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Thursday, February 21, 2008
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GETTING WISDOM
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If your aim is the acquisition of wisdom, real time-tested wisdom, rely on popular sayings by Anonymous, the greatest philosopher of all time.
“Don’t believe everything you are told.” “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.” “Believe what you see, ignore what you hear.” “Drumbeats sound better from a distance.” “Don’t stir the pot too much, you may expose the manure.” “Some people will say and do anything for money.”
Cases in point: During the Soviet era, a highly respected Armenian academic taught “scientific atheism” in Yerevan. But when the Kremlin collapsed, he immigrated to America, saw the light, was born again, and is now making a comfortable living as a professor of theology.
After being paid a goodly sum by the Gulbenkian Foundation, a British academic and notorious drunkard, wrote a lavishly illustrated book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION.
When another one of our brilliant academics, whose education and political career were subsidized by one of our political parties, was made a more attractive offer by the opposition, he promptly switched loyalties.
Moral: Our “betters” may well be our worst.
If you find all this depressing, remember, “Better to sob with the wise than to laugh with fools.”
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Friday, February 22, 2008
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ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN ARMENIAN LIFE
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In his REPUBLIC, Plato writes that in an anti-intellectual environment, a philosopher cannot but be like “a man who has fallen among wild beasts, who is unwilling to share in their misdeeds and is unable to hold out singly against their savagery.”
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Our bishops represent the Almighty, our benefactors represent another Almighty, and our bosses represent their respective little mafias. Who represents the people? The voice of the people continues to be an absent factor in our collective existence.
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Albanians are ahead of us. They are now willing to concede that they allowed themselves to be manipulated and moronized by a petty dictator like Enver Hoxa because he was successful in convincing them they were just about the smartest people on earth. (For more on this subject, see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES.)
Something similar happened to Germans under Hitler: by convincing them they belong to a superior race, Hitler was successful in making them behave like swine. Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao – the secret of their success was flattering the masses by brainwashing them to believe a glorious destiny awaits them.
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What happened to our intellectuals? Even after Talaat and Stalin slaughtered two generations of our ablest writers, we had giants like Shahnour, Zarian, Oshagan, and Massikian. We don’t even have midgets today. And why? The answer is obvious. Consider the way we treated Zarian. Insulted, abused, and ignored in America, he was lured behind the Iron Curtain with promises none of which were kept. Shahnour was forced to write in French in order to survive as a ward of the State. Oshagan spent an important part of his life flattering idiots. And when Massikian offered to give away his books free of charge, there were no takers.
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Somewhere Antranik Zaroukian writes: “Even as they speak of crucifixion, they nail us to the cross.” And by “they” he didn’t mean the people, but their “betters” and their gangs of dupes, who, even as they praise dead writers, they bury living ones.
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Saturday, February 23, 2008
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BITCHING
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What have we learned from our genocide? “All you do is bitch,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji tells me. “Isn’t that what you do too?” I wanted to know. He replied with an insult. End of discourse.
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“After reading four or five of your posts, I can guess what you are going to say next,” a reader informs me. “Why bitch, if you can stop reading me?” I am tempted to ask. Instead I say: “Sorry to be a source of disappointment to you, my good friend.” Perhaps from now on I should append the following lines after everything I post: “If not perfectly satisfied, your money will be cheerfully refunded.”
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We see the best in ourselves and the worst in others. Or perhaps what we really do is project the worst in us on others, and it makes no difference who the other is – a Turk, an Armenian, or, like Sultan Abdulhamid II, a half-Armenian. If only we could see the worst in ourselves and the best in others! Am I bitching again?
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