as i see it

Sunday, December 14, 2008
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SUMMING UP (II)
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Free speech is a fundamental human right not only for men who know and understand everything and are therefore seldom or never wrong, but also for poor mortals whose knowledge and understanding are limited and whose opinions are more often than not more wrong than right.
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A man with a heavy burden of guilt is safer to deal with than a man who is innocent by reason of insanity or absence of conscience.
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A Turk who can tell right from wrong is morally superior to an Armenian who violates someone's human right in the name of patriotism.
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To say, because I know better and am therefore better qualified to silence you, is at the root of all massacres. To put it differently: All crimes against humanity begin with the violation of a single individual's human rights.
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I have yet to meet a patriotic Armenian with more certainties than doubts who did not harbor fascist sentiments.
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The brainless are more easily brainwashed to believe, even when they behave like swine, they are fully qualified to assert moral superiority.
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To those who say I have been silenced because I am an irrelevant mediocrity of no interest to the general reader, I say: Not all of us are endowed with superior intellects or able to discriminate what is and is not relevant.
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Nothing comes easier to a self-assessed genius than to look down on his fellow men as misguided fools in need of his political, intellectual, and moral guidance.
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Like all nations we too have our share of misguided fools and criminal minds who operate on the assumption they are leaders of men.
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Monday, December 15, 2008
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THE POSITIVE IN THE NEGATIVE
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Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
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At the turn of the last century, the Great Powers of the West were on our side and against our enemies. But no one ever bothered to ask them if they would be willing to sacrifice the life of a single soldier to save a hundred, a thousand, or even a million Armenian lives. Had they asked, they wold have been surprised at the answer.
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It is not true that I receive only hostile or negative assessments of my work. To be fair to my readers, I also receive friendly or positive ones. Two reasons why I don't mention them is that (one) I may provoke my enemies to accuse me of self-promotion, and (two) I may make my friendly readers vulnerable to verbal abuse.
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Saroyan was a “positive” write because he wrote for an American audience. If I write like Scrooge it may be because I write for an Armenian audience. Different strokes for different folks. On the positive side: in America we enjoy not only freedom of speech but also freedom of choice when it comes to reading matter. If you are the kind of reader who is big on positive stuff, by all means, feel free to bury your head in the sand until the next catastrophe, which, if lucky, you may not live long enough to experience or witness.
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Some of our most brilliant humorists (Baronian, Odian, Massikian) were also the most negative.
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My negative readers are positive in the sense that they are my main source of inspiration. Without them I would dry up and wither away.
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There are visible catastrophes, and there are invisible ones, as when you witness the collapse of your belief system.
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When a reader insults me, I know I have hit paydirt; and I would like to thank him for letting me stay in his consciousness rent-free.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
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After gloating over the collapse of Communism, Americans are now witnessing the collapse of Capitalism and the triumph of the Welfare State not only for the poor but also for the rich; and when the rich apply for welfare, they speak in billions; and unless they get their way, they threaten the collapse of the economic structure.
Capitalists don't beg; they blackmail.
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Instead of speaking of cabbages and kings, let's speak of truth and lies; and if truth is beyond our reach, let's expose liars.
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It is in failure that the lies of an ideology are exposed.
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If you live by the sword, or if you use nationalism or patriotism as a sword, the writing on the wall will be the same.
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In a commentary today I read that President Bush has supported and invited to the White House dissidents from “China, Burma, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.” Are you thinking what I am thinking?
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George Will in ONE MAN'S AMERICA (New York, Random House, 2008): “The use of genocide as a plaything for political posturing is contemptible” (page 197). I urge all our Turcocentric ghazetajis, dime-a-dozen self-appointed pundits, and baloney artists to think of this line next time they use the word genocide. Further down George Will speaks of the “trivialization of a huge tragedy” that has become “fodder for semi-intellectual wisecracks...” and, I would add, an occasion for self-righteous riffraff to assert moral superiority. Elsewhere he speaks of “the beguiling simplicity of pure stupidity.”
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Where mediocrities enter, men of vision are blinded.
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Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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WORDS
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Rudyard Kipling: “Words are, of course, the post powerful drugs used by mankind.”
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The defeated and deported Azeri who lives in a tent or ghetto is my brother. He is as guilty as the overwhelming majority of Armenians at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire – Armenians like my mother (who was a baby) and father (not yet a teenager) who had no political ambitions or, for that matter, awareness. Next time you speak of war, think of the children.
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There is Russian roulette, and there is Armenian roulette. In Armenian roulette there are no empty chambers.
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If you insult me and I insult you back, who wins?
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By writing I hope to change the world. I know this to be an illusion on my part but I go on writing. Notwithstanding the fact that so far I have failed to change the mind of a single fanatic, hoodlum, partisan or fascist, I go on writing in the hope that some day I may hit on the right combination of words and ideas that may connect.
I know this to be another illusion but I go on writing in the hope that the invisible forces of history and the universe will combine to create the kind of fertile soil in which ideas may germinate into action. If this is another illusion, so be it!
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