insanity

Sunday, March 04, 2012
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INSANITY
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If world history has been shaped by conventional wisdom, give me insanity so that I may keep my sanity.
Like Brando’s
“I could have been a contender,” sometimes I cannot help thinking, I could have been a plumber with a regular income, a family, children, grandchildren, a circle of beer-guzzling pals…But perhaps on some other level am I not a plumber? -- and more precisely like the American plumber who had the following motto printed on his business card: “Your shit is my bread and butter.”
Which reminds me of the dissident who, when asked to identify himself, replied: “I am a shit-disturber.”
We live in an environment where dealing in crap is more profitable than exposing it.
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Mirabeau on Talleyrand: “He would sell his soul for money, and he would-be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold.” It is to be noted that Mirabeau was beheaded in his early forties, and Talleyrand died in bed in his eighties.
For more on this subject see A FIRST-RATE MADNESS: UNCOVERING THE LINKS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MENTAL ILLNESS by Nassir Ghaemi (New York, 2011), where we are told that mental illness may indeed be a necessary ingredient in all great leadership.
There may be some truth in that.
But I suspect there may be even more truth in the assertion that what drives great leaders insane is power.
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Monday, March 05, 2012
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THE NEW ARMENIAN
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One of the worst mistakes a woman can make, Dorothy Parker tells us, is to fall in love. That’s because by falling in love she places all her eggs in a single bastard.
Throughout our history we too have placed all our eggs in single bastards: if it’s not the Sultan, it’s the commissar; and if it’s not the commissar, it’s our own bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
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Scientists around the world, we are told, discover and name new species all the time. I wonder if they will ever discover the new Armenian that Zarian spoke about: the Armenian who neither curses nor laments his fate; neither begs nor protests; neither boasts of his past achievements nor his present celebrities.
The new Armenian knows what must be done and does it. He knows that so far he has been on the wrong path. He understands that his so-called virtues are extensions of weakness, cowardice, and greed; and his vices results of ignorance and stupidity.
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Because I dare to say these things am I your enemy?
Only if you think with the old brain.
Did I say brain?
Please forgive the overstatment.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
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SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
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It is not my wisdom that I try to share but my outrage.
Catholics have their child-molesting priests;
Russians their plutocrats and former KGB agents;
the Yanks their 1%; and you think we never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands?
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Trying to reason with an Armenian who has made up his mind (if you will forgive the overstatement) is akin to mating with a shark.
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Every line of work has its recurring experiences. With lawyers it’s the career criminal who wants to plead not guilty; with Armenian writers it’s cyberbullies pretending to speak in the name of God and Country.
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We don’t have a silent majority. What we have is a brainwashed majority capable of processing only platitudes delivered by baloney artists.
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Once upon a time there was a man called Financial Success and he had a twin brother called Moral Bankruptcy.
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Wednesday, March 07, 2012
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THE IRONY OF ALL IRONIES
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We are most catastrophically wrong
when we think we are absolutely right.
History provides us with so many examples
of this most common of all aberrations:
Paris falling in love and abducting Helen.
The Athenian jury condemning Socrates to death
on the assumption that they were getting rid of a nuisance.
The pope persecuting, torturing, and even killing anyone who dared to question his infallibility.
Napoleon attacking Russia.
Hitler declaring war on two fronts.
Stalin purging his ablest men thus planting the seeds of his empire’s disintegration.
The United States adopting the domino theory in Vietnam;
and before that, the South declaring war on the North
in defense of its right to enslave fellow human beings.
And now, closer to home:
notwithstanding the Biblical injunction, adopting the absurd notion that a house divided against itself has a better chance to stand;
our revolution at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire which has been compared to a mouse trying to rape an elephant; and last but far from least, cyberbullies attacking dissidents who support free speech and democratic reforms in both the Homeland and the Diaspora, and doing so in the name of patriotism.
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