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Thursday, December 01, 2011
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What can you possibly know about a country
if you have never tried to make a living there?
What can you possibly know about the human condition
if you have at no time been dependent
on the charity of swine?
For 25 years I had to produce pseudo-Saroyanesque trash
in order to make minimum wage.
The reason why I write as I do today is that
I have declared my financial independence
and, with it, to write as I please
without fear of retaliation.
I may not be a “good” Armenian
as defined by our Ottomanized, Sovietized, and Americanized
wheeler-dealers but I like to believe
I fully qualify as a born-again human being.
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Friday, December 02, 2011
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A lie is like a deadly virus.
Left unattended it will poison and kill its speaker
as well as his dupes,
families as well as communities,
tribes as well as nations,
empires as well as civilizations.
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Saturday, December 03, 2011
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After listening to the patriotic spiel
of a fellow passenger on a train,
Tolstoy is quoted as having said:
“As long as there are men like you
we will have wars and massacres.”
Likewise, as long as there are organized religions
we will have prejudice, intolerance,
and crimes against humanity.
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The true enemies of God
are men who speak in His name.
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Tolerance means not only to be open to new ideas,
including ideas that contradict our own,
but also to welcome and cherish them.
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If we admit there is some truth in all belief systems,
we must also admit that truth is not in a single god
but in all gods; or, in Gandhi’s words:
“If God is Truth even atheists are believers
because they believe in God’s non-existence.”
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God is either on no one’s side or on everybody’s side.
To say, like the Nazis, “God is with us,”
is not theology but pathology.
(For more on this subject,
see Toynbee’s STUDY OF HISTORY, volume x.)
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