summing up

April 7, 2010
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WHY MEN DISAGREE
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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).
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When we speak, we select and emphasize a single aspect of Reality that has an infinite number of them.
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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.
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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.
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No subject has created more disagreements, intolerance, persecutions, wars, and massacres than God, Who, we are told, is love mercy and compassion.
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Man hates in the name of love and sees no contradiction in it. Figure that one out, if you can.
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We are, or rather our history is, a succession of contradictions which we can only pretend to resolve and understand.
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Our belief systems are houses of cards in a storm. To say “I believe” is to assert faith in the incomprehensible and the inconceivable.
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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.
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“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.
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May God (if He cares to hear me) have mercy on my soul (if I have one).
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April 8, 2010
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READING ZARIAN
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Or rather, “re-reading” him, because so far all I have been doing is either quote or paraphrase him.
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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.
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“What matters in life is not a multiplicity of ideas but a certain quality of attitude, action, responsibility, and commitment.”
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“Morality is not the same as religion.”
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“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.”
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“An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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...”
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“We survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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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.”
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I may stop quoting him now but I will go on paraphrasing him in future installments.
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April 9, 2010
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SUMMING UP
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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.
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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.
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To hate Turks is to hate the wrong enemy. If we are going to hate, let's begin with fascists, beginning with our own.
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“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.”
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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!”
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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!
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