QUOTE
Vigil, I hope you realize this: we cannot convert 'odars' for the pure and simple reason that we don't tolerate any intermarriage. Here is a perfect example:Sev_Mart marries his Hye girlfriend and (god-willing) they have six new ARMENIANS! Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating and they only have three kids. That still makes 4 new Armenians. They'd be schooled in Armenian, raised by an Armenian mother, babysat by Armenian grandparents.... It's a win, win situation.
As long as the children are taught the language, the music, the history, the art, the literature - as long as the spirit of Armenians lives on in their souls - they are Armenian. And they will grow & procreate - creating more Armenians. Let's face it - there's never going to be a day when ALL the diaspora is going to return to our lands, and Diasporan Armenians MUST & WILL adapt to their new host societies. What we can hope/strive for, is to retain important aspects of our culture that make us unique and keep living as diasporan Armenians. If we integrate a few members of other cultures, then all the better.
I have been following these boards for quite some time now. It's good to monitor some of the consensus of youth in our culture. But I have to admit, after reading this little gem above from "Vava", I was in sheer awe of just how screwed up things have become in certain Armenian circles. I'm not sure what's worse, placing my hope of the preservation of my identity as an Armenian in the hands of folks like Vava, or simply taking a time warp back to 1915 and just putting my head under a Turkish scimitar.
Yes Vava, lets talk about this "cultural preservation" you're refering to and how it's "enough" to simply pass on language and teach kids of mixed marriages Armenian then dubb them as "Hye". So basically by your logic, if I learn everything about feudal Japan, learn to read and write in Japanese, and toss in a bit of its history into my personal knowledge base, I can be Japanese! Wow, I never knew it was that easy to become Japanese or even Armenian for that matter! You're wonderful optimism about this delusion that you're having almost passes it as the reality of our situation, ALMOST but not quite.
First off, being anything, whether it's Armenian, Pakistani, Martian, etc, etc, starts at the genetic level, then branches off into phenotipic features, and lastly encompasses a unique mindset and behavioural values which we call "culture". Being Armenian is ALL of that, not just a fragment such as "hey Joe Blow, you know Armenian and some of our history, thus you're Hye"! I do not care how actively you participate in Armenian culture, or whether someone's Armenian/Odar mix children know the Eibuben inside out and can recite them backwards, or even if you're a Nobel Laureate historian on Hye culture. If the sperm and the egg that made up that child were not from Hye parents, that child is not Hye, he is a mix that knows a lot about one half of his genetic make-up, period.
Armenianism is MORE than just values, historical knowledge, and linguistic "know-how". Armenianism is about a LINEAGE of people that genetically have travelled a 3000+ year journey, during which many have tried to end that genetic lineage permenantly. Armenianism is about Hye's mounting the front lines of the battles in the Crusades, in which the very survival of Christianity depended on. Armenianism is about taking the chance of making Christianity our official religion when no one else would dare to do so. Being Hye is about a cultural AND genetic line of people that predates the humanoid religious form of "God" by nearly 1000 years.
I'm just in sheer shock that this kind of mentality and assinine commentary is coming from someone that is calling himself/herself "Hye" and furthermore on a site that hopes to create the preservation of Armenianism. Sadly most people on this forum use the fact of being "Armenian" as nothing more than a mantle or title, some even have the audacity to just refer to being Hye as a nice punchline to enhance some sort of twisted self-image during intellectual topics about politics and socio-economic strife. I'm willing to bet that you Vava jan, are involved with an odar and you spew out all this garbage of your's in an attempt to feel some sort of justification for either present or past guilt. And if you don't feel guilty for thinking the way you do, I truly pity you. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you are in fact Sev-Mart's significant other! But I digress. Just please do not idealistically fool yourself into thinking that once the genetic line has been cut off via inter-ethnic marriage that you can still be "hye" through charitable actions and cultural knowledge. Once you're done genetically, you're DONE, that's it, you've cut off Armenianism at it's most basic and essential level, which is genetically.
The fact of the matter is this. Anyone that does feel the way Vava does, does so because there exists a very prevalent problem in a good portion of Armenian communities. The Armenian Pirate likes to call this, "The Sexual Repression Factor". This factor is most apparent in our females due to the social pressure of staying "makur". Odds are Sev-Mart's girlfriend is from a very sexually conservative family in which the expectations of her sexual state are unrealistic for any female to endure. Thus the obvious outlet is to have sexual relations with the Odar, and of course Sev-Mart enters the scene, BAM one Hye girl lost due to this social disease. The solution to this problem is not stating "hey it's okay for us to turn our backs to our 3000+ year old genetic lineage and just make sure the mix kids can speak hye and know some hye history". Instead, the Hye youth needs to change the train of thought regarding sexuality so that Hye guys and girls can have sexual relations with each other without worrying about being dubbed as "outcasts" from their Hye community. That ladies and gentlemen is the solution and will also allow us to maintain Armenianism on cultural, historic, AND genetic levels, which is the way any ethnic group can maintain their identity.
Now I'd like to address this issue about Sev-Mart's "input" about how Armenians "should" resolve our cultural issues. Let me do a little bit of a reality check here for all you "intellectuals" that love to jump the gun on these boards with your grandiose globalization ideas and liberal media child views. Before I go on, I don't want anyone here tossing the crutch excuse or accusation of "racist" my way, I probably have more African-American friends than Sev-Mart himself, so let us begin.
I love the idea of an odar learning about Armenians, our history, so on and so forth. What I do not like, in fact, what I despise, is any odar that feels they can do a romantic social waltz into any Armenian related forum, debate, etc, and preach about how certain hye issues should or should not be dealt with or what courses of action are good for us as a people.
Sev-Mart, while his intentions perhaps noble, has absolutely no idea about the critical state of our people's identity. It's easy for him to sit there and talk about why we do not like odars mixing in with us because he has a legion of his own people to fall back on, on the entire continent of Africa. Who do I have as a Hye? 6.XX million of us , that's it. And as Vigil said, EVERY SINGLE LOSS counts for us. Furthermore, to be frank, Sev-Mart can keep to himself when it comes to critical issues of our culture, it does not concern him, it concerns me, the Armenian. The reason being is because if I, as an Armenian and as a white man, went on an African American forum and spoke out about how the 200 years of slavery were justified or commented on some other civil right sensitive topic, I guarantee you this everyone, within 5 posts, my ass would be banned and I would get death threats. And that is why I hate the fact that Sev Mart feels he can just come in with his whines and declarations of "why is it I cannot date and marry a hye girl", to me as an Armenian , this is MY sensitive topic just like slavery and civil rights is his for him. Mixed marriages kill MY identity the way slavery was cultural death for his identity and basic human rights.
Vigil is right, the kids of any mixed marriage will gradually dwindle in identity until there really is no definitive identity left several generations later in that family. So stop this nonsense about why mixed marriages are "win/win" situations , they are not, at best they are a loss, nothing more.
I sit here right now, in disbelief about how jaded most of you are and how quick you buy into this idea of the "cultural" melting pot. In the 1970s there were Hyes in Beirut that literally had to defend their identity with guns and here most of you are in the U.S. willing to say "hey it's okay to inter-marry as long as we just teach our kids the Eibuben, some hye history, etc". Some of you don't even know the Eibuben, how are you going to teach your mixed children the Eibuben? If you're willing to give up your genetic lineage on the drop of a dime the way Vava is preaching on, how the hell do you propose to even care about the cultural aspect of it all?!
Another crutch excuse is of course what was said earlier with "why would you show-effort/die for a country you gain no benefit from in any form" in reference to Armenia. For the genius that made this comment, you're hye aren't you? Your whole mindset is collectively that very same "benefit" you are arrogant enough to assume is non-existent. And how dare ANY of us say such things in the first place when men like Monte Melkonian that were BORN AND RAISED in the U.S. , with a college degree from a top rated U.S. university along with a full ride to Oxford decided to give it all up and die for his country. Most of you folks on this board are immigrants that should at the very least have more of a spirit behind your Armenianism, but there was Monte, a kid that never set foot outside of the United States and was as "american" as apple pie but decided to fly to the shithole of the world in the middle east to fight for his people. How dare any of you come on these boards and say things like "lets intermarry, it's okay", or "why should I show effort", or any other ridiculous cowardly notion. Those ideas are all easy fixes for folks that like to call themselves "intellectuals" and all they do is act as analysts on boards such as this one. God forbid any real sort of effort is required of them, they would soon intermarry and stay jaded rather than show some effort in changing social stigmas such as sexual repression in our culture by HELPING EACH OTHER and keeping our lineage strong.
I'd like to close by saying that some folks here need to really look within themselves and realize how wonderful it is to be Armenian. Yes it can be difficult due to some of the social vises that exist, especially for our wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful hye women. But we are the youth, and we are the future, and the future is our's to shape. The blood that runs in our vains is ancient and on the world stage carries seniority in nearly every aspect. Perhaps this is the very notion Monte Melkonian realized and decided to give up his whole life to help preserve us as a people. You think one man cannot make a difference? Ask the battalion of troops that would die for him, or better yet, ask the governments that feared him, and look at the lands near Karabagh that he returned to their rightful owners, us Armenians. That was all one man's effort, a kid from Fresno California that had never been outside of U.S. soil. To preserve Armenianism, it must be done culturally AND gentically via the continuation of the Hye lineage. Think about Monte and these notions then look at yourself in the mirror and still say "it's okay to inter-marry" , "it's not worth that much effort", or "I wouldn't fight for a country that doesn't give me benefits".
-The Armenian Pirate
Edited by TheArmenianPirate, 26 March 2004 - 03:08 AM.
