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as i see it - Pt. IV


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#41 ara baliozian

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Posted 25 November 2004 - 12:11 PM

NOTES / COMMENTS
*************************************
André Gluckmann is a contemporary French philosopher and the author of over twenty books, the most recent being A TREATISE ON HATRED. The following three quotations are from an interview dealing with this book.
*
“It is said that hatred is born of oppression, destitution, and humiliation, as if everyone living in deplorable conditions were ravaged by hatred. What could be more offensive to the poor and the disadvantaged of this world!”
*
“The terrorist is not a robot manipulated by material conditions. The terrorist is an assassin who takes pleasure in indiscriminate killing….”
*
“The great writer is a prophet of doom. He exposes that which has gone wrong and that which is evil."
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Portuguese proverb: “Better a red face than a black heart.”
*
Stephen Leacock: “A half truth in argument, like a half brick, carries better.”
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Bulgarian proverb: “Other people’s eggs have two yolks.”
*
Speechifiers and sermonizers are like men who praise vegetarianism while dining on shish kebab.
*
When it comes to thinking, real thinking, asking questions and raising doubts are more important that making dogmatic assertions and relying on authority.
*
I am an Armenian, which means when I think of my fellow Armenians, I lose both sleep and appetite.
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#42 ara baliozian

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Posted 26 November 2004 - 12:51 PM

Friday, November 26, 2004
************************************
Whenever I question Zarian's contemporaries, I notice again and again that they refuse to discuss the work and prefer to gossip about the man, and more specifically the insults he apparently inflicted on them.
A minor novelist: "We organized a picnic in his honor and instead of thanking us he complained about the food."
A third-rate versifier who considers himself a first rate poet: "He was an arrogant name-dropper. Unamuno told me this, Verhaeren told me that, Picasso told me, me, me, me!"
An academic in Yerevan: "He was unbearably self-centered. No one liked him."
An occasional journalist: "Once, when I was a boy, I carried two of his atrociously heavy bags to the top of a mountain in Cyprus and he didn't even thank me."
Of Zarian we can truly say that he was too good for his people, including our so-called intellectual elite. To those who say, "But there must be some truth in all that anecdotal evidence. The man must have been inconsiderate, perhaps even rude, in his dealings with his fellow Armenians"; I say, yes, certainly, I agree. Rudeness is unforgivable in any man, including writers, especially writers. But then, Charents was an attempted murderer: that doesn't seem to stop our academics from studying his works and the public from idolizing him.
*
More from André Gluckmann’s interview:
“Anti-Semitism antedates any encounter or dealing with a real Jew.”
*
“Hatred is directed at imaginary objects of a certain type: reflections of oneself that one refuses to recognize.”
*
Simone Weil: “It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.”
*
Writes Olivier Messiaen: “Among birds most fights are settled by tournaments of song.”
Imagine, if you can, American marines and Iraqi insurgents (or, for that matter, Armenians and Turks, or even Armenians and Armenians) today, settling their differences by bursting into song. And to think that homo sapiens thinks he has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.
*
My favorite three funeral marches: the slow movement from Beethoven Eroica Symphony, the first movement of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, and Siegfried’s orchestral threnody from the final act of Wagner’s GOTTERDAMMERUNG (which was also Hitler’s favorite).
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Edited by ara baliozian, 27 November 2004 - 12:11 PM.


#43 ara baliozian

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Posted 27 November 2004 - 12:11 PM

Saturday, November 27, 2004
************************************
There are those who think by writing one or more articles in our weeklies they have made a valuable contribution to the solution of our problems. There are even those who think if they succeed in solving all our problems, the nation will be grateful to them. I thought so too when I was young, naïve and inexperienced - in short, a dumb jerk. The truth is (and historic evidence is clear on this point) no power on earth, not even a messiah, can solve the problems of a nation that does not want to solve its problems. And if you are ever successful in solving all our problems, consider yourself lucky if they let you live.

It was Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher, who said that for every wise man you meet, be prepared to deal with ten thousand fools, or words to that effect. He also said: "Astrology is a disease, not a science."
A thousand years of progress and what do we have? For every astronomer today there are probably ten thousand astrologers and a hundred thousand fools who believe in them.
*
It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken in by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and completely ignored the voices of such dissidents as Thomas Mann, Gramsci, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.
If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.
*
Denis Donikian: "Being Armenian means to have a license to exploit fellow Armenians in the name of Armenianism."
*
Russian proverb: "Dwell on the past and you will lose an eye. Ignore the past and you will lose both of them."
*
With enough checks and balances even a mediocrity may behave like a statesman. Without checks and balance even the greatest statesman may behave like a serial killer.
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#44 Armen

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Posted 27 November 2004 - 05:49 PM

QUOTE (ara baliozian @ Nov 27 2004, 12:11 PM)
It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken in by the likes of Stalin, Hitler  and Mussolini and completely ignored the voices of such dissidents as Thomas Mann,  Gramsci, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.
If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.


I cannot believe the level of your hypocricy. And the biggest evil of our times are the Arab terrorists right? You sound like CNN.

#45 Armat

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Posted 28 November 2004 - 12:36 AM

Armen I think you are harsh on Ara. He was very clear that his last essay was about individuals “thinking” for themselves verses masses following “leaders” like sheep.

#46 Armen

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Posted 28 November 2004 - 01:47 AM

Armat, I'm saying that it would not be a bad idea to consider making the U.S. more oftenly an example where people follow leaders like sheep. I agree that I was harsh. And please consider Armenians totaly free of that "illness".

#47 ara baliozian

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Posted 28 November 2004 - 11:34 AM

Sunday, November 28, 2004
*****************************************
The positive or optimistic view of history emphasizes progress, the negative or pessimistic view emphasizes moral decline, and the objective view tells us it is wrong to blur the line that separates technological from moral progress.
*
Two things an Armenian will never forget: the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and the fact that Armenians are smart, and so smart that it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian. It follows, as night follows day, that as an Armenian he too qualifies. Hence the embarrassing spectacle of a loud-mouth imbecile with a negative IQ who, after assessing himself as a genius and an authority on any given subject, will accuse you of hating Armenians if you fail to look up to him, as if it were the patriotic duty of every Armenian to love and cherish white trash.
*
We don’t have an Armenian Sultan Abdulhamid because we didn’t have an empire.
*
Some readers expect me to be polite, tolerant, civilized. They drown me in verbal crap and demand style. You want manners? Read Emily Post and quit bothering me.
*
Anyone who considers himself infallible inhabits a realm that is not open to reason.
*
The easiest way to deal with an unpleasant truth is to call the speaker a liar.
*
Only those who think of themselves as indestructible attempt to destroy an idea and they are invariably destroyed by the idea.
*
I say what I think not because I am paid a regular salary or hope to enhance my power and prestige, but because I have had enough of lies and charlatans and I have no affection for bloodsuckers and gravediggers.
#

#48 ara baliozian

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Posted 29 November 2004 - 12:24 PM

Monday, November 29, 2004
**********************************
About Baruch Spinoza I read the following:
“At the age of six he lost his mother. That’s when he questioned the existence of God. At the age of twenty he fell in love with Clara Maria Van den Enden, his mentor’s daughter. She rejected him. That’s when he completely lost his belief in the existence of God. In 1656 a Jewish fanatic tried to kill him. On July 27 of the same year he was excommunicated (Spinoza was, not the fanatic) by the Synagogue of Amsterdam.”
*
From an interview with the eminent contemporary French philosopher Edgar Morin:
“The principles of love and compassion within both Christianity and Islam have now been replaced with hatred… The world is cursed with an excess of love for idols and abstractions. I maintain we should love the transitory and the perishable more than the eternal. That which is more deserving of our love is also most fragile: conscience, beauty, tenderness… And by understanding I mean understanding others as well as ourselves.”
*
Understanding reality means understanding our fellow men and, through them, ourselves.
*
Jules Renard: “There is no paradise; even so, one must do one’s best to deserve it”.
*
In a democracy, the function of an editor is to separate fact from propaganda and to print the fact.
In an authoritarian regime, the function of an editor is to separate fact from fiction and to print the fiction.
Among Armenians, the function of an editor is to print the trash.
#

#49 ara baliozian

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Posted 30 November 2004 - 12:55 PM

Tuesday, November 30, 2004
**********************************
I have heard many Armenians say that Naregatsi is our Shakespeare. But I have heard only one Armenian quote a line from his Book of Lamentations not as proof of literary excellence but of its perversity. The line in question? All about our sins, when added, exceeding in volume that of Mount Ararat.
*
Armenian identity begins with the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and ends with hatred of Turks. Any deviation from this line is seen as loss of identity, even betrayal.
*
The oppressed yearn for freedom. The oppressor demands subservience, which he calls loyalty. And when the oppressed acquire freedom, what do they do with it? They oppress – what else? -- because like their former masters they confuse free speech with disloyalty. In the eyes of our bosses, bishops and benefactors (and their flunkies) I am an enemy because I yearn for free speech. You may now guess the identity of our role models.
*
I am tempted to introduce every sentence I write with the words: “I have said this before…” or even better, “This has been said before, but it bears repeating.”
*
It is a mistake to identify a political party, an ideology, or a regime with the nation and, by extension, with patriotism. Parties, ideologies, regimes are ephemeral things, here today, gone tomorrow. But the nation endures, provided of course it values freedom above subservience.
*
It is the destiny of all oppressors to bite the dust. History is very clear on this point and it recognizes no exceptions to this rule. What remains in dispute is when. The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years, the Soviet Empire a little over 60. As for our own oppressors: judging by the rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland, the when is not sometime in the near or distant future but in modern parlance, “history.”
#

#50 ara baliozian

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Posted 01 December 2004 - 12:20 PM

Sunday, November 28, 2004
*****************************************
The positive or optimistic view of history emphasizes progress, the negative or pessimistic view emphasizes moral decline, and the objective view tells us it is wrong to blur the line that separates technological from moral progress.
*
Two things an Armenian will never forget: the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and the fact that Armenians are smart, and so smart that it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian. It follows, as night follows day, that as an Armenian he too qualifies. Hence the embarrassing spectacle of a loud-mouth imbecile with a negative IQ who, after assessing himself as a genius and an authority on any given subject, will accuse you of hating Armenians if you fail to look up to him, as if it were the patriotic duty of every Armenian to love and cherish white trash.
*
Anyone who considers himself infallible inhabits a realm that is not open to reason.
*
The easiest way to deal with an unpleasant truth is to call the speaker a liar.
*
Only those who think of themselves as indestructible attempt to destroy an idea and they are invariably destroyed by the idea.
*
I say what I think not because I am paid a regular salary or hope to enhance my power and prestige, but because I have had enough of lies and charlatans and I have no affection for bloodsuckers and gravediggers.
#
Monday, November 29, 2004
**********************************
About Baruch Spinoza I read the following:
"At the age of six he lost his mother. That's when he questioned the existence of God. At the age of twenty he fell in love with Clara Maria Van den Enden, his mentor's daughter. She rejected him. That's when he completely lost his belief in the existence of God. In 1656 a Jewish fanatic tried to kill him. On July 27 of the same year he was excommunicated (Spinoza was, not the fanatic) by the Synagogue of Amsterdam."
*
From an interview with the eminent contemporary French philosopher Edgar Morin:
"The principles of love and compassion within both Christianity and Islam have now been replaced with hatred… The world is cursed with an excess of love for idols and abstractions. I maintain we should love the transitory and the perishable more than the eternal. That which is more deserving of our love is also most fragile: conscience, beauty, tenderness… And by understanding I mean understanding others as well as ourselves."
*
Understanding reality means understanding our fellow men and, through them, ourselves.
*
Jules Renard: "There is no paradise; even so, one must do one's best to deserve it".
*
In a democracy, the function of an editor is to separate fact from propaganda and to print the fact.
In an authoritarian regime, the function of an editor is to separate fact from fiction and to print the fiction.
Among Armenians, the function of an editor is to print the trash.
#
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
**********************************
I have heard many Armenians say that Naregatsi is our Shakespeare. But I have heard only one Armenian quote a line from his Book of Lamentations not as proof of literary excellence but of perversity. The line in question? All about our sins, when added, exceeding in volume that of Mount Ararat.
*
Armenian identity begins with the massacres in the Ottoman Empire and ends with hatred of Turks. Any deviation from this line is seen as loss of identity, even betrayal.
*
The oppressed yearn for freedom. The oppressor demands subservience, which he calls loyalty. And when the oppressed acquire freedom, what do they do with it? They oppress -- what else? -- because like their former masters they confuse free speech with disloyalty. In the eyes of our bosses, bishops and benefactors (and their flunkies) I am an enemy because I yearn for free speech. You may now guess the identity of our role models.
*
I am tempted to introduce every sentence I write with the words: "I have said this before…" or even better, "This has been said before, but it bears repeating."
*
It is a mistake to identify a political party, an ideology, or a regime with the nation and, by extension, with patriotism. Parties, ideologies, regimes are ephemeral things, here today, gone tomorrow. But the nation endures, provided of course it values freedom above subservience.
*
It is the destiny of all oppressors to bite the dust. History is very clear on this point and it recognizes no exceptions to this rule. What remains in dispute is when. The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years, the Soviet Empire a little over 60. As for our own oppressors: judging by the rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland, the when is not sometime in the near or distant future but it might as well be, in modern parlance, "history."
#
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
**************************************
Some agree, others disagree, still others tell me it's a waste of time - writing for Armenians, that is. I am beginning to think so too, and I look forward to the day when I will grow the skin of a crocodile, say "A plague on all your houses!" give up writing, live happily ever after, and die in peace.
*
We remember our massacres and lament our victims even as we verbally massacre one another and would prefer to remember our adversaries as corpses.
*
"Being an Armenian," a friend tells me, "is enough to give an insomniac nightmares."
*
To reason, to negotiate, and to compromise is better than to fight. Good advice. It makes sense. I am all for it. But can you negotiate with an adversary who is in a position to silence you? Can a poet negotiate with a commissar? Can a rabbit reason with a wolf? Can a sardine and a shark reach a consensus?
*
What is it that has made of us perennial losers and victims? Everyone who has been brainwashed by a master of the blame game will advance his own historical, demographic, or geopolitical theory. My own explanation: We have been at the mercy of dividers who have at no time mastered the difficult art of thinking against themselves and questioning their own judgment. In other words, individuals who understand neither the world in which they live, nor the consequences of their actions and fundamental beliefs. Charlatans who operate on the assumption that the best way to deal with critics and dissenters is to starve or silence them - all in the name of patriotism, of course.
#

#51 ara baliozian

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Posted 02 December 2004 - 12:11 PM

Thursday, December 02, 2004
***********************************
AUTHENTIC AND INAUTHENTIC IDEAS
*******************************************
How to define an authentic idea?
After you eliminate all phony or inauthentic ideas, what remains (if anything) qualifies as authentic.
*
How to identify an inauthentic idea?
Easy. Any idea that is based on hearsay, which means words uttered by sermonizers and speechifiers, or anyone in a position of power, be he pope, bishop, imam, king or president, cannot be authentic. That’s because the primary concern of all power is to preserve or enhance its authority and prestige and not to advance on the endless road whose destination is truth. In that sense, power and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts.
*
An authentic idea is based on insight based on experience, provided one remembers that experiences too are necessarily partial or personal, hence limited and lacking in universal application and acceptance.
*
To be authentic an idea cannot be dogmatic or infallible. On the contrary, it must have a margin of error, doubt, and uncertainty. There is nothing new in what I am saying. Philosophers from Socrates and Plato to Hegel, Marx and Sartre believed truth (or understanding reality) is a goal that can be reached only by means of dialectic or dialogue – the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or assertion, contradiction, and compromise/consensus.
*
Truth is God’s realm not man’s, and no one is qualified to speak in His name, because “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates). Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism because “only matter exists, consciousness being a manifestation of motion in brain cells” (Marx).
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#52 Armen

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Posted 02 December 2004 - 12:19 PM

QUOTE (ara baliozian @ Dec 2 2004, 12:11 PM)
Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism ...


I would take it further. All talk is charlatanism.

#53 Nakharar

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Posted 03 December 2004 - 07:20 AM

QUOTE (ara baliozian @ Dec 2 2004, 12:11 PM)
Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism ...


So is vineyard philosophy...

#54 ara baliozian

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Posted 03 December 2004 - 12:40 PM

Friday, December 03, 2004
************************************
GETTING WISDOM
*************************************
Ever since I read the words “man’s primitive belief in explanations” (Paul Valéry), I find most explanations suspect, especially explanations that are flattering to my ego.
*
It is not easy being objective. One way to achieve objectivity is by acquiring the difficult habit of “thinking against oneself” (Sartre), or, in Gandhi’s words: “I have always held that it is only when one sees one’s own mistakes with a convex lens [or with a magnifying glass], and does just the opposite in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two.”
I dare anyone to play the blame game with an easy conscience after reading these lines.
*
For a long time I could not understand why our academics insist on producing books on the Genocide and the Middle Ages and totally ignoring our present situation, thus implying we are in good hands, when we are, in fact, at the mercy of charlatans whose number one concern is number one. Then I read Brecht’s four-word formula, “grub first, then ethics”), and saw the light.
*
Whenever I am misunderstood, I console myself by remembering Hegel’s famous last words, “No one understood me, except one and even he did not understand me.” I am not implying here that my ideas are as complex as Hegel’s, but I am suggesting that only readers, who are clear-cut cases of arrested development, and whose understanding of our past and present never ventures beyond partisan slogans, find my ideas easy to misunderstand.
*
Whenever one of my outraged readers engages in verbal massacre in order to assert his superior brand of Armenianism, I am reminded of Zarian’s dictum, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
Whenever one of our partisan editors rejects my commentaries, I remember Zarian’s letter written in the 1930s to a fellow writer, in which the following lines occur: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And if you think, as an anti-establishment writer, Zarian’s judgment cannot be trusted, consider the words of a pro-establishment writer, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian), who wrote mostly harmless fiction and was on friendly terms with all our bosses, bishops and benefactors: “Once upon a time, we fought and died for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”
*
The words I have quoted above are to me what booze is to an alcoholic. Reading them for the first time was like acquiring a golden key to a door that until then had remained locked. I know now that understanding reality is an endless process, and one of the worst mistakes one can make is to rely on the words of sermonizers and speechifiers, whose conception of being positive or constructive is based on the false assumption that a friendly lie is better than a hostile truth.
#

#55 ara baliozian

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Posted 04 December 2004 - 12:15 PM

Saturday, December 04, 2004
*************************************
ON GOD
**********************
Sartre was an atheist. And yet, he concludes his memoirs by saying, "I depend only on men who depend on god, and I don't believe in god. Figure that one out, if you can."
Elsewhere he describes himself as an atheist whose aim in life was to find salvation not only for himself but also for his fellow men.
*
Gandhi identified himself as a Hindu but he at no time dismissed atheists as infidels or blasphemers. On the contrary. If we define god as truth, he said, even atheists become believers because they believe in the non-existence of god.
*
When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.
*
When Toynbee concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by attempting to reconcile all religions into a single universal belief system, wasn't he, in a way, expressing tacit agreement with Gandhi? Because by reconciling, say, Buddhism (an atheist religion) with Islam or Christianity, also meant reconciling a belief in the existence of god with a belief in his non-existence.
*
Like Gandhi, Toynbee clearly saw that when religion legitimizes intolerance, hatred, and violence, it becomes the instrument (and thus asserts the existence) not of god but of the devil.
*
When kings and sultans claimed to represent god on earth, did they believe it? When bishops and imams speak in the name of god, do they mean it? Italians are fond of saying that even the pope doubts his faith seven times every day. As for bureaucrats (be they secular or religious): they will say anything to maintain and enhance their powers, privileges, and prestige.
*
Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.
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#56 ara baliozian

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Posted 05 December 2004 - 01:34 PM

Sunday, December 05, 2004
*************************************
After Bach, the Beatles; after Socrates, Stalin; after Elgar, Elvis; after Sibelius, Sinatra; after Hegel, Hitler; after Vermeer, Warhol; after Gostan Zarian, Nairi Zarian…I could go on. The human race does not seem to be open to reason or esthetic and moral values.
*
No matter what your field, you will have competitors who will be more successful by prostituting its integrity.
*
After Jesus Christ, televangelists, who amass vast fortunes by perverting his message of love and compassion to greed, intolerance, and hatred.
*
Speaking of man’s primitive faith in explanations: we are fond of saying that what made of us perennial losers is our geography, thus implying that we have been enslaved by our mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys; or we have allowed our longitudes and latitudes to be masters of our destiny. If true, emigration would mean liberation. But consider our academics in America, our crème de la crème, who are in no position to plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance or unawareness: not only are they subservient to our mini-sultans and pseudo-imams but also to their flunkies.
*
To assert their independence of mind, courage, and daring, some readers insult a defenseless and harmless scribbler anonymously and from a safe distance, all in the name of patriotism, of course, which means allegiance to the Homeland, namely Mount Ararat, Mount Aragats, Lake Sevan, Dilijan and Hraztan.
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#57 ara baliozian

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Posted 06 December 2004 - 12:47 PM

Monday, December 06, 2004
************************************
When Schopenhauer called Hegel an “arch-charlatan,” his unspoken intent was to replace Hegel’s philosophical system with his own; or, to propound an antithesis to Hegel’s thesis. Which means, in his rejection of Hegel, he was being a Hegelian.
*
When your average layman calls an intellectual giant like Marx, Freud, or Sartre a charlatan without having read their works, he only succeeds in exposing his prejudice and arrogance.
*
I define an intellectual giant as one who unveils something that has been hidden from view, and having done so, he changes our worldview or understanding of reality. He may be proven wrong and corrected by future thinkers, but only in the sense that Einstein corrected Newton.
*
Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) publicly condemned communism. But when he declared in one of his encyclicals, “Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, whereas man are corrupted and degraded,” he might as well have been speaking as a Marxist. And this indeed is an unmistakable mark of an intellectual giant: it becomes impossible to speak about anything that matters without in some way quoting or paraphrasing him.
*
Sartre put it best when he said: “An anti-Marxist argument is only the apparent rejuvenation of a pre-Marxist idea.” Which also means, you cannot contradict a new thesis with an obsolete anti-thesis; or again, any effort to arrest the advance of human thought is destined to fail.
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#58 ara baliozian

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Posted 07 December 2004 - 12:38 PM

Tuesday, December 07, 2004
***********************************
ON INTERMARRIAGE
***************************
In the Armenian ghetto where I was born, raised, and brainwashed, I was led to believe intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy. I know better now because I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages, namely, racial and religious tolerance. And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals, from Abovian to Zarian, and from Arlen to Saroyan, married odars.
*
How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? -- (about 80% in the U.S., I am told). A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the two meet, everything else – moral and esthetic values, political orientation, financial status, religious and ethnic affiliation – fly out the window. What remain are a man, a woman and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.
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ON BEST-SELLERS
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In the U.S. best-selling books are as a rule either ignored or torn to shreds by critics. What makes them best sellers are average readers and word of mouth. We Armenians don’t have best-selling books because we don’t have average readers. Every Armenian who knows how to read considers himself not only a distinguished literary critic with impeccable esthetic criteria but also an expert on any given subject.
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ON GENTLE READERS
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Whenever I am described by some of these distinguished scholars and gentlemen as a purveyor of b.s. I am reminded of a popular saying in Hollywood, which brought a smile, when I first read it: “It may be shit, but it has integrity.”
*
I once called one of my abusive readers an “inbred moron,” and ever since then he has done his utmost to prove me right.
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#59 Armen

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Posted 07 December 2004 - 06:15 PM

QUOTE (ara baliozian @ Dec 4 2004, 12:15 PM)
When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as  much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.


"Within you" doesn't mean your brain only.

QUOTE
Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.
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You speak in the name of money and I don't trust you.

#60 ara baliozian

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Posted 08 December 2004 - 11:52 AM

Wednesday, December 08, 2004
*************************************
ON FUNDAMENTALISTS
*************************************
A fundamentalist is one who uses (make it, abuses) the scriptures to camouflage his carnivorous instincts and cannibalistic disposition.
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"A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of national origin," Lenin said. So is a fundamentalist -- regardless of belief system.
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Lawyers, theologians, politicians, sophists and charlatans in general have at one time or another proved that a man may behave like swine and portray himself as a noble specimen of humanity. History is very clear on this point.
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A fundamentalist believes being virtuous, superior, or one of the "chosen," consists in basing one's conduct on the scriptures, and by cunningly isolating certain lines and completely ignoring the spirit of many other lines, he can prove to be (to his own satisfaction, at any rate) a man of compassion even as he engages in the massacre of innocent civilians.
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Those who commit massacres don't like that word. They prefer the word war, and in war sometimes "bad things happen."
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Fundamentalism in both the West and the Middle East might as well be reflections of one another. One reason Kerry lost is that as a moderate he could not see this, he thus underestimated the evil in both camps.
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How can any reasonable man change a message of love and compassion to one of hatred and murder? Easy. Listen to Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him."
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