reflections

Sunday, October 17, 2010
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LIARS AND MEGALOMANIACS
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When what I say is ignored or rejected,
I have no choice but to repeat myself in the hope that
I may have better luck next time.
After all, Rome wasn't built in one day.
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I agree with our revolutionaries in so far as
they said enough is enough!
After six hundred years of subservience
we have earned the right to revolt.
I disagree with them – and do so violently – in so far as
they were the first to abandon ship.
*
For saying the obvious,
I am now told I am wrong by individuals
whose incompetence is exceeded only
by their cowardice.
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In the eyes of the infallible,
you will be right only when you parrot their lies.
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If you can't convert them, make them mad.
That's my motto.
An Armenian writer is judged
by the number of enemies he makes.
The more, the merrier.
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What have they learned from their failures?
Nothing. Less than nothing!
Only to rewrite history – which is another thing
they share with Turks.
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Never parrot the line or recycle the propaganda
of individuals who consider themselves infallible
(they are liars)
or pretend to speak in the name of the Almighty
(they are megalomaniacs).
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Monday, October 18, 2010
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BIAS VERSUS OBJECTIVITY
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After disagreeing with my views on objectivity,
a reader writes to support the thesis that bias is inevitable and objectivity impossible.
Objectivity, like truth, may indeed be unattainable.
That, however, does not mean we cannot travel in its direction;
or bias is a terminal condition, and once biased, always biased.
*
Consider the following cases of bias:
Germans asserting they belong to a superior race,
and Jews believing they are the Chosen People.
Now contrast these two cases of bias with Toynbee's objective assertion that both Germans and Jews owe their fictional privileged status to no one but to their own narcissism.
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Closer to home:
I know what it means to be brainwashed (and therefore biased),
and I also know what it means to replace bias with objectivity.
As a child I was biased.
As an adult I have become more objective.
*
Some Turks believe the Genocide to be a fiction of our imagination, and that it was not Turks who massacred Armenians, but the other way around.
By contrast, Armenians believe Turks massacred as many as two million Armenians.
Now suppose these Turks and Armenians appeal to a panel of outsiders with no ax to grind to study the matter and report back. And suppose after a year of deliberation and consultation with experts in the field, this panel reports back and submits its findings, after which Turks are willing to concede that as many as 300,000 Armenians may have been massacred, and Armenians are willing to lower the number of victims from 2 million to 1.5 million. We can conclude that both sides have taken a step in the right direction.
*
And now suppose that a hundred years hence the study of history will be so refined and developed that there will no longer be Armenian and Turkish, or for that matter, Russian or American, history textbooks but a single textbook agreed upon by a panel of international academics. I suggest such a textbook will have taken still another step in the direction of objectivity.
*
Bias may be said to be of two kinds: the kind that is a Big Lie (which can be exposed) and the kind that is inevitable (which can be corrected).
As things stand, all textbooks by nationalist historians – be they Turkish, Armenian, or Hottentot – are no better than propaganda whose intent is to legitimize a power structure, deceive the people, and brainwash children in order to prepare them to fight another war.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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OBJECTION!
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One of my gentle readers has taken it upon himself to straighten me out on the subject of lawyers by sending me a three line message which contains one insult and two curses.
Zarian is right: “An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan.”
Since this is the first time I hear from this reader -- (let's call him Jack S. Avanakian not because I don't want to identify him but because I did not burden my memory with his name), I should be flattered in the knowledge that he agrees – or at least he does not disagree – with everything else I have been saying. But flattered, I am not!
I may not believe in curses, but neither do I welcome them.
May I assure Jack S. Avanakian and all lawyers in general that they have had a bad press long before I was born, and insulting me will do nothing to improve matters.
*
In my time I have dealt with several lawyers – probably more than my share – and one of them was indeed a fine gentleman (may he rest in peace) perhaps because there are good men everywhere, including Turks.
If I emphasize the dark side of things -- if I choose to expose the negative, as opposed to extolling the positive -- it may be because as an Armenian I refuse to adopt Saroyan (who pretended to love mankind but couldn't stand his own children) as a role model.
*
There are good lawyers as there are honest politicians out there somewhere. That, however, does not diminish the accuracy and relevance of Raymond Chandler's unforgettable observation, “The room was as dark as the prospects of an honest politician.” And if I have nothing good to say about them it's because we Armenians collectively have been perennial double victims of alien as well as our own political leadership.
*
Speaking of politicians: the fact that a great many of them are lawyers doesn't make them more palatable to my taste. But that's neither here nor there. What I find most repellent about lawyers is that they care more about the Law and less about Justice. And what has been the contribution of the Law in history – from the execution of Socrates and the Crucifixion of Christ to such more recent crimes against humanity as our Genocide, the Holocaust of the Jews, the countless violations of human rights against the Blacks in America, and the Gulag in the USSR (all of which were committed in the name of the Law)?
Throughout history, the Law has always acted as an arm of those in power (be they capitalists or commissars) even when they were no better than crminals.
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If Jack S. Avanakian is not careful he may provoke me into saying that lawyers have been as bad as those whose interests they serve and whose powers they defend and legitimize. Sultan Abdulhamid II, Talaat, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao may be dead and buried but their offspring can always rely on lawyers to defend them even if they are as guilty as serial killers.
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It would be no exaggeration to say that at the root of all injustice there will be a lawyer. And if there is more justice today in both Russia and the United States it's because of dissident writers like Solzhenitsyn and preachers like Martin Luther King, not lawyers.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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REFLECTIOONS
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If at the end of an argument neither side has moved an inch, they must be either Turks or Armenians.
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You want to be a writer? Write a single honest line and you will be attacked by so many charlatans that you will spend the rest of your life replying to them and in the process exposing their dishonesty. Yes! -- all it takes is a single honest line.
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We are told love is better than hatred. What we are not told is that it is wrong to love that which is deserving of our hate – things like lies, prejudice, greed, war, and massacre.
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We are taught to love our homeland and fellow countrymen. What we are not taught is that singling them out as more deserving of our love than all others may have some undesirable consequences – among them xenophobia, chauvinism, racism, double-talk, cynicism, and ignorance of the world.
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There is nothing wrong in being wrong. But there is something horribly wrong pretending to be infallible.
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Philip Roth had to write PORTRNOY'S COMPLAINT to be hated by his fellow Jews. All an Armenian writer has to do is to say 2+2=4.
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It's good to know that I live in a country where capital punishment by crucifixion or the death of a thousand cuts have been abolished. But as Antranik Zaroukian says somewhere, you can always rely on your fellow countrymen to find another equally painful method of execution.
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