: 'To qualify as a member of an Armenian organization.'”
*
“He was convinced he looked like a doctor though he had not had much practice in legal murder.”
*
“The logic of an Armenian charlatan: All geniuses have major failings. Since I have a major failing, I must be a genius.”
*
“Instead of books, they want basterma.
Instead of theater, belly-dancing.
Instead of poems, obscenities and brawls.”
#
April 16, 2010
***************************************************
REFRAINS
**************************************
Because he was a Jew, writes Kirk Douglas in his memoirs, he was constantly harassed, bullied, and beaten by neighborhood boys in New York. I too was bullied and sometimes beaten, not by Greeks but by my Armenian classmates.
*
Nothing comes more naturally to a victim than to victimize the first chance he gets.
*
For most of our historic existence we were at the mercy of bullies who were successful in convincing us we were in the best of hands.
When shortly before he was himself murdered, Zohrab warned his fellow Armenians of the coming catastrophe, they said, “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating.”
That's another problem with us. After being victims for centuries, we assume our status as underdogs to be an integral part of the human condition.
*
I have said this before and it bears repeating: Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
*
We experienced a literary Renaissance in Istanbul under Sultan Abdulhamid II. Under our own bosses and benefactors (and with the blessing of our bishops) we are experiencing the apotheosis of mediocrity which is worse than death.
*
The dead can be resurrected. It is more difficult with the living.
*
I remember to have read somewhere, “A feud should live a full and colorful life and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.” After we die, our feuds will go on living. Our mortality is certain. So is the immortality of our feuds.
#
April 17, 2010
***************************************************
TWO BOOKS
**************************************
Two recently published books that I am looking forward to read are SPEAK, NABOKOV by Michael Maar, and a biography (the first, I think) of Lesley Blanch titled INNER LANDSCAPES, WILDER SHORES by Anne Boston.
*
Nabokov is a favorite writer of mine. LOLITA is the only work of fiction that I have read four times with equal enjoyment. His critics are right when they say he has no moral sense, no social consciousness, and no constructive message. In that sense, he is very much like music, even though he was himself tone deaf, unlike his son Dimitry, who in addition to being an opera singer is also his father's editor and translator of his Russian works.
My admiration of Nabokov is such that I am more than willing to forgive his blind spots – two of them being his contempt for two bourgeois writers like Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Nabokov was born in the highest Russian aristocracy, a multimillionaire, who lost his fortune to the Soviets and his father to an assassin.
*
Lesley Blanch is the author of THE SABRES OF PARADISE, the most fascinating book on the Caucasus, or rather, the fierce resistance of Caucasian tribes under the leadership of Imam Shamil, which continues to this day.
There are several Armenians in this epic story, one of them being a girl not much older than Lolita, with whom Shamil is said to have fallen in love. So much so that even when the girl's parents were willing to pay a ransom for her (she was abducted), she refused to return to her family.
Leslie Blanch married Romain Gary, author of the best-selling THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, (inspired by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, with whom he was personally acquainted), who left her for a much younger Jean Seberg, who committed suicide; and so did Romain Gary.
I have a soft spot for all suicides (except Hitler), but I am also convinced it is the wrong people who commit suicide, and those who should, don't – Stalin, Mao, Franco, and any day now, Castro.
#
***************************************************
READING BARUIR MASSIKIAN,
THE ABOMINABLE NO MAN
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
**************************************
“Armenian literature is a vast cemetery and writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as attending a requiem mass.”
*
A handful of his contemporaries may have heard of him but the rest have every reason to assume that he is a fiction of my own imagination whose raison d'etre is to reinforce my own peculiar views on Armenians and related atrocities. It is to dispel that notion that I have translated below the brief entry on him in the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (volume 7, page 267), by A. Yapujian:
“Armenian author, born in Adana in 1914. He lived in Cairo in 1920. Received his primary education in the Berberian School, Studied law at the University of Paris, philosophy and literature at the University of Brussels. His works include OUR LIFE (1946), BROKEN CROSSES (1959), and PELTING RAIN (1962), which is a collection of humorous tales, and the plays “My Grandson,” “The Cross,” “One Million,” and “Akhjikdes” [literally, “girl-viewing,” a formal visit arranged by match-makers). His operetta ERZRUM RONDO was staged in Cairo, New York, and elsewhere.”
In addition to being a composer he was also an excellent violinist, or so I am told by a personal acquaintance of his.
He died about ten years after the Encyclopedia was published in 1981.
His contempt of Armenian activists, Panchoonies, and Jack S. Avanakians was such that, when several of them approached his deathbed suggesting he bequeath his estate to an Armenian educational foundation (he died single and, as a successful lawyer, he was a wealthy man), he is said to have replied: “I'd much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”
*
“To be an Armenian poet means to be a beggar at the mercy of buggers.”
*
“They asked a thief why he stole, and he replied: 'To qualify as a member of an Armenian organization.'”
*
“He was convinced he looked like a doctor though he had not had much practice in legal murder.”
*
“The logic of an Armenian charlatan: All geniuses have major failings. Since I have a major failing, I must be a genius.”
*
“Instead of books, they want basterma.
Instead of theater, belly-dancing.
Instead of poems, obscenities and brawls.”
#
April 16, 2010
***************************************************
REFRAINS
**************************************
Because he was a Jew, writes Kirk Douglas in his memoirs, he was constantly harassed, bullied, and beaten by neighborhood boys in New York. I too was bullied and sometimes beaten, not by Greeks but by my Armenian classmates.
*
Nothing comes more naturally to a victim than to victimize the first chance he gets.
*
For most of our historic existence we were at the mercy of bullies who were successful in convincing us we were in the best of hands.
When shortly before he was himself murdered, Zohrab warned his fellow Armenians of the coming catastrophe, they said, “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating.”
That's another problem with us. After being victims for centuries, we assume our status as underdogs to be an integral part of the human condition.
*
I have said this before and it bears repeating: Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
*
We experienced a literary Renaissance in Istanbul under Sultan Abdulhamid II. Under our own bosses and benefactors (and with the blessing of our bishops) we are experiencing the apotheosis of mediocrity which is worse than death.
*
The dead can be resurrected. It is more difficult with the living.
*
I remember to have read somewhere, “A feud should live a full and colorful life and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.” After we die, our feuds will go on living. Our mortality is certain. So is the immortality of our feuds.
#
April 17, 2010
***************************************************
TWO BOOKS
**************************************
Two recently published books that I am looking forward to read are SPEAK, NABOKOV by Michael Maar, and a biography (the first, I think) of Lesley Blanch titled INNER LANDSCAPES, WILDER SHORES by Anne Boston.
*
Nabokov is a favorite writer of mine. LOLITA is the only work of fiction that I have read four times with equal enjoyment. His critics are right when they say he has no moral sense, no social consciousness, and no constructive message. In that sense, he is very much like music, even though he was himself tone deaf, unlike his son Dimitry, who in addition to being an opera singer is also his father's editor and translator of his Russian works.
My admiration of Nabokov is such that I am more than willing to forgive his blind spots – two of them being his contempt for two bourgeois writers like Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Nabokov was born in the highest Russian aristocracy, a multimillionaire, who lost his fortune to the Soviets and his father to an assassin.
*
Lesley Blanch is the author of THE SABRES OF PARADISE, the most fascinating book on the Caucasus, or rather, the fierce resistance of Caucasian tribes under the leadership of Imam Shamil, which continues to this day.
There are several Armenians in this epic story, one of them being a girl not much older than Lolita, with whom Shamil is said to have fallen in love. So much so that even when the girl's parents were willing to pay a ransom for her (she was abducted), she refused to return to her family.
Leslie Blanch married Romain Gary, author of the best-selling THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, (inspired by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, with whom he was personally acquainted), who left her for a much younger Jean Seberg, who committed suicide; and so did Romain Gary.
I have a soft spot for all suicides (except Hitler), but I am also convinced it is the wrong people who commit suicide, and those who should, don't – Stalin, Mao, Franco, and any day now, Castro.
#
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
aphorisms
April 10, 2010
***************************************************
ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND
**************************************
Whenever asked for solutions, I offer a single word, “honesty.” And when asked to define honesty, I say nothing on the grounds that anyone who cannot recognize an honest man when he sees one deserves to be taken in by crooks.
We are responsible for our actions as surely as we are for our thoughts and attitudes; and life, as well as the law, do not allow us to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance.
*
For many centuries men were deceived into thinking kings ruled by the will of God; and after abolishing monarchy they consented to be ruled by even more dangerous charlatans. As a result, many more millions died in wars, massacres, and genocides.
*
Who is more guilty – the deceiver or he who consents to be deceived?
Mutual deception may be said to be at the root of all tragedies.
God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, where He not only planted the Tree of Knowledge but also introduced the Serpent. In legal parlance, entrapment; in layman's terms, deception.
*
We were deceived into thinking the Empire would not strike back because the Great Powers were on our side.
Hitler deceived his people into believing they belonged to a superior race and were therefore qualified, nay destined, to rule the world.
Stalin deceived the people into believing the economic foundations of capitalism were rotten and the future belonged to Bolsheviks.
*
And consider what happens in HAMLET: Claudius deceives the people into thinking he is not a murderer and a usurper but the legitimate king of the land. Whereupon his nephew plots his revenge by deceiving the court into believing he is mad.
Who can forget the magnificent exchange between the usurper's senile minister of state and the “mad” prince?
POLONIUS: Do you know me my lord?
HAMELT: Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS: Not I my lord.
HAMLET: Then I would you were so honest a man,
POLONIUS: Honest, my lord?
HAMLET: Ay sir; to be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
#
April 11, 2010
***************************************************
ON POPULARITY
**************************************
It is an honest man's duty to expose the dishonest because not to do so amounts to legitimizing dishonesty and ignoring their victims. And because the dishonest outnumber the honest, an honest man is bound to be unpopular.
My guess is, the Beatles made more money in a single day than Mozart in a lifetime.
Popularity is for the birds and the likes of Elvis Pelvis.
Whenever I make myself unpopular with a reader, I think “mission accomplished.”
Can you name a single Armenian writer who was popular?
Naregatsi? Abovian? Baronian?
The first led an anonymous existence in a monastery.
The second committed suicide at the age of 43.
The third was betrayed to the authorities, driven out of business (as publisher) and died of TB at the age of 49.
And they were the lucky ones.
Charents and Bakunts were worse off.
The first was betrayed, arrested, and committed suicide in a Yerevan jail at the age of 40.
The second was betrayed, arrested, tortured, and shot and the age of 38.
First nation to convert to Christianity?
Maybe, but in name only.
Intelligent, progressive, civilized?
Don't make me laugh.
Philistinized, Ottomanized, Sovietized (which also means converted to atheism)?
That's more like it
*
The Polish nation is in mourning today.
If what happened to them happened to us, I have every reason to suspect we would be celebrating.
*
When the truth is unbearable or unreachable, we lie.
#
April 12, 2010
***************************************************
MUMBO JUMBO
**************************************
Some words are untranslatable. Case in point: in Armenian we have a word for “house,” but not one for “home.” There is a popular and widely quoted poem in English that says, “Every house ain't a home,” and “It takes a heap of living to make a house a home.” Translate that, if you can.
*
Man does not understand man (including himself) and yet, theologians pretend to understand and explain God to us. We can't understand God for the simple reason that God and man do not share the same dictionary. Man may need dictionaries. God doesn't.
*
God created man, and man created words, and the twain shall never meet. That's why everything we say about God is irrational, absurd, and blasphemous in the eyes of other men.
*
When we say “God is love,” or “God is our Father,” we in a sense make an attempt to bring Him down to our own level of understanding, and in this effort we fail miserably. Hence countless orthodoxies, heresies, religious wars, and massacres. It is no exaggeration to say that more people have died in the name of God than any other concept, including the Devil. Figure that one out if you can.
*
The Tower of Babel, like Reincarnation, is not a single occurrence but a constant and ceaseless process.
*
For millions of years, primitive man thought of God as the Unknown and the Unknowable; the source of all good as well as evil. Traces of this belief may be found today in all organized religions, including our own – as when we say in the Lord's prayer, “Do not lead us into temptation,” thus identifying God with the Devil whose business it is to lead man into temptation.
*
God may be many things but he is not and cannot be a contradiction. Some day we may see and understand this very clearly but not as long as we speak of Him as if He were a superior version of ourselves.
*
When we say God knows everything, do we mean He knows all the names and numbers in all the telephone books in print today? God's words – assuming he has them, or needs them, or uses them – are not our words, and neither are ours His. When Wittgenstein said we should not speak about things we know nothing about (in his own words, “...about that of which one cannot talk, one must be silent”) I suspect he had God in mind and he was saying “Shut up!” to theologians. Two and a half millennia ago Socrates made a similar assertion when he said, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
*
Jean-Paul Sartre, a contemporary of Wittgenstein, wrote a big philosophical treatise titled BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. In the cosmos, the planet on which we live is the size of a speck of dust so tiny that it might as well be invisible. Which may suggest that “being and nothingness” are not two contradictory conditions but one and the same, or as complementary to one another as mumbo jumbo.
#
April 13, 2010
***************************************************
APHORISMS
**************************************
We all harbor a killer and like 007 all we need is a license to kill.
*
God did not create man in His own image. Man is prone to error. God is not – provided we assume creating man not to have been a serious blunder on His part.
*
We choose an ideology or belief system not by its truth but by its usefulness to us.
*
By selecting a set of values and facts, one can formulate an almost infinite number of belief systems and ideologies.
*
There is a natural tendency in all of us to believe in pleasant lies and to reject painful truths.
*
If the Bible is the word of God, then it is a clumsily garbled paraphrase by someone suffering from an advanced case of Alzheimer's.
*
True knowledge contains doubts, false knowledge only certainties.
*
If as a teenager I had read someone like me, I would have hated his guts.
*
A bad reader can be a mean critic.
*
Men have been talking about women since the beginning of time and they still can't figure them out. What does that tell you about the state of human knowledge and understanding?
#
***************************************************
ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND
**************************************
Whenever asked for solutions, I offer a single word, “honesty.” And when asked to define honesty, I say nothing on the grounds that anyone who cannot recognize an honest man when he sees one deserves to be taken in by crooks.
We are responsible for our actions as surely as we are for our thoughts and attitudes; and life, as well as the law, do not allow us to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance.
*
For many centuries men were deceived into thinking kings ruled by the will of God; and after abolishing monarchy they consented to be ruled by even more dangerous charlatans. As a result, many more millions died in wars, massacres, and genocides.
*
Who is more guilty – the deceiver or he who consents to be deceived?
Mutual deception may be said to be at the root of all tragedies.
God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, where He not only planted the Tree of Knowledge but also introduced the Serpent. In legal parlance, entrapment; in layman's terms, deception.
*
We were deceived into thinking the Empire would not strike back because the Great Powers were on our side.
Hitler deceived his people into believing they belonged to a superior race and were therefore qualified, nay destined, to rule the world.
Stalin deceived the people into believing the economic foundations of capitalism were rotten and the future belonged to Bolsheviks.
*
And consider what happens in HAMLET: Claudius deceives the people into thinking he is not a murderer and a usurper but the legitimate king of the land. Whereupon his nephew plots his revenge by deceiving the court into believing he is mad.
Who can forget the magnificent exchange between the usurper's senile minister of state and the “mad” prince?
POLONIUS: Do you know me my lord?
HAMELT: Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS: Not I my lord.
HAMLET: Then I would you were so honest a man,
POLONIUS: Honest, my lord?
HAMLET: Ay sir; to be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
#
April 11, 2010
***************************************************
ON POPULARITY
**************************************
It is an honest man's duty to expose the dishonest because not to do so amounts to legitimizing dishonesty and ignoring their victims. And because the dishonest outnumber the honest, an honest man is bound to be unpopular.
My guess is, the Beatles made more money in a single day than Mozart in a lifetime.
Popularity is for the birds and the likes of Elvis Pelvis.
Whenever I make myself unpopular with a reader, I think “mission accomplished.”
Can you name a single Armenian writer who was popular?
Naregatsi? Abovian? Baronian?
The first led an anonymous existence in a monastery.
The second committed suicide at the age of 43.
The third was betrayed to the authorities, driven out of business (as publisher) and died of TB at the age of 49.
And they were the lucky ones.
Charents and Bakunts were worse off.
The first was betrayed, arrested, and committed suicide in a Yerevan jail at the age of 40.
The second was betrayed, arrested, tortured, and shot and the age of 38.
First nation to convert to Christianity?
Maybe, but in name only.
Intelligent, progressive, civilized?
Don't make me laugh.
Philistinized, Ottomanized, Sovietized (which also means converted to atheism)?
That's more like it
*
The Polish nation is in mourning today.
If what happened to them happened to us, I have every reason to suspect we would be celebrating.
*
When the truth is unbearable or unreachable, we lie.
#
April 12, 2010
***************************************************
MUMBO JUMBO
**************************************
Some words are untranslatable. Case in point: in Armenian we have a word for “house,” but not one for “home.” There is a popular and widely quoted poem in English that says, “Every house ain't a home,” and “It takes a heap of living to make a house a home.” Translate that, if you can.
*
Man does not understand man (including himself) and yet, theologians pretend to understand and explain God to us. We can't understand God for the simple reason that God and man do not share the same dictionary. Man may need dictionaries. God doesn't.
*
God created man, and man created words, and the twain shall never meet. That's why everything we say about God is irrational, absurd, and blasphemous in the eyes of other men.
*
When we say “God is love,” or “God is our Father,” we in a sense make an attempt to bring Him down to our own level of understanding, and in this effort we fail miserably. Hence countless orthodoxies, heresies, religious wars, and massacres. It is no exaggeration to say that more people have died in the name of God than any other concept, including the Devil. Figure that one out if you can.
*
The Tower of Babel, like Reincarnation, is not a single occurrence but a constant and ceaseless process.
*
For millions of years, primitive man thought of God as the Unknown and the Unknowable; the source of all good as well as evil. Traces of this belief may be found today in all organized religions, including our own – as when we say in the Lord's prayer, “Do not lead us into temptation,” thus identifying God with the Devil whose business it is to lead man into temptation.
*
God may be many things but he is not and cannot be a contradiction. Some day we may see and understand this very clearly but not as long as we speak of Him as if He were a superior version of ourselves.
*
When we say God knows everything, do we mean He knows all the names and numbers in all the telephone books in print today? God's words – assuming he has them, or needs them, or uses them – are not our words, and neither are ours His. When Wittgenstein said we should not speak about things we know nothing about (in his own words, “...about that of which one cannot talk, one must be silent”) I suspect he had God in mind and he was saying “Shut up!” to theologians. Two and a half millennia ago Socrates made a similar assertion when he said, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
*
Jean-Paul Sartre, a contemporary of Wittgenstein, wrote a big philosophical treatise titled BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. In the cosmos, the planet on which we live is the size of a speck of dust so tiny that it might as well be invisible. Which may suggest that “being and nothingness” are not two contradictory conditions but one and the same, or as complementary to one another as mumbo jumbo.
#
April 13, 2010
***************************************************
APHORISMS
**************************************
We all harbor a killer and like 007 all we need is a license to kill.
*
God did not create man in His own image. Man is prone to error. God is not – provided we assume creating man not to have been a serious blunder on His part.
*
We choose an ideology or belief system not by its truth but by its usefulness to us.
*
By selecting a set of values and facts, one can formulate an almost infinite number of belief systems and ideologies.
*
There is a natural tendency in all of us to believe in pleasant lies and to reject painful truths.
*
If the Bible is the word of God, then it is a clumsily garbled paraphrase by someone suffering from an advanced case of Alzheimer's.
*
True knowledge contains doubts, false knowledge only certainties.
*
If as a teenager I had read someone like me, I would have hated his guts.
*
A bad reader can be a mean critic.
*
Men have been talking about women since the beginning of time and they still can't figure them out. What does that tell you about the state of human knowledge and understanding?
#
Saturday, April 10, 2010
summing up
April 7, 2010
***************************************************
WHY MEN DISAGREE
**************************************
If we disagree, it may be because we speak in the name of Reality (whose complexities are infinite), Truth (which is accessible only to God) or God (Whom we are not equipped to know or understand).
*
When we speak, we select and emphasize a single aspect of Reality that has an infinite number of them.
*
Speaking and writing consists in selecting and emphasizing a perspective or point of view which proves a pet theory or justifies our interests. Which is why I trust more a man who speaks against himself.
*
Our brains' ability to perceive Reality is limited. Scientists tell us space is not infinite. Which means at a certain point it ends. But our brain cannot perceive or imagine what it is that stands between space and non-space, or between existence and nothingness.
*
No subject has created more disagreements, intolerance, persecutions, wars, and massacres than God, Who, we are told, is love mercy and compassion.
*
Man hates in the name of love and sees no contradiction in it. Figure that one out, if you can.
*
We are, or rather our history is, a succession of contradictions which we can only pretend to resolve and understand.
*
Our belief systems are houses of cards in a storm. To say “I believe” is to assert faith in the incomprehensible and the inconceivable.
*
When I say “Let us pray,” I express a desire to direct my words to a Being who has consistently ignored the voices of those who need Him the most – the enslaved, the downtrodden, the starving, the dying, and the innocent victims of massacres.
*
“Our Father Who art in heaven”? Any father who would witness the rape and murder of his young daughter when he was in a position to stop it, would be in jail for aiding and abetting a man guilty of a capital offense.
*
May God (if He cares to hear me) have mercy on my soul (if I have one).
#
April 8, 2010
***************************************************
READING ZARIAN
**************************************
Or rather, “re-reading” him, because so far all I have been doing is either quote or paraphrase him.
*
G.B. Shaw once said that even after he had solved all of mankind's problems people kept asking for solutions. Something very similar could be said of Zarian and our problems. It can be said that Zarian is to Armenians what the Old Testament is to Jews, and what the New Testament is to Christians.
*
“What matters in life is not a multiplicity of ideas but a certain quality of attitude, action, responsibility, and commitment.”
*
“Morality is not the same as religion.”
*
“We don't have critics. Not in the true sense of the word. What we have are semi-educated meddlers with derivative criteria gathered from here and there – amateurs who have made of criticism an arid field of dismal mediocrity.”
*
“An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan.”
*
“What are we but a handful of persecuted and displaced people at the mercy of the wind. Like dust we cling to stones on dirt roads and assume their shapes – grateful whenever we fall on a vegetable planted by others.”
*
“Our communities in the Diaspora are dominated by shopkeepers, pseudo-intellectuals, and priests. A miscellaneous crew of rascals with fat bellies and swollen egos. There you have the nucleus around which our collective existence revolves. This indeed ought to be the central issue of our literature today.”
*
“Our devils come in many disguises. In our own days they appear as clergymen, activists, hired scribblers, schoolmasters. They have beady eyes, loose lower lips, deep voices, and mangled features. They are termites, toads, and sometimes vipers. Pretense, envy, treachery...”
*
“We survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
“Writing for Armenians is a waste of time. We are in a vegetative state. We are interested only in matters dealing with our survival. We carry our identity like a heavy weight on our shoulders. If I write, it must be in either French or English.”
*
“The Armenian nation is like a family whose members devour each other because of conflicting interests. And because they are absorbed in personal feuds, they are blind to spiritual greatness. For the average Armenian, Armenia is nothing but a piece of real estate.”
*
I could go on quoting Zarian for many more pages, but I will stop here on the grounds that “No banquet under heaven is endless.”
*
I may stop quoting him now but I will go on paraphrasing him in future installments.
#
April 9, 2010
***************************************************
SUMMING UP
**************************************
By quoting others my aim is to point out the fact that the difference between my critics and me is that I rely on thinkers and they recycle the slogans and clichés of Panchoonies and Jack S. Avanakians. As for new or original ideas: there are none. They don't exist. Marx was against exploiters. So was our Lord when two thousand years ago he spoke about camels and the eye of a needle.
*
I am against dividers because I believe “all men are brothers” (and I don't mean like Cain and Abel); and when I say “all men” I include Turks. It is a mistake to think of Turks as Turks. I doubt if there is a single Turk alive today. Turks are a mixture of Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Assyrians, Iranians, Arabs, Jews, and Armenians, among others. Something similar could be said of Armenians. As for Armenians who claim the Bagratunis and Mamikonians as their ancestors: Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews, and Khorenatsi identified the Mamikonians as Chinese. Speaking for myself: I have at no time hidden the fact that, on a good day, I can trace my ancestry all the way back to my father.
*
To hate Turks is to hate the wrong enemy. If we are going to hate, let's begin with fascists, beginning with our own.
*
“History of Armenian diplomacy” -- if one of our academics were to produce a monograph on the subject, with separate chapters on Zohrab in Constantinople, Khrimian in Berlin, Mikoyan in Yerevan, and Sylva Kaputikian in Moscow – the subtitle will probably read, “Anatomy of Incompetence and Treason.”
*
My critics accuse me of being anti-Armenian and of projecting my self-hatred on the nation, thus implying there is nothing wrong with us. So much so that, we might as well be a role model to all other nations. To which I can only say, “Self-satisfied bug*ers!”
*
It has been said “nothing fails like success.” If the opposite were true (“nothing succeeds like failure”) we should be on our way to being one of the greatest nations on earth. Now then, I dare anyone to call me a pessimist!
#
***************************************************
WHY MEN DISAGREE
**************************************
If we disagree, it may be because we speak in the name of Reality (whose complexities are infinite), Truth (which is accessible only to God) or God (Whom we are not equipped to know or understand).
*
When we speak, we select and emphasize a single aspect of Reality that has an infinite number of them.
*
Speaking and writing consists in selecting and emphasizing a perspective or point of view which proves a pet theory or justifies our interests. Which is why I trust more a man who speaks against himself.
*
Our brains' ability to perceive Reality is limited. Scientists tell us space is not infinite. Which means at a certain point it ends. But our brain cannot perceive or imagine what it is that stands between space and non-space, or between existence and nothingness.
*
No subject has created more disagreements, intolerance, persecutions, wars, and massacres than God, Who, we are told, is love mercy and compassion.
*
Man hates in the name of love and sees no contradiction in it. Figure that one out, if you can.
*
We are, or rather our history is, a succession of contradictions which we can only pretend to resolve and understand.
*
Our belief systems are houses of cards in a storm. To say “I believe” is to assert faith in the incomprehensible and the inconceivable.
*
When I say “Let us pray,” I express a desire to direct my words to a Being who has consistently ignored the voices of those who need Him the most – the enslaved, the downtrodden, the starving, the dying, and the innocent victims of massacres.
*
“Our Father Who art in heaven”? Any father who would witness the rape and murder of his young daughter when he was in a position to stop it, would be in jail for aiding and abetting a man guilty of a capital offense.
*
May God (if He cares to hear me) have mercy on my soul (if I have one).
#
April 8, 2010
***************************************************
READING ZARIAN
**************************************
Or rather, “re-reading” him, because so far all I have been doing is either quote or paraphrase him.
*
G.B. Shaw once said that even after he had solved all of mankind's problems people kept asking for solutions. Something very similar could be said of Zarian and our problems. It can be said that Zarian is to Armenians what the Old Testament is to Jews, and what the New Testament is to Christians.
*
“What matters in life is not a multiplicity of ideas but a certain quality of attitude, action, responsibility, and commitment.”
*
“Morality is not the same as religion.”
*
“We don't have critics. Not in the true sense of the word. What we have are semi-educated meddlers with derivative criteria gathered from here and there – amateurs who have made of criticism an arid field of dismal mediocrity.”
*
“An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan.”
*
“What are we but a handful of persecuted and displaced people at the mercy of the wind. Like dust we cling to stones on dirt roads and assume their shapes – grateful whenever we fall on a vegetable planted by others.”
*
“Our communities in the Diaspora are dominated by shopkeepers, pseudo-intellectuals, and priests. A miscellaneous crew of rascals with fat bellies and swollen egos. There you have the nucleus around which our collective existence revolves. This indeed ought to be the central issue of our literature today.”
*
“Our devils come in many disguises. In our own days they appear as clergymen, activists, hired scribblers, schoolmasters. They have beady eyes, loose lower lips, deep voices, and mangled features. They are termites, toads, and sometimes vipers. Pretense, envy, treachery...”
*
“We survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
“Writing for Armenians is a waste of time. We are in a vegetative state. We are interested only in matters dealing with our survival. We carry our identity like a heavy weight on our shoulders. If I write, it must be in either French or English.”
*
“The Armenian nation is like a family whose members devour each other because of conflicting interests. And because they are absorbed in personal feuds, they are blind to spiritual greatness. For the average Armenian, Armenia is nothing but a piece of real estate.”
*
I could go on quoting Zarian for many more pages, but I will stop here on the grounds that “No banquet under heaven is endless.”
*
I may stop quoting him now but I will go on paraphrasing him in future installments.
#
April 9, 2010
***************************************************
SUMMING UP
**************************************
By quoting others my aim is to point out the fact that the difference between my critics and me is that I rely on thinkers and they recycle the slogans and clichés of Panchoonies and Jack S. Avanakians. As for new or original ideas: there are none. They don't exist. Marx was against exploiters. So was our Lord when two thousand years ago he spoke about camels and the eye of a needle.
*
I am against dividers because I believe “all men are brothers” (and I don't mean like Cain and Abel); and when I say “all men” I include Turks. It is a mistake to think of Turks as Turks. I doubt if there is a single Turk alive today. Turks are a mixture of Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Assyrians, Iranians, Arabs, Jews, and Armenians, among others. Something similar could be said of Armenians. As for Armenians who claim the Bagratunis and Mamikonians as their ancestors: Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews, and Khorenatsi identified the Mamikonians as Chinese. Speaking for myself: I have at no time hidden the fact that, on a good day, I can trace my ancestry all the way back to my father.
*
To hate Turks is to hate the wrong enemy. If we are going to hate, let's begin with fascists, beginning with our own.
*
“History of Armenian diplomacy” -- if one of our academics were to produce a monograph on the subject, with separate chapters on Zohrab in Constantinople, Khrimian in Berlin, Mikoyan in Yerevan, and Sylva Kaputikian in Moscow – the subtitle will probably read, “Anatomy of Incompetence and Treason.”
*
My critics accuse me of being anti-Armenian and of projecting my self-hatred on the nation, thus implying there is nothing wrong with us. So much so that, we might as well be a role model to all other nations. To which I can only say, “Self-satisfied bug*ers!”
*
It has been said “nothing fails like success.” If the opposite were true (“nothing succeeds like failure”) we should be on our way to being one of the greatest nations on earth. Now then, I dare anyone to call me a pessimist!
#
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
comments
April 4, 2010
***************************************************
LAMENTATION
**************************************
“You are consistently negative,” I am told again and again by the very same readers who are the cause of my negativism.
*
We speak as though our problems need solutions.
We speak as though generations of our writers lived, worked, and died in some other dimension inaccessible to us.
Poor Armenian people!
Poor Armenian writers!
*
Poor Armenian writers.
After we bury them, we re-bury them again and again whenever we ignore their works.
*
We have been so thoroughly dehumanized that ideas mean nothing to us.
Money, yes!
Ideas?
Who gives a damn?
*
Jesus died for our sins, we are told.
Generations of Armenian writers died to save us but we continue to wallow in ignorance, apathy, materialism, envy, intolerance, and arrogance.
*
I work for nothing.
I write for readers who know better.
Writing for Armenians is akin to mating with a shark.
*
We speak of nationalism because we have been de-nationalized as thoroughly as we have been dehumanized.
Our own backyard comes first.
As for the nation – who gives a damn?
*
Oppressors don't want the oppressed to have ideas. What they want is subservience. In their eyes, freedom is a dangerous commodity. As for ideas...in Napoleon's words: “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
It is the same with our bosses: all they want from us is subservience.
*
After the Sultan, Talaat.
After Talaat, Stalin.
After Stalin, our bosses and their assorted hirelings of Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Comrade Panchoonies, and communities whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
*
Even when we speak of others, we speak of ourselves. Think twice before you say another word on Turks.
#
April 4, 2010
***************************************************
FROM DUST TO DUST
**************************************
Confucius: “Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve men.”
*
Our parish priest (Anteliassagan) refused to bless my mother's grave on the grounds that she had been cremated. “We don't believe in cremation,” said he.
I wonder, was he trying to obstruct her path to heaven?
*
According to N.T. Wright, a contemporary theologian: “People are so preoccupied about who gets into heaven that they forget that much of the New Testament is about how we conduct our lives in the here and now.”
*
They lead us like sheep not to green pastures but to a den of wolves.
*
What makes me to repeat myself is not senility but the conviction that a truth should be repeated as often as the lies of our Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Panchoonies.
*
More quotations from Confucius:
*
“Respect spiritual beings but keep them at a distance.”
*
“Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.”
*
“The path to duty lies in what is near and men seek for it in what is remote. The work of duty lies in what is easy and men seek for it in what is difficult.”
*
“When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
#
April 5, 2010
***************************************************
READING RAFFI
**************************************
We sent Khrimian Hairik to Berlin, and Sylva Kaputikian to Moscow.
Diplomats and revolutionaries: where are they when we need them most?
Raffi's answer:
“We are like sheep without a shepherd...We don't have an aristocracy. We have neither elites nor leaders. What we have are merchants and clergymen [and vodanavorjis, he could have added]. Merchants are trash. As for the clergy: they have always been against individual freedom.”
*
“Where there is oppression, there is cowardice, ignorance, and sloth. A man needs freedom to discover the benefits of freedom.”
*
“What's done is done. What we must do now is assess the damage and figure out how to avoid the next catastrophe.”
*
“War, bloodshed, massacre: they will be with us so long as the principle of Might is Right prevails.”
*
“The prevalent mentality among us is, every man for himself. As long as I can take care of myself, why should I give a damn about anyone else?”
*
“Those who are in charge of our destiny are themselves a gang of criminals. What are our options? Who can help us? Not even God, it seems, perhaps because we have too many sins on our conscience.”
*
“Our capitalists are the most corrupt and degenerate members of the community. Nothing good can come from them. They are men without a country. They worship only money. Profit is their only homeland.”
*
In what way are our national benefactors different from Raffi's capitalists if they allow their flunkeys to behave like commissars of culture and to subsidize ghazetajis whose obsession with Turks far exceeds their concern for fellow Armenians? And what about our fornicating bishops and bosses who so far have delivered nothing but empty verbiage? Has anything changed during the last 150 years? Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
*
Here is Raffi again:
“No power on earth can deprive you of your freedom. No one can enslave you if you refuse to be enslaved. Where there is slavery there are also men willing to assume a passive stance. Oppressors know this and they count on it.”
#
April 6, 2010
***************************************************
PATRIOTISM
**************************************
Nationalists begin by asserting a superior brand of patriotism and end by committing massacres.
*
All genocides are committed in the name of nationalism, and sooner or later all nationalists are exposed as fascists.
*
I have yet to meet an Armenian who thought his own brand of patriotism to be inferior to someone else's.
*
If I have been silenced, it's because our fascist editors and publishers have been successful in convincing their readers that I am an enemy not of fascism but of the people and the fatherland.
*
They accuse me of emphasizing the negative, whereas they are in the business emphasizing the positive; and emphasizing the negative means “corrupting the young” and “undermining the authority of the gods,” which happen to be the charges leveled against Socrates and against all dissidents in general.
*
To be a dupe of propaganda means supporting fascists whose ultimate aim is the destruction of the state, or so history or reality tells us.
*
Patriotism is a mask that hides killers, and killers not only of the enemy but also of their fellow countrymen.
*
Patriotism appeals to the emotions, and “emotions are judgments opposed to those arrived at by reason” (Epicurus).
*
There is nothing new under the sun. What I have been saying was said by Greeks more than two thousand years ago.
#
***************************************************
LAMENTATION
**************************************
“You are consistently negative,” I am told again and again by the very same readers who are the cause of my negativism.
*
We speak as though our problems need solutions.
We speak as though generations of our writers lived, worked, and died in some other dimension inaccessible to us.
Poor Armenian people!
Poor Armenian writers!
*
Poor Armenian writers.
After we bury them, we re-bury them again and again whenever we ignore their works.
*
We have been so thoroughly dehumanized that ideas mean nothing to us.
Money, yes!
Ideas?
Who gives a damn?
*
Jesus died for our sins, we are told.
Generations of Armenian writers died to save us but we continue to wallow in ignorance, apathy, materialism, envy, intolerance, and arrogance.
*
I work for nothing.
I write for readers who know better.
Writing for Armenians is akin to mating with a shark.
*
We speak of nationalism because we have been de-nationalized as thoroughly as we have been dehumanized.
Our own backyard comes first.
As for the nation – who gives a damn?
*
Oppressors don't want the oppressed to have ideas. What they want is subservience. In their eyes, freedom is a dangerous commodity. As for ideas...in Napoleon's words: “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
It is the same with our bosses: all they want from us is subservience.
*
After the Sultan, Talaat.
After Talaat, Stalin.
After Stalin, our bosses and their assorted hirelings of Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Comrade Panchoonies, and communities whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
*
Even when we speak of others, we speak of ourselves. Think twice before you say another word on Turks.
#
April 4, 2010
***************************************************
FROM DUST TO DUST
**************************************
Confucius: “Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve men.”
*
Our parish priest (Anteliassagan) refused to bless my mother's grave on the grounds that she had been cremated. “We don't believe in cremation,” said he.
I wonder, was he trying to obstruct her path to heaven?
*
According to N.T. Wright, a contemporary theologian: “People are so preoccupied about who gets into heaven that they forget that much of the New Testament is about how we conduct our lives in the here and now.”
*
They lead us like sheep not to green pastures but to a den of wolves.
*
What makes me to repeat myself is not senility but the conviction that a truth should be repeated as often as the lies of our Jack S. Avanakians and “mi kich pogh” Panchoonies.
*
More quotations from Confucius:
*
“Respect spiritual beings but keep them at a distance.”
*
“Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.”
*
“The path to duty lies in what is near and men seek for it in what is remote. The work of duty lies in what is easy and men seek for it in what is difficult.”
*
“When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
#
April 5, 2010
***************************************************
READING RAFFI
**************************************
We sent Khrimian Hairik to Berlin, and Sylva Kaputikian to Moscow.
Diplomats and revolutionaries: where are they when we need them most?
Raffi's answer:
“We are like sheep without a shepherd...We don't have an aristocracy. We have neither elites nor leaders. What we have are merchants and clergymen [and vodanavorjis, he could have added]. Merchants are trash. As for the clergy: they have always been against individual freedom.”
*
“Where there is oppression, there is cowardice, ignorance, and sloth. A man needs freedom to discover the benefits of freedom.”
*
“What's done is done. What we must do now is assess the damage and figure out how to avoid the next catastrophe.”
*
“War, bloodshed, massacre: they will be with us so long as the principle of Might is Right prevails.”
*
“The prevalent mentality among us is, every man for himself. As long as I can take care of myself, why should I give a damn about anyone else?”
*
“Those who are in charge of our destiny are themselves a gang of criminals. What are our options? Who can help us? Not even God, it seems, perhaps because we have too many sins on our conscience.”
*
“Our capitalists are the most corrupt and degenerate members of the community. Nothing good can come from them. They are men without a country. They worship only money. Profit is their only homeland.”
*
In what way are our national benefactors different from Raffi's capitalists if they allow their flunkeys to behave like commissars of culture and to subsidize ghazetajis whose obsession with Turks far exceeds their concern for fellow Armenians? And what about our fornicating bishops and bosses who so far have delivered nothing but empty verbiage? Has anything changed during the last 150 years? Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
*
Here is Raffi again:
“No power on earth can deprive you of your freedom. No one can enslave you if you refuse to be enslaved. Where there is slavery there are also men willing to assume a passive stance. Oppressors know this and they count on it.”
#
April 6, 2010
***************************************************
PATRIOTISM
**************************************
Nationalists begin by asserting a superior brand of patriotism and end by committing massacres.
*
All genocides are committed in the name of nationalism, and sooner or later all nationalists are exposed as fascists.
*
I have yet to meet an Armenian who thought his own brand of patriotism to be inferior to someone else's.
*
If I have been silenced, it's because our fascist editors and publishers have been successful in convincing their readers that I am an enemy not of fascism but of the people and the fatherland.
*
They accuse me of emphasizing the negative, whereas they are in the business emphasizing the positive; and emphasizing the negative means “corrupting the young” and “undermining the authority of the gods,” which happen to be the charges leveled against Socrates and against all dissidents in general.
*
To be a dupe of propaganda means supporting fascists whose ultimate aim is the destruction of the state, or so history or reality tells us.
*
Patriotism is a mask that hides killers, and killers not only of the enemy but also of their fellow countrymen.
*
Patriotism appeals to the emotions, and “emotions are judgments opposed to those arrived at by reason” (Epicurus).
*
There is nothing new under the sun. What I have been saying was said by Greeks more than two thousand years ago.
#
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Peguy
April 1, 2010
***************************************************
READING PEGUY
**************************************
“Out of ignorance and a sense of duty most decent people are liable to turn into criminals.”
*
Charles Péguy (1873-1914) is closer to my heart than any other writer you care to mention. Unlike Toynbee and Sartre, he is as accessible to the ordinary reader as, say, Chekhov. Like Chekhov, he was an honest man and he said what he thought. Organized religions have their saints. Literature does not. If it did, I would name Peggy as one of the greatest.
Has he been translated into Armenian? I don't know. I doubt it. I don't think so. Probably because he was quintessentially un-Armenian. We are not brought up to appreciate honesty and straight talk. After centuries of subservience to brutal regimes, we have learned to be cautious and calculating in our speech – a diplomatic way of saying, we are born liars.
Enough by way of introduction and warning. Let Peggy speak for himself:
*
“It is vulgar to want to be right and still more so to want to be in the right against someone else.”
*
“The man who doesn't bawl out the truth when he knows the truth becomes the accomplice of liars.”
*
“When people become established they become intelligent.”
*
“Let them leave us to our work. But if they disturb us, then we shall see to it that we shall not have been uselessly interrupted.”
*
“The life of the decent man must in some ways be one of continual apostasy; he must continually be a renegade and in this sense his life is one continual unfaithfulness.”
*
“Destitution is not a pumice stone by which people can be polished and made to shine. If it were it would be worth preserving. Destitution weakens people and thereby makes them incapable of getting out of it. Destitution not only makes people unhappy, which is a serious matter, it makes them bad, ugly and weak, which is also a serious matter.”
*
“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”
*
“One does not have the right to betray even a traitor. Traitors must be fought and not betrayed.”
*
“What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.”
*
“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”
*
Once, I remember, when I said as much to one of our Panchoonies who headed one of our major charity organizations, he explained: “If we assume a critical stance towards the regime in Yerevan, we will not be allowed to help the people.” To which I could only say: “You mean, they would allow the people to starve? If you know them to be so evil, why legitimize them with your support?” At this point he hung up on me and thus I acquired still another enemy in high places.
#
April 2, 2010
***************************************************
READING ZOHRAB
**************************************
“Oppression corrupts everything it touches, even the highest moral principles.”
*
“We all of us condemn prostitution; yet, how many of us engage in it! Lawyers who perjure themselves for a few pieces of silver; ghazetajis who sell their conscience to vested interests; physicians who prolong a useless treatment; young men who marry wealth. In what way, may I ask, are these individuals different from common whores?”
*
“My code of ethics: Between the real and the imaginary, choose the real; between truth and falsehood, choose truth – at all times, everywhere.”
*
“A newspaper is not a chameleon. It should not change colors to please its readers. It is bound to make enemies. I would measure the moral success of a newspaper by its willingness to make enemies.”
*
“In the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, literature abhors the absence of ideas.”
*
“As impressionable as soft wax, the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices of the country in which he happens to be living.”
*
Which may explain why Armenians from the Levant are more Levantine than Armenian, and Armenians from the former Soviet Union are more Soviet and less Armenian. Hence Sylva Kapoutikian's boast (and this after the collapse of the USSR) “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party!” -- the very same party that slaughtered two generations of our best intellects and awarded her the Stalin Prize.
*
Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915) was a victim of the Genocide. Has anything changed since then? Or rather, what have we learned from the Genocide? Are we not at the mercy of lying whores who will sell not only their bodies but also their souls to anyone for a few pieces of silver?
*
If we “dzour nesdink, shidag khossink,” we shall have to admit that “mart bidi ch'ellank!”
#
April 3, 2010
***************************************************
Q/A
**************************************
Q: What makes an Armenian happy?
A: To crap on a fellow Armenian, what else?
Q: Isn't that what you have been doing too?
A: If I do it's only on brainwashed dupes who consider crapping to be their patriotic duty.
Q: Do you think you are always right?
A: Hell no! On the contrary. Everything I say may well be wrong. I don't know the truth. Only God does. All I ever hope to do is expose lies and in doing so to take a tiny step in the direction of truth which I may never reach in this lifetime.
Q: If you have such a low opinion of Armenians, why do you continue to identify yourself as one?
A: I identify myself as a human being. I consider my national identity an accident of nature. I don't see any inconsistency here perhaps because after being dehumanized by our propaganda I am now a born-again human being and as such I believe all men are brothers, which happens to be an assertion we make every time when we repeat the Lord's prayer -- “Our Father Who art in heaven...”
Q: No one denies that we have problems. But isn't it a fact that all men and all nations have problems similar to ours?
A: They do, yes. But that doesn't mean the best way to deal with them is to cover them up or to ignore them on the grounds that time or the Almighty will solve them for us. Time has never been on our side. After a thousand years of subservience to tyrants we were rewarded with a series of massacres. Am I saying something or anything that has not been said before by far better men than myself? Of course not! I will go further and say, everything I say is either a quotation or a paraphrase. I have at no time hidden that fact from my readers. I quote as a challenge to those who accuse me of of being anti-Armenian or even pro-Turkish. On the subject of Armenians crapping on fellow Armenians: I am reminded of a passage in Zarian's TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD, in which, speaking of the new generation of Soviet-Armenian writers, among them Charents (who at first swallowed Kremlin's propaganda hook, line, and sinker), Zarian wrote: “They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Derian. They are spitting on Aharonian. Danger! Danger! Danger!” Armenian worldview at the time Zarian wrote these lines was shaped by Lenin's and Stalin's commissars. Our worldview today is shaped by Jack S. Avanakian charlatans and arav-pakhav mi-kich-pogh Panchoonies who have been more than successful in raising a wall between us and reality by saying all we need to solve our problems is more money. As for ideas: they are empty verbiage and irrelevant commodities. Which may suggest, the more things change, the deeper we sink in our own merde.
#
***************************************************
READING PEGUY
**************************************
“Out of ignorance and a sense of duty most decent people are liable to turn into criminals.”
*
Charles Péguy (1873-1914) is closer to my heart than any other writer you care to mention. Unlike Toynbee and Sartre, he is as accessible to the ordinary reader as, say, Chekhov. Like Chekhov, he was an honest man and he said what he thought. Organized religions have their saints. Literature does not. If it did, I would name Peggy as one of the greatest.
Has he been translated into Armenian? I don't know. I doubt it. I don't think so. Probably because he was quintessentially un-Armenian. We are not brought up to appreciate honesty and straight talk. After centuries of subservience to brutal regimes, we have learned to be cautious and calculating in our speech – a diplomatic way of saying, we are born liars.
Enough by way of introduction and warning. Let Peggy speak for himself:
*
“It is vulgar to want to be right and still more so to want to be in the right against someone else.”
*
“The man who doesn't bawl out the truth when he knows the truth becomes the accomplice of liars.”
*
“When people become established they become intelligent.”
*
“Let them leave us to our work. But if they disturb us, then we shall see to it that we shall not have been uselessly interrupted.”
*
“The life of the decent man must in some ways be one of continual apostasy; he must continually be a renegade and in this sense his life is one continual unfaithfulness.”
*
“Destitution is not a pumice stone by which people can be polished and made to shine. If it were it would be worth preserving. Destitution weakens people and thereby makes them incapable of getting out of it. Destitution not only makes people unhappy, which is a serious matter, it makes them bad, ugly and weak, which is also a serious matter.”
*
“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”
*
“One does not have the right to betray even a traitor. Traitors must be fought and not betrayed.”
*
“What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.”
*
“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”
*
Once, I remember, when I said as much to one of our Panchoonies who headed one of our major charity organizations, he explained: “If we assume a critical stance towards the regime in Yerevan, we will not be allowed to help the people.” To which I could only say: “You mean, they would allow the people to starve? If you know them to be so evil, why legitimize them with your support?” At this point he hung up on me and thus I acquired still another enemy in high places.
#
April 2, 2010
***************************************************
READING ZOHRAB
**************************************
“Oppression corrupts everything it touches, even the highest moral principles.”
*
“We all of us condemn prostitution; yet, how many of us engage in it! Lawyers who perjure themselves for a few pieces of silver; ghazetajis who sell their conscience to vested interests; physicians who prolong a useless treatment; young men who marry wealth. In what way, may I ask, are these individuals different from common whores?”
*
“My code of ethics: Between the real and the imaginary, choose the real; between truth and falsehood, choose truth – at all times, everywhere.”
*
“A newspaper is not a chameleon. It should not change colors to please its readers. It is bound to make enemies. I would measure the moral success of a newspaper by its willingness to make enemies.”
*
“In the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, literature abhors the absence of ideas.”
*
“As impressionable as soft wax, the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices of the country in which he happens to be living.”
*
Which may explain why Armenians from the Levant are more Levantine than Armenian, and Armenians from the former Soviet Union are more Soviet and less Armenian. Hence Sylva Kapoutikian's boast (and this after the collapse of the USSR) “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party!” -- the very same party that slaughtered two generations of our best intellects and awarded her the Stalin Prize.
*
Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915) was a victim of the Genocide. Has anything changed since then? Or rather, what have we learned from the Genocide? Are we not at the mercy of lying whores who will sell not only their bodies but also their souls to anyone for a few pieces of silver?
*
If we “dzour nesdink, shidag khossink,” we shall have to admit that “mart bidi ch'ellank!”
#
April 3, 2010
***************************************************
Q/A
**************************************
Q: What makes an Armenian happy?
A: To crap on a fellow Armenian, what else?
Q: Isn't that what you have been doing too?
A: If I do it's only on brainwashed dupes who consider crapping to be their patriotic duty.
Q: Do you think you are always right?
A: Hell no! On the contrary. Everything I say may well be wrong. I don't know the truth. Only God does. All I ever hope to do is expose lies and in doing so to take a tiny step in the direction of truth which I may never reach in this lifetime.
Q: If you have such a low opinion of Armenians, why do you continue to identify yourself as one?
A: I identify myself as a human being. I consider my national identity an accident of nature. I don't see any inconsistency here perhaps because after being dehumanized by our propaganda I am now a born-again human being and as such I believe all men are brothers, which happens to be an assertion we make every time when we repeat the Lord's prayer -- “Our Father Who art in heaven...”
Q: No one denies that we have problems. But isn't it a fact that all men and all nations have problems similar to ours?
A: They do, yes. But that doesn't mean the best way to deal with them is to cover them up or to ignore them on the grounds that time or the Almighty will solve them for us. Time has never been on our side. After a thousand years of subservience to tyrants we were rewarded with a series of massacres. Am I saying something or anything that has not been said before by far better men than myself? Of course not! I will go further and say, everything I say is either a quotation or a paraphrase. I have at no time hidden that fact from my readers. I quote as a challenge to those who accuse me of of being anti-Armenian or even pro-Turkish. On the subject of Armenians crapping on fellow Armenians: I am reminded of a passage in Zarian's TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD, in which, speaking of the new generation of Soviet-Armenian writers, among them Charents (who at first swallowed Kremlin's propaganda hook, line, and sinker), Zarian wrote: “They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Derian. They are spitting on Aharonian. Danger! Danger! Danger!” Armenian worldview at the time Zarian wrote these lines was shaped by Lenin's and Stalin's commissars. Our worldview today is shaped by Jack S. Avanakian charlatans and arav-pakhav mi-kich-pogh Panchoonies who have been more than successful in raising a wall between us and reality by saying all we need to solve our problems is more money. As for ideas: they are empty verbiage and irrelevant commodities. Which may suggest, the more things change, the deeper we sink in our own merde.
#
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
