the key

June 6, 2010
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AN ANGRY OBJECTION
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A reader writes:
“When you speak of Ottomanism and Sovietism – are you sure you are not projecting your own problems on the rest of us? I too was born and raised in an Armenian family and I feel neither Ottomanized nor Sovietized.”
There may be two explanations for that:
(one) you are either an exception to the rule – and when I write I speak of rules not of exceptions, and (two) you are in denial. Though your inability to entertain ideas that are not your own may well be seen as a symptom of Ottomano-Sovietism.
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My function as a writer is to make the unconscious conscious; or to light a candle, not to convince you to like what you see. I can give you an explanation. What I cannot give you is understanding.
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I define Ottomanism and Sovietism as two belief systems that legitimize intolerance and the right to silence those who do not believe in their lies and fallacies. In that sense, both the Sultan and Stalin are not dead; they are very much alive in all of us as assumptions that intolerance is not a vice but one of the cardinal virtues.
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Ottomanism and Sovietism are not the only two aberrations to which we subscribe and from which we suffer. Even more dangerous and far more insidious is Levantinism – the notion that Capital and God are one, that the profit motive is a respectable one, and that benefactors and their hirelings are not empty suits but royalties.
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Dzour nesdink shidag khosink.
Very much like the Yanks in the McCarthy era, we too have a HUAC or a House Un-Armenian Activities Committee, whose members belong to a church, political party, or philanthropic organization, and sometimes all three at once, who believe it is their patriotic duty to silence those who, by disagreeing with their dogmas, plot the destruction of the land.
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In a French magazine I read the following headline about a grizzly murder: “He was the most subservient husband but one day he beheaded her.”
We too were the most loyal, that is to say, subservient subjects of the Empire...But to paraphrase an old Chinese proverb: “No honeymoon under heaven is endless.” To quote another familiar French saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The Sultan and Stalin are dead. Long live our mini-sultans and neo-commissars!
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As for the charge that I have en eye only for the negative: that's like saying to an oncologist, “You have an eye only for tumors.”
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June 7, 2010
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QUOTATIONS
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Since I spend most of my time reading, the most enjoyable moments in my daily existence are quotable lines.
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BALZAC
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“The fate of the house hangs on the wedding night.”
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“Nature makes only dull animals; we owe the fool to society.”
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“Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves, but of the two, hatred has a longer lifespan.”
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KURT VONNEGUT
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“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
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DEFINITIONS FROM
A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY
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“Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure. The megalomaniac represents himself as he would like to be but as he is not. Megalomania may also be a symptom of the decline of one’s critical faculties.”
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On dogmatism:
“It stands in direct contradiction to criticism, skepticism, empiricism, and realism.
It fosters intolerance and fanaticism.”
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ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
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“Who is a Zek’s [an inmate of the Gulag]] worst enemy? Another Zek.”
Zeks too, I thought.
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EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
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“And he whose soul is flat – the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”
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MARILYN MONROE
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"Khruschev looked at me the way a man looks on a woman."
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June 8, 2010
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SUMMING UP
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Anything that is worth saying is worth repeating.
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Don't believe everything you are told or everything you read, including what follows. Don't rely on someone else's brain if it means not using your own.
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Between a lie that flatters and a truth that insults, always choose the insult. You may be wrong in doing so but never as consistently wrong as when you choose flattery.
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Propaganda works because it flatters by emphasizing the positive. Literature doesn't because it exposes ignorance or emphasizes the negative in those who parade as leaders of men and their dupes.
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At all times and everywhere, ignorance exceeds knowledge even in the wisest of men. We owe wars that are lost and revolutions that fail to men who refused to acknowledge his simple fact.
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Another instance of ignorance exceeding knowledge, and arrogance exceeding objective assessment is writers who write for readers who know better.
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I don't make policy. You have nothing to fear from me. I only expose contradictions. If you cannot see the contradiction, don't blame me. I cannot make the blind see, and no one can be as blind as the man who refuses to see.
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I suspect all talk of Armenian intelligence and cunning. There is an old Italian saying: “It takes seven Genoese [the smartest Italians] to fool a Jew, and seven Jews to fool an Armenian.” I now see this saying as a warning to all those – including Armenians – who dare to deal with Armenians.
“After shaking hands with an Armenian, count your fingers.”
“After kissing an Armenian, count your teeth.”
If we were half as smart as we like to think we are, our history would not be the disaster area that it is.
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We have been victimized, true. But to suggest we had no say in shaping our destiny as a nation is a lie created by pathological liars, that is to say, propagandists.
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Understanding reality is a journey without end.
We can only take small steps in the direction of the truth.
The man who is searching is closer to the truth than the man who says he has found it.
No one can be as brainless as he who claims to have all the answers.
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June 9, 2010
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THE KEY
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The poor are told the rich will go to hell. This works to the advantage of the rich who are thus left alone to exploit the poor and to enjoy their wealth in peace.
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Where there is power there will also be tyranny, injustice, and oppression.
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If you were to add up oppressed or exploited minorities in “the land of the brave and the free,” or anywhere else for that matter, you will end up with a majority. But this majority is powerless to act because it is divided.
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Dominant minorities are experts in adopting and implementing what were known even to the Romans as “divide and rule” policies. Hence the phenomenon of Armenians whose enemy number one is neither the Turk nor the Russian but their fellow Armenians.
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What divides us are not truths voiced by honest men, but lies conceived and repeated by charlatans.
The question we must ask at this point is: Do our dividers know what they are doing?
My guess is, the men at the very top do, but their flunkies may not.
The men at the very top may not even be Armenian.
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Khorenatsi tells us the Mamigonians were of Chinese descent. The Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews. One of our elder statesmen once informed me that some of our community leaders today are not of Armenian but of Turkish descent. “They may speak Armenian fluently, they may know all there is to know about us, but they are not Armenians.”
But i suggest an Armenian does not have to be a Turk to undermine the integrity of the nation. Greed for power (which is also universal) will render him blind – and we all know what happens when the blind lead the blind...
This indeed is the key to understanding our history.
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A so-called Armenian with so-called leadership qualities is first and foremost a man who is committed to the proposition that greed for power is thicker than loyalty to the tribe or any other principle of honesty, compassion, justice, and fair play. He will preach patriotism and practice treason without batting an eye. And if things go wrong he will come up with a thousand reasons why he should not be held accountable. And he will be believed, in the same way that most honest Christians believe the rich will go to hell and “the meek shall inherit the earth.”
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