415 replies to this topic

[Hyeflyer]

To T.B. I will not try to tie up this board.You use the word odar wich in its self shows you view your self sepeate from other people.The biggest obstacle I have tried to overcome in my life was to stop looking at people as Odar,White,Black,Brown,Yellow ect.ect.Armenians teach the children predjudice be using words like odar and they learn to view humans in catagorys in turn sowing seeds of bigotry and predjudice.Humans are not layered like onions we are a jig saw puzzle.

[sen_Vahan]

Dear Ara Baliozian,
I think you are very important for today's Armenian youth. In my opinion,it is sometimes better to read a new writer that a well known old one. So, your ideas are more fresh than those of Hakob Paronyan.And I would like to thank you,
Vahan

[Twilight Bark]

Ah yes. Let us not tie up the board so that Mr Baliozian's megaphone can be heard at full blast. That is plain silly.

I have used the word "odar" in quotation marks to indicate how some (or many) Armenians think. Please pay attention to the quotation marks, and the subtle and not-so-subtle twists in meaning caused their context. For the umpteenth time for you and Mr. Baliozian: I agree with a lot of what he writes. I did not have to learn those problems from either of you. My problem is the superficiality of how he interprets the problems of Armenian culture, the naked sourness and self-disgust that oozes from his postings, and the appallingly inaccurate and unfair generalizations he inserts into the platitudes that all reasonable people would agree with. Mr. Baliozian misdiagnoses the operating, relevant causes of the flaws in Armenian culture, and gives the impression that it is such a repugnant culture that the world would be better off without it. I disagree.

As for our onion shells and puzzle pieces. The two-dimensional puzzle pieces exist on the surface of each onion shell. Sure, you can flatten the onion with a sledgehammer and then call the resulting mess a jigsaw puzzle. That is not a pretty idea of humanity. To say that we do not have a hierarchical structure of identity is to ignore the self-evident. Do it if you prefer the bliss of ignorance to the glorious structure that reality is.

Why is it that whenever I criticize our Saint Ara The "Critic" his groupies treat me like I am a foaming-at-the-mouth chauvinist? Is there no room for healthy self-awareness and self-critique between the stupid extremes of complete self-disgust and skinhead chauvinism?

Regards,
Twilight Bark

[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: Twilight Bark ]

[sen_Vahan]

Dear highflyer,
you say that Armenians teach their children to think in categories like "otar". Do you know any other way to survive out of homeland?
Second, people are different, they DO belong to different categories, and so do the nations. One of the nations that think suffered much from inhumanity, in fact, think in categories such as "We are the chosen nation, we are the best of the best". I don't mean Armenians, don't worry.
Vahan

[Hyeflyer]

To T.B.I dont see your posts as attacking Ara and or myself.We are all imperfect puzzles and I feel it is our duty to our selves to complete as much of our own puzzle to find what peices are missing.It is only in that way can we be better people thus enabling us to find the way to over come the problems all people face and thus also helping Armenians and Armenia.I find you most interesting.

[Hyeflyer]

To Sen-VahnSome day I hope you will learn the catagories are all artificial.It is quite simple to surive and keep your identity out side of your homeland.First your parents and grandparents tell you repeatedly you identity and your name carries your identity.Then your children ask where did we come from so you repeat the cycle and tell them repeatedly like your forebearers.The cycle continuesas long as there is a will to teach and a question to be asked.

[Hyeflyer]

To AraSorry to have caused so much fuss about nothing.Keep dreaming of a better world.

[ara baliozian]

ISLAM
*************
John Selden (1650): "The Turks tell their People of a Heaven where there
is a sensible Pleasure, but of a Hell where they shall suffer they don't
know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a Hell
where we shall feel sensible Pain, but of a Heaven where we shall enjoy
we can't tell what."
TRANSLATION
*********************
Islam promises good food and sex. Christianity, inconceivable bliss on
invisible clouds to the accompaniment of unheard of music – no, not even
the final movement of Brahms’s 4th conducted by Furtwaengler or the first
movement of Mahler’s 5th conducted by Bruno Walter, perhaps even (and why
not?) by Mahler himself.
GOOD FOOD AND SEX
***************************
There you have the explanation why Islam today produces many more heroes
and martyrs than Christianity.
HEROES AND MARTYRS
*****************************
Mostly horny young buggers. Shakespeare is right to say that youth should
be outlawed because all it’s good for is impregnating wenches.
BLISS
**************
My definition: The awareness that one is no longer dependent on the
charity of swine and on the approval of fools.
FAITH
***************
Samuel Butler (NOTEBOOKS): "What is faith but a kind of betting or
speculation after all? It should be: ‘I bet my Redeemer liveth.’"
IMPREGNATING WENCHES
*********************************
Shakespeare (THE WINTER’S TALE): "I would there were no age between
sixteen and three-and-twenty; for there is nothing the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting,
drinking."

[ara baliozian]

REPLY
***************************
A reader writes:
"How can you say or imply that Turks and Armenians are 99% alike
simply because scientists say all men are 99% alike?
Compare their contributions to culture to ours!"
Empires don't emphasize individual contributions,
only contributions to its administration
or, at best, to its entertainment.
This is true of the Ottoman Empire as well as
of the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Soviet, and American empires.
In their Golden Age (5th century BC) the Greeks,
or rather, the Athenian Empire,
executed Socrates and forced Plato as well as Aristotle into exile.
Some of Rome’s ablest men
were either assassinated or ordered to commit suicide,
among them Cicero, Petronius, and Seneca the Philosopher.
The Byzantine Empire produced more famous generals
(most of them Armenian or half-Armenian)
than poets and philosophers.
We all know what happened to Soviet literature under Stalin.
In the United States today, basketball players and Hollywood stars
are more highly appreciated than intellectuals.
(Clark Gable on first meeting William Faulkner:
"What’s your line of work, Mr. Faulkner?")
And what about our own Mikoyan, Gulbenkian, and Deukmejian?
What is their contribution to Armenian or any other culture?
And yet, the average Armenian knows more about them
than about Arthur Adamov and Nina Berberova.

[sen_Vahan]

Dear highflyer,
Do all Armenians outside Armenina know their own language (read,write,speak)? Maybe 50 % know or 30 % ? So, it turns out not to be so simple as you think to survive.
As Russians say: "Pobegdaet seredina i posredstvennost'." (about your model Armenians)
Vahan

[ara baliozian]

BROTHERS
************************
Why is it that highly sophisticated writers
like Krikor Zohrab and Rouben Sevak
(a lawyer and doctor respectively)
trusted in the ultimate goodness of the Turks
even after the massacres of 1894-96 and 1909?
Were they taken in by Turkish cunning?
Did they underestimate the evil that we say is inborn in all Turks?
Why is it that even a sensitive observer like Zabel Yessayan
(born and raised in Istanbul but educated in Paris)
believed that not all Turks are alike and there are good and bad Turks?
During and after World War II
it was fashionable to divide Germans into good and bad Germans.
Thomas Mann disagreed.
He said the good and bad German was one and the same.
He went further and published an essay about Hitler
whom he called "A Brother" (the title of the essay).
I suppose we, all of us, have something
of the good and bad German (or Turk) in us.
Why else so many of our own writers would say that
our worst enemy is us?
On the day we learn to speak of Turks as our brothers
or at least as our half-brothers
(some of whom may well qualify as such)
we may have a far better chance to settle our differences with them.
But if we keep on calling them killers, murderers,
butchers, and bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians,
even the good Turks (if they exist)
may be justified in saying
"We cannot negotiate with people who hate us" --
in the same way that I myself
find it extremely difficult to reason with readers
who call me an ass, a moron, a jerk, an idiot, a shithead,
and a son of a whore.

[sen_Vahan]

my uncle's best friend in Russia is Turkish.Actually, it is strange for me to hear or read that Armenians consider Turks to be killers. As for me, that is something not real. Armenians like Turkish music,the kitchen,....Moreover, Armenians in Russia work a lot with Azeri people in commerce, business. Armenia needs good relations with Turkey, but the problem of Genocide should also be solved anyhow. The problem is not only in Armenians.
Vahan

[ara baliozian]

ON RACISM
***********************
In a French dictionary of philosophy
I read the following definition of racism:
"A belief that
(1) there are definable human races;
(2) the races are unequal; and (3) superior races have an inherent right
to control the destiny of inferior races."
The article goes on to say that
biology does not recognize clearly definable races
and that such things as skin-color and cranial shapes
are morphologically discernible but biologically imprecise tools.
As for IQ criteria: they do not reveal any systematic inequalities.
Whites may have a weaker physical constitution than Blacks,
and Blacks may not be as intellectually endowed as Whites,
but these do not in any way affect their potential for development.
Racism that discriminates is a universally condemned moral aberration.
As a rule, racism is a byproduct of authoritarian societies
that impose on their citizens
rigid definitions of what is right and wrong;
and that when positively seen human differences
may enhance our understanding of ourselves and our fellow men.
Which may explain why
as I view my fellow Armenians more objectively,
I begin to understand Turks better.

[Twilight Bark]

I will not address the middle-school level discussion about races. I will also try to restrain myself from smirking when I clearly remember Mr. Baliozian's essentially racist views of Arabs and Middle Easterners in general. However, I will say that Mr. Baliozian's pedestrian monologues, which are as trivial as his ancient books of cheap propaganda, might go some way in explaining why Armenians don't trust or value their "intellectual"s. If Mr. Baliozian is anywhere near the best that the Armenian diaspora offers in the way of "intellectual/writer", we are in big trouble. And we probably are.

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: Twilight Bark ]

[ara baliozian]

TRANSFORMATIONS
***********************************
1.
When an Armenian assesses himself,
he is as a rule the soul of understanding, compassion, and generosity.
When he assesses another
(and it makes no difference if the other is a Turk or an Armenian)
he turns into Jack the Ripper.
2.
After praying to a "compassionate and merciful Allah,"
a fanatic Muslim feels fully justified to murder innocent civilians.
3.
Giambattista Vico:
"Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers,
who regard money as the measure of all things,
and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty….
Emancipated from ethics generally,
they live by mutual spying and deceit."
4.
Why is it that man hungers to assert superiority over his fellow man
even when in the process he runs the risk of making an ass of himself?
I once met an Armenian who,
when he ran out of things to brag about,
he started bragging about his grandmother.
He went further.
To emphasize his grandmother’s superiority,
he felt the need to degrade my own grandmother
about whom, it must be noted,
he knew nothing.
5.
I repeat: Why would anyone volunteer to make an ass of himself?
The answer must be:
When you assess yourself as morally and intellectually superior,
it follows, as night follows day,
that you can do no wrong.
You might as well be more Catholic than the Pope,
more Bolshevik than Stalin,
and more Magnificent than Suleiman.

[Hyeflyer]

To T.B.You have siad we feed from the crumbs of Aras intelectual table.I see you are still at the table.
To Ara please seve up the next course.

[ara baliozian]

MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER
********************************************
1.
If you play it safe and write about birds serenading the moon
or the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat,
be prepared to be called a vodanavorji and ignored.
If, on the other hand,
you decide to live dangerously and analyze our present situation
with some degree of objectivity,
be prepared to be reviled by readers
who cannot chew gum and fart at the same time.
2.
And remember, if an Armenian doesn't like what you write,
he will insult not only you but also your grandmother.
A wounded beast will attack anyone that goes near him;
and what are we if not open wounds in search of victims?
And who could be a safer victim than a dead grandmother?
3.
To the next reader who plans to insult my grandmother,
please be informed that the one on my father’s side
died 70 years ago;
and the other, on my mother’s side, 39 years ago.
4.
So far I mentioned the negatives.
For the sake of balance let me mention one of the fringe benefits
you may look forward to: namely, the remote
– make it, the extremely remote –
possibility of posthumous immortality,
which in our context means
that one or two eccentrics may remember your name
after you drop dead or at best
quote one of your lines which may not even be yours.

[ara baliozian]

PROFESSIONAL SECRETS
*****************************
If a Jew wants to succeed in opera,
he acquires an Italian name –
or so I was told by a Jew once.
If he wants to succeed in ballet
s/he acquires a Russian name.
If he wants to succeed as a Flamenco dancer,
he adopts a Spanish name.
In Hollywood, he is given an Anglo-Saxon name.
If an Armenian wants to succeed,
I was told by an Armenian,
s/he marries a Jew.
If these friends are right, it follows that,
when an ambitious Armenian marries another Armenian,
the organist should play not the Wedding March but a dirge.
TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK
(IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING)
**********************************
To all those who at one time or another
have attacked or insulted me, I say:
"Thank you for being a source of inspiration to me.
Next time you see a reference to your person in one of my essays,
please rest assured that you are not an incipient paranoiac."
FOR THE SUGGESTION BOX
*********************************
One of our dime-a-dozen experts on any given subject
with particular emphasis on Turkish-Armenian relations
informs me:
"The reason why you are a failure as a writer is that
you lack the diplomatic touch."
Aha! I thought.
That may well be why so far we have failed to convince
the Turks, among others, that our genocide
is not a figment of our morbid imagination but a historic fact.
What we need is more diplomacy.
Next time we raise the issue,
let’s remember to say "Please!"
or "Pretty lease!!"
or even "Please with sugar on it!!!"

[sen_Vahan]

Dear Ara Baliozian,
If it was not a joke then what a Jew does when he wants to become a King? Or a philosopher?
Comparing Jews and Armenians in that sense doesn't seem to be reasonable - Armenians is a nation, Jews a superethnos(see the differences by Gumilev L.N.). It is hard to define who is the Jew today. If a Russian Jew
wants to become a Flamenko dancer he/she will look like.... He/she can be a opera singer because of some Russian origin.
Oh, some people in this page again will think I am making differences between peoples. But what can you do, they ARE different.
Thank you,
Vahan