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May 20, 2010
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ON LEVANTINE CUNNING
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After informing me that translating Zarian is a waste of time because he was a loud-mouth nonentity, a third-rate vodanavorji and a fourth-rate intellect went to suggest that I translate his poetry instead, and he made it sound as if translating him were a rare honor he was bestowing on me in an unprecedented burst of generosity for which I should be eternally grateful to him.
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We are told God created men in His own image. Good men, maybe. As for bad men: I like to believe they were created by the Devil. To say otherwise would be to blaspheme.
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Every policy has a stated as well as a hidden motive. Two cases in point:
Speaking about Canadian multiculturalism, I once heard a pundit on the radio define it as, “Let them dance.”
Our Turcocentrism may also be summed up thus: “If they think about Turks and massacres all the time, they will have little time to think about our shenanigans.”
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We don't understand everything. Therefore there must be Someone who does. What could be more unbearable than a mystery without a solution? God must exist!
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We see the Genocide as a tragedy; but it is also a defeat and a victory -- a defeat for us, and a victory for the Turks not only over Greeks, Kurds, and Armenians, but also Russia, the Great Powers of the West, and their Allies.
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H.G. Wells: "The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations."
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It is a well-known fact that in America when the cavalry won it was a victory, but when the Indians won it was a massacre.
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It has been said that nothing divides the Arab nations more than talk of Arab unity. Something similar could be said about us. Because I have been critical of our dividers, I too have been accused of being one.
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May 21, 2010
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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At one time or another all nations have conducted wars of conquest. Why is it that when it comes to Jews, this is seen as a crime against humanity?
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Judging by the number of times I have been called a fool by fools, I am not the only one who thinks Armenians are not as smart as they think they are.
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There is a natural tendency in all fools to conspire with other fools and call themselves smart.
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No book can be as unreadable as an established masterpiece.
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About Americans and genocide recognition: it would be useful to remind ourselves once in a while that what we are dealing with here are men who at one time or another in the past, and to some extent even today, have justified such aberrations as slavery, racism, revolution, wars of conquest (including civil war), and the massacre of civilians.
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And speaking of Indians: nowadays, even they speak with a forked tongue.
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When you don't know, you have no choice but to trust the judgment of those who pretend to know.
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There is no accounting for tastes. Some scholars are Turcophiles, some are Armenophiles, some women fall in love with serial killers.
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Yugoslav proverb: "Man is harder than rock and more fragile than eggs." If we view Turks as hard as rocks and ourselves as fragile as eggs, it may be because, by uniting them, their leaders made them stronger; and by dividing us, our leaders made us weaker and more vulnerable. If you think I am the first to say this, read Yeghishé (410-470 AD): "If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish."
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To ignore our prophets is bad enough; to cover up their prophecies is to pretend that history fell on us without warning, like a thief in the night.
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May 22, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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What could be more incomprehensible than someone else's grief?
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When popes, imams, rabbis, and gurus pretend to have a monopoly on truth, they lie. Our “betters” are liars.
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Hegel: “Truth lives only in the conquest of error.”
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Kierkegaard: “You will never be anything so long as you have money.”
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To those who say, “knowledge is power,” Socrates says “we know nothing.”
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Heidegger: “The greater the work accomplished the richer the unthought-of element in that work.”
Or, the more questions an answer raises, the closer to the truth it takes us.
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John Ruskin: “When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.”
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I don't write against anyone, not even Turks. I write against the Turk in me.
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Because we are experiencing a slow-motion and self-inflicted white massacre, we pretend it is not taking place.
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Erich Fromm: "Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him."
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True knowledge contains doubts, false knowledge only certainties.
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When it comes to political awareness, we are an underdeveloped people no better than Zulus and Ugandans.
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