Twilight Bark

Have a nice day.

There was a Polish wrestler (lost to the American), who looked rather Armenian, including the facial hair etc. He had a Polish sounding name though (I forget now). Must have been one of those assimilated ones, with certain "traditions" nevertheless intact.

Ahem. As in Conan the Barbarian, right?

I wouldn't want this to turn into an exercise in winning an argument, or a game of polemic. I am glad to see that you are confident and optimistic about our performance, and I do not want to deflate it. As long as we are not complacent, and creativity permeates our daily lives, I don't care so much if we produce world-famous names or not (obviously I would like that, but ... ). My chagrin comes from what I perceive as the mediocrity and banality of Armenian cultural and intellectual life. I would be very glad to be entirely wrong in my perceptions, and have no interest in proving myself "right". It's a much bigger issue than that.

Well, yes. But that is also an information-free statement, since we are comiserating about relative screwed-upness.

Thanks for that assessment, nairi. Does that square with your cross-cultural observations? Since you are implying that there is nothing particularly different in the behavior and attitudes of Armenian men, the whole issue is meaningless. Not only Armenian men are beyond help, but they are not particularly different from the men of other cultures. No reason for any complaints then.

Let's go over it again. If: Father=he can't be bothered with the lowly task of being involved in the nitty gritty Mother=left alone by the father to raise her sons; appears to raise replicas of the father (who is not involved in the business) Then: The mother, who is doing the tango alone, has to change something in how she raises her boys, since it won't be coming from the father, who has been raised and trained to be uninvolved in such lowly activities. (that's where the tango fails, you see) The virtuous cycle of ever-better males would never take off without a coherent change in Armenian maternal attitudes towards their boys. That's assuming that Armenian culture is isolated, which of course it is not. Then we can all sit on our butts, and assimilation (in the diaspora) and globalization (in the homeland) will take care of the whole thing.

I thought I anticipated and addressed that exact issue.

To say that implies that there is something genetically wrong with the sons, and they are beyond help, and mothers can do nothing to prevent their boys from growing up to become self-absorbed overgrown babies. Is that gene particular to the Armenian genome? Maybe we are a distinct subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens Armenicus.

I was not referring to our uniqueness or resiliency. As admirable as they are, these qualities do not count as cultural production. And I did not say that we had the "competitive advantages" of the bully nations. If you are interested, you can search my posts for my thoughts on such subjects. If you do, you'll see that I largely agree with your sentiments. However, I still do not see anything in your post that pleasantly surprises me with an undiscovered Armenian gem that our Armenian culture produced recently. I am not saying that we can't, or even that we don't. But it is certain that an honest and hard look at our creativity or lack thereof would not be a bad thing. I don't think we should be satisfied with mediocrity.

Forever. It's Baliozianesque shallowness to imply "stupid people should be smart, bad people should be good, jerks should be nice, writers should be rich". Yes, of course. But how? Now, don't think that I am unaware of the inconsistency in what I am saying (as I implied), which amounts to "Armenian mothers should (magically) become better in raising their boys". What I am warning against is the easy, shallow, blame-games. That's all.

It's true that Armenian guys often are insufferable jerks. However, it gets on my nerves when the Armenian women, who in the whole are responsible for raising those jerks complain about their collective creations. And no, "what about the father" won't cut it, because he is also mostly raised by his mother. The solution lies with how Armenian boys are raised. To the extent that the Armenian culture is an isolated, distinct entity (which of course it is not *), the first move inescapably has to come from the females, and most relevantly from the mothers. Raise your boys well. * The other, much more likely factor is the simple absorption of new values from the host cultures, which these days offer a less chauvinistic role for men. They come with their bag of issues, but that's a different discussion.

That's a blessing. It means that we have not been put on the radar screen and then stoned and lynched, all in a politically safe way. It's not good to become "important" by any means other than cultural, scientific and athletic accomplishments, all of which we are lacking these days. It's good that there isn't much to talk about Armenians. Yes. Agreed. But what culture are we producing these days? Please surprise me by something truly interesting, original, and Armenian. <_<

Perhaps that reflects more your personal experience and the "circle of friends" than anything worth generalizing. It may also have a lot to do with the irrational hatred Germans have towards the Serbs. My personal experience (admittedly not extensive) with Serbs is that they have a sincere feeling of solidarity with Armenians. Personally, I am more or less indifferent about the subject, and am speaking as an observer who is perturbed by the German hatred for Serbs and a probably incorrect generalization of Serb attitudes towards Armenians.

Why should -ik come from Parthian/Iranian? Armenian is an older language, and unless it is proven that it lacked -ik before an Armenian-Iranian interaction per se, it is more reasonable to asume that it always had it. And I think the suggestion was "Hayk", not "Hayrenik". Hmm. Non-indoeuropean words like ardziv, khntsor, sur. I submit that, before demanding Indo-European fabrications, we should stop characterizing Armenian words and suffixes that are common with other languages as "borrowed", unless they are proven borrowings.

No, no. I am shedding plenty of crocodile tears for the discomfort the precious diplomats must be feeling.

Without getting into the particulars of Iraq, I think the moral dilemma would be resolved if there were two tiers in the army. One, a voluntary elite force that is well-trained, well-paid, and is composed of individuals that have accepted to go into missions that are not strictly for defending their homes. The second tier would be "the rest", who can understand and relate to defending the territory of the homeland. The former would have the understanding that they are doing the bidding of their government, and accept the risk that their government could on occasion (or even more often) turn out to be a bunch of morons, and that they are risking their lives for their hare-brained ideas, but are nevertheless willing to assume that their superiors know what they are doing. But going into such units should be a conscious decision that should be presented in essentially that way (probably in less unflattering terms ).

It's just that, it is terribly convenient to generalize all the "breakaway regions" as crime-infested feudal fiefdoms, each run by a mafia boss. And then you have NKR spoiling the whole thing for the nice little status-quo-loving, realpolitik wielding "diplomats". They'd rather see complete misery and lack of democracy in those regions, so that their universe continues to make sense to them. Don't you see, it's just, ... so unfair.

That's because it isn't true in a republic. You vote for your representative and pretty much wash your hands off the dirty business of running the country. What you are saying can approach being true in a direct-democracy, however. And the sooner Armenians realize their natural form of government, the better. But I am not holding my breath. We wouldn't do it until we see somebody else do it. So we should start working on the Georgians. [Edit: Except, of course, their natural form of government appears to be a loosely associated feudal fiefdoms; too bad]

As I said before, from the perspective of a diasporan, what would be the point of watching a movie on Armenian channel, if it is in English/French/whatever, with subtitles. I agree with you that it would be better for the audience in Armenia. That's why I emphasized the diasporan perspective etc. I hope it's clear now. I wouldn't want you to so, so, soooo disagree with me.

Yes Sasun, the only way the explain the horrible characterization of a newborn as "sinful" would be along those lines. But ... Imperfection is the basis of life, and more importantly, of self-awareness. Perfect things are by necessity dead or self-unaware. This will be my only post in this thread as I have no interest or time to sink in a "born-again" sort of discussion.

I agree, but from the perspective of a diasporan, in the absence of Armenian-made movies, the best thing would be movies properly dubbed in Armenian (rather than the horrible, unprofessional voiceover -- fine for documentaries, unacceptable for anything else). Besides, I would get a kick out of seeing Armenian come out of the mouths of Hollywood stars. Of course the real problem is that the government is too dumb and visionless to have a few diapora-oriented, professionally executed satellite (or even internet) channels. I guess they figure that their underperformance at home makes sure that the diaspora (and its cash) is replenished with no conscious effort at preservation and inspiration on their part.

Well thank you sir. I wish you were sincere in your accusation.

Ah, I see. Well, I didn't mean to "accuse" you of being childish. However, I would be glad to be accused of being so [fat chance of that ]. As for posting on a bulletin board. I expressed in a much earlier post my reason for doing so (basically to sharpen and crytallize my thoughts). While it is not childish, it would not be entirely inappropriate to say that it is as "adolescent" as masturbation.

I don't want to spend time and energy to bash an Armenian scientist, however lousy I think he may be. I am surprised that, after reading through Hollis' book you can still defend Damadian as a scientist. If 10% of what Hollis wrote were true (and he has pretty direct evidence for more than that), it would be enough to bump Damadian off the Nobel-class (actually would bump him all the way to the bottom of the barrel). Just a couple of points: * Hollis did not compete with Damadian on imaging, and even if he did, it's irrelevant; he supplies plenty of evidence to show Damadian's scientific and ethical level. * Damadian's lack of understanding of basic NMR is absolutely scary.