as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 16, 2005

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Whenever I express an honest opinion I make an enemy, as if honesty were anti-Armenian.

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Whether we like it or not, we are all in the business of recycling a party line because none of us knows the whole truth. We may know a fraction of the truth but never the whole truth. But a fraction of the truth is how propaganda is defined.

*

I too recycle a party line, and more specifically the party of Baronian, Voskanian, Zarian, and Massikian; the party of Socrates and Solzhenitsyn; the party of Toynbee and Pamuk, who went on trial today not because he spoke the truth – only the Good Lord knows the whole truth – but because he expressed an honest opinion; and it’s not that honesty is anti-Turkish, rather it does not recognize any specific religion, ideology, and power structure that speaks in the name of god or truth.

*

I have said this before and it bears repeating: god and truth have generated more victims than the most diabolical big lies invented or imagined by man.

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[ara baliozian]

#

Saturday, December 17, 2005

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EXCUSE MY FRENCH

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E.M. Forster, the author of some of the very best books on England and India, in a letter to a friend: "Most Indians, like most English people, are shits."

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I was born and raised in a ghetto near Athens that looked like an oversized gypsy encampment. Greeks called us "Turkish gypsies" and treated us like shit.

*

At the age of twenty I came to Canada and tried to make a living working at minimum-wage jobs in factories and department stores. That's when I discovered that even the best among them are capable of behaving like shit when dealing with white trash.

*

I lived in Italy for a number of years and I found it difficult to resist their charm. But whenever I use that word I am reminded of Albert Camus. "Charm," Camus once said, "is shit." When I think of Mussolini and his Fascists I cannot help agreeing with Camus.

*

There are two drawbacks in being an Armenian writer: you work for less than minimum wage and whenever you refuse to recycle someone's party line you are treated like shit.

*

If some of my readers are to be believed - and I for one do not feel qualified to question their honesty -- I am myself a first-class shit.

*

Perhaps the only difference between tyrants and the rest of us is that tyrants have the means to deal with the shits whereas all we can do is resort to name-calling.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 18, 2005

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Sometimes I repeat myself because I find it extremely difficult to ignore questions by new readers. Some recent questions follow.

*

Q: Why do you write the way you do? What is your real aim?

A: To understand and explain, not because understanding and explaining will make me a happier man but because I am tired of being deceived and manipulated by frauds whose number one concern is number one.

Q: Do you have anyone in particular in mind?

A: Almost everyone who is in a leadership position.

*

Q: Don’t you feel it is one of your duties as a writer to encourage the next generation of writers?

A: As things stand, what the nation needs more than writers is readers.

*

Q: Who is the most important Armenian writer today?

A: I can’t think of anyone. The ones I know write about the massacres, as if that were the most important issue we confront today.

Q: Isn’t it?

A: No!

Q: Why not? Is not defending our rights important?

A: They may want you to think they are defending our rights but in reality all they are doing is promoting miserabilism.

Q: If recognition of the Genocide is not an important issue today, what is?

A: Corruption, incompetence, exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora, divisiveness, which also means waste of resources and personnel, spineless academics who kow-tow to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, charlatans who parade as pundits…

Q: That’s quite a list!

A: That’s quite a mess we are in.

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[Takoush]

Sunday, December 18, 2005

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*

Q: Who is the most important Armenian writer today?

A: I can’t think of anyone. The ones I know write about the massacres, as if that were the most important issue we confront today.

Q: Isn’t it?

A: No!

Q: Why not? Is not defending our rights important?

A: They may want you to think they are defending our rights but in reality all they are doing is promoting miserabilism.

Q: If recognition of the Genocide is not an important issue today, what is?

A: Corruption, incompetence, exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora, divisiveness, which also means waste of resources and personnel, spineless academics who kow-tow to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, charlatans who parade as pundits…

Q: That’s quite a list!

A: That’s quite a mess we are in.

#

 

Ara:

 

I am also dismayed and most of the times appalled by all the Churches and the 'gousagtsoutyoun's' with the Armenians here in the U.S. Although a while back, but things were so much better in Montreal. I happen to know that the Armenian 'gousagtsoutyoun's' are or at least they were far better in the Ontario area even more than the Montrealers. But in here, I think it's far worse. And although your quote about what we should concentrate on as far as assimilation, corruption in the Homeland, exodus, etc. etc. is right on target. But the people in the leadership positions are not as competent or their very heart is not in it. They either want the high positions for recognition and more respect and power to them or money money money. It's a shame. But what to do? How to break those bad habits amongst Armenians. When they see you happy or having potential for greatness, right away they get very envious and jealous and they want to break you. When they see you unhappy, they don't give a darn about you. That's how they even think and act some of them on this very HyeForum of yours. Believe you me, I know it, I have seen it and so it is. The very same goes on and much more amongst all the Churches and the so called 'gousagtsoutyuns'. Do you think I haven't been very dismayed and appalled too? I have. You are a good writer and have been for so many years I understand. Maybe you should put your fine writings all over the boards wherever Armenians are throughout the Northern Hemisphere and elsewhere too to get through the Armenians' hard sculls to start thinking not just about themselves but about the whole picture. About their brethrens' well being and finally about their Armenia and their Armenianness.

 

I am not a writer now, and I can't get through to them like you may do; and I really wish you good luck in your endeavors./anahid

Edited December 18, 2005 by Anahid Takouhi

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 19, 2005

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When enemies disagree, they agree on nothing. When friends disagree they agree at least on one thing: they agree to disagree. And where there is agreement on one thing, there will be hope for agreement on two or more things. Let us therefore be friends with the Turks. Even more important, let us begin by being friends with fellow Armenians who disagree with us.

*

All major historical events have two or more interpretations. This is true of World War I and World War II, as it is of the American, French, and Russian Revolutions. It all depends on which side of the fence you find yourself.

*

Whenever I take a walk with a friend I notice that he sees things that I don’t see. Four eyes are better than two, they say, and when it comes to understanding reality, dialogue is better than monologue. In a political environment where dissent is stifled, understanding is diminished, and the ability to deal with reality is impaired.

*

If we want to understand ourselves and the world in which we live, we must also try to understand the Turkish side of the story. And we must do this for purely selfish reason.

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[ara baliozian]

Ara:

 

I am also dismayed and most of the times appalled by all the Churches and the 'gousagtsoutyoun's' with the Armenians here in the U.S. Although a while back, but things were so much better in Montreal. I happen to know that the Armenian 'gousagtsoutyoun's' are or at least they were far better in the Ontario area even more than the Montrealers. But in here, I think it's far worse. And although your quote about what we should concentrate on as far as assimilation, corruption in the Homeland, exodus, etc. etc. is right on target. But the people in the leadership positions are not as competent or their very heart is not in it. They either want the high positions for recognition and more respect and power to them or money money money. It's a shame. But what to do? How to break those bad habits amongst Armenians. When they see you happy or having potential for greatness, right away they get very envious and jealous and they want to break you. When they see you unhappy, they don't give a darn about you. That's how they even think and act some of them on this very HyeForum of yours. Believe you me, I know it, I have seen it and so it is. The very same goes on and much more amongst all the Churches and the so called 'gousagtsoutyuns'. Do you think I haven't been very dismayed and appalled too? I have. You are a good writer and have been for so many years I understand. Maybe you should put your fine writings all over the boards wherever Armenians are throughout the Northern Hemisphere and elsewhere too to get through the Armenians' hard sculls to start thinking not just about themselves but about the whole picture. About their brethrens' well being and finally about their Armenia and their Armenianness.

 

I am not a writer now, and I can't get through to them like you may do; and I really wish you good luck in your endeavors./anahid

 

on more than one occasion i have tried to post my things on armenian forums here and abroad but i always run into a gousagtsagan forum master or moderator who removes me from the list of contributors and blocks my writings. / ara

[Takoush]

on more than one occasion i have tried to post my things on armenian forums here and abroad but i always run into a gousagtsagan forum master or moderator who removes me from the list of contributors and blocks my writings. / ara

Now isn't that a shame!!! I mean are they good writers themselves? For heavans sake I know the mentality Ara, if you are not doing or saying exactly what they want you to say and do; forget it you won't do. But you posted it here sometimes; I remember, you can't control or direct a writer, it has to come from within and with free expressions, thoughts and writings. It's true; on a much smaller scale I have wrote some articles or whatever and it's true. It'll have to come out from your free thinking ability. You can't impose on writers, but that's the way the 'gousagtsoutyouns' are; they want to mold you into their ways or won't do. I don't know, I really don't know. Going way back. You have talked about Aristotles and Appolo's philosophies with Armen here for a little while. If they were handcuffed, would they be able to produce what they did? Nop.

 

They are very controlling I know; but unfortunately in so doing they are killing the very spirit of the writer, and that is A SHAME!!!

Edited December 20, 2005 by Anahid Takouhi

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

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ERROR MANAGEMENT

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On the radio today an interview with an Australian professor whose field is error management that consists in predicting, preventing, minimizing and compensating for errors. At one point, the good professor said mankind is divided into two categories: “people who have made mistakes and people who will make mistakes.” But like all rules, this one too has its exceptions, namely Armenian leaders.

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Armenian leaders are such masters of assigning blame that they have no use for error management. Result? Since they could not predict, prevent, and minimize the damage of the “Red” massacres of 1915, they have been doing the same with the “White” massacres (exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora). The first massacres they blame on the Turks and the degenerate West, the second massacres on historic, social, economic, and cultural factors beyond their control.

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What do they mean by “cultural factors”? The answer must be obvious to everyone except themselves: the vacuum of our own culture, because that’s what happens to a culture when the best and the brightest are systematically alienated, silenced, and starved.

*

Speaking of the blame game: perhaps the source of all our problems is our geography. As a landlocked country we have no use for ships and captains and for a tradition that says the captain goes down with the ship. Our captains survive and go on to sink other ships, and the more ships they sink the merrier.

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[ara baliozian]

Now isn't that a shame!!! I mean are they good writers themselves? For heavans sake I know the mentality Ara, if you are not doing or saying exactly what they want you to say and do; forget it you won't do. But you posted it here sometimes; I remember, you can't control or direct a writer, it has to come from within and with free expressions, thoughts and writings. It's true; on a much smaller scale I have wrote some articles or whatever and it's true. It'll have to come out from your free thinking ability. You can't impose on writers, but that's the way the 'gousagtsoutyouns' are; they want to mold you into their ways or won't do. I don't know, I really don't know. Going way back. You have talked about Aristotles and Appolo's philosophies with Armen here for a little while. If they were handcuffed, would they be able to produce what they did? Nop.

 

They are very controlling I know; but unfortunately in so doing they are killing the very spirit of the writer, and that is A SHAME!!!

 

it is not that they think of themselves as writers or better writers

as that they see themselves as infallible judges. that's our farce and that's our tragedy! / ara

[Takoush]

it is not that they think of themselves as writers or better writers

as that they see themselves as infallible judges. that's our farce and that's our tragedy! / ara

No Ara, I was mocking them. Like, are they good writers themselves that they find fault in you? You know what I mean? I was making fun of them. But what it is Ara, is the fact that they probably want you to write what they would want you to write. Probably nothing coming out of your brainstorming; no, just what they'll prescribe you to write. Anyway, just for the record, nobody but nobody is infallible, judges or otherwise; and farce, yes it is just that. /anahid

Edited December 20, 2005 by Anahid Takouhi

[Armen]

why isolate the last 3 centuries?

why not the last thousand centires?

and scientists did not invent the destructive power of the atom. they only discovered it. which means they uncovered something that was there already -- placed by whom? by nature or rather, if you believe in god, by god, no? why did god bury such a destructing power in the atom?

 

I isolated them to show you a pattern. To illustrate how modern human materialism surpasses even the amount of evil that was necessary to God for setting the whole the system into movement.

 

Atom does not have "destructive power". It just has a lot of power, which can be made good or bad according to our preferences.

[Armen]

It is not the freedom of speech that is realy being challenged in our days but the freedom of thought. If the latter is eliminated the former is irrelevant. Edited December 21, 2005 by Armen

[ara baliozian]

I isolated them to show you a pattern. To illustrate how modern human materialism surpasses even the amount of evil that was necessary to God for setting the whole the system into movement.

 

Atom does not have "destructive power". It just has a lot of power, which can be made good or bad according to our preferences.

 

it is the destructive part of the atom that makes me wonder.

if god could have created a non-destructive atom and if he was able to predict what would happen if he created an atom that could be destructive, why did he do it?

he gave us a choice?

no way.

he did not give me and the victims of Hiroshima a choice.

did he give you a choice?

to speak of choice is nonsense! / ara

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

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ON PROPAGANDA

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No nation on earth is as good as its propaganda. Moreover, by emphasizing the positive and covering up or ignoring the negative, propaganda impairs our understanding of reality. Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire were dupes of the West because they were dupes of their own propaganda.

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ON CAPITALISTS

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Raffi (Hagop Melik-Hagopian: 1835-1888): "They are the most corrupt and degenerate members of the community. Nothing good can come out of them. These people worship only money. They are men without a country. They belong to no nation on earth. Profit is their only homeland."

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K.C. Constantine in BOTTOM LINER BLUES (New York, 1993): "They got no nationality. Their only nationality is money."

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For more on this subject see the sections on Ken Lay (page 171) and Dennis Kozlowski (page 172) in Bernard Goldberg's 100 PEOPLE WHO ARE SCREWING UP AMERICA (New York, 2005).

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HISTORY AND REAL ESTATE

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Eric Hobshawn in ON HISTORY (London, 1997): "Denmark does not claim the large part of eastern England which was settled and ruled by Danes before the eleventh century, which continued to be known as the Danelaw and whose village names are still philologically Danish."

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[ara baliozian]

No Ara, I was mocking them. Like, are they good writers themselves that they find fault in you? You know what I mean? I was making fun of them. But what it is Ara, is the fact that they probably want you to write what they would want you to write. Probably nothing coming out of your brainstorming; no, just what they'll prescribe you to write. Anyway, just for the record, nobody but nobody is infallible, judges or otherwise; and farce, yes it is just that. /anahid

 

 

they ought to know by now that to write does not mean to recycle propaganda or to cover up their blunders and their responsibility as leaders, which is to serve the community.../ ara

Edited December 21, 2005 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

It is not the freedom of speech that is realy being challenged in our days but the freedom of thought. If the latter is eliminated the former is irrelevant.

 

who can stop you from thinking what you want to think?

who can ever know what's going on in the convolutions of your brain -- except God (if you believe in Him).

[Armen]

it is the destructive part of the atom that makes me wonder.

if god could have created a non-destructive atom and if he was able to predict what would happen if he created an atom that could be destructive, why did he do it?

he gave us a choice?

no way.

he did not give me and the victims of Hiroshima a choice.

did he give you a choice?

to speak of choice is nonsense! / ara

 

Yes, it is a non-sense. That is the whole idea. You do not recognize anything that your sensors do not register. I am trying to do it. There is nothing bad in it.

[Armen]

who can stop you from thinking what you want to think?

 

Teachers. Fortunately, I am off their limits but there are lot of kids under their control.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 22, 2005

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Smart Armenians who have made it in the odar world are as a rule not as clannish as the rest of us. I was reminded of this fact last week when I introduced myself to a young doctor as a fellow countryman and I could not help observing that the expression on her face changed as if she had stepped on a pile of cow dung. And I imagine the following exchange with her mate later that evening:

Something wrong?

Nothing I can’t handle.

What happened?

Met a member of the tribe today.

What did he say?

Nothing much.

What did you say?

Ditto.

So what’s the problem?

I just don’t like the idea of running into them, that’s all; and they have a way of popping up when you least expect them.

Have you thought of changing your name?

More than once.

What’s stopping you?

My folks.

They are against it?

We haven’t discussed it but my guess is my dad won’t like it.

Daddy’s little girl doesn’t want to hurt the old man?

Well, if it wasn’t for him this little girl wouldn’t be where she is. Don’t you think he deserves a little consideration?

Then I guess you must grin and bear it.

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I am told whenever she was introduced to a fellow Armenian, Krikor Zohrab’s daughter in New York (may the Good Lord have mercy on her soul) behaved as though she was about to be attacked by a rattlesnake.

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I am also told Taniel Varoujan’s daughter lives all by herself in the middle of nowhere and as far away from her fellow Armenians as the State of New York will allow it.

#

[ara baliozian]

Yes, it is a non-sense. That is the whole idea. You do not recognize anything that your sensors do not register. I am trying to do it. There is nothing bad in it.

 

non-sense covers a lot of ground -- including

superstitions, astrology, and a large variety of mumbo jumbo....

[ara baliozian]

Teachers. Fortunately, I am off their limits but there are lot of kids under their control.

 

i agree. the world is full of dupes and charlatans who brainwash innocent minds.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 23, 2005

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Understanding is not a single faculty but many. It is an illusion to think that just because you understand one thing well, you are also equipped to understand many other things. To say that just because you understand the market place you also understand history, or politics, or literature amounts to saying that just because you understand Swahili you also understand Japanese, Hungarian, and Urdu.

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There are even people who understand nothing and think they understand everything. I know such people exist because I was one of them. The older I grow the more I realize what a damn fool I have been most of my life.

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If history is an endless catalogue of disasters, blunders, crimes, and miscalculations it may be because it is shaped by individuals who are not in the habit of questioning their perception of reality or understanding; and the only reason they enjoy popular support is that they simplify complex issues in order to make them more comprehensible to the majority.

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Between a simple explanation and a complex one, the simple explanation will invariably be more popular, especially among yokels and fanatics.

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Turks massacred us because they are evil, bloodthirsty, Asiatic barbarians. There is no other explanation. Anyone who says otherwise is a denialist. The irony here is that it is the very same Armenians who dehumanize Turks who expect them to behave like decent human beings by pleading guilty as charged.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 24, 2005

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The most important question we should ask about our history is neither what happened nor why, but where did we go wrong. We already know what happened and why, or we think we do, because we have been told we do. There are probably hundreds, not to say thousands of textbooks, memoirs, articles in encyclopedias, monographs, studies, and essays on the subject. But as far as I know very few that tell us where we went wrong, so few in fact that most of us are convinced our conduct has been flawless and beyond criticism.

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Where did we go wrong? The reason I consider this to be the most important question is that it may change the line of our destiny. But instead of asking where did we go wrong we ask where did they go wrong, thus implying our sole contribution to our history has been victims.

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To ask where we did go wrong also means asking what are we doing wrong. A hundred years ago we were at the mercy of Turkish brutality and foreign meddling and manipulation. What has really changed? Today we are victims of Turkish intransigence and economic and cultural factors beyond our control, or so we claim. Beyond our control also means our only option is to adopt a passive stance and contribute more victims. Which of course is dangerous nonsense.

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There is a great deal we can do to combat and minimize these negative factors by demanding accountability from our leaders and promoting our culture. By promoting our culture I don’t mean supporting or helping our writers – a repellent concept in itself, as if writers were beggars in need of handouts – by promoting our culture I mean emphasizing the importance of ideas, practicing dialogue, and being receptive to dissent as opposed to dealing in chauvinist propaganda, practicing censorship, delivering speeches and sermons, and publishing commentaries and editorials replete with clichés, platitudes, and verbal crapola.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 25, 2005

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MYSTICISM AND LOGIC

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Speaking of the gravedigger, Hamlet says, “How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.”

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The language of mystics is an incomprehensible medium full of equivocations, paradoxes, and contradictions because its aim is to make us understand that god or truth resides in a realm of meanings beyond our reason, common sense, and logic. And because I first came across this idea in Zen Buddhism, I thought of Christianity as an inferior religion. It is not. All religions have produced mystics and all mystics speak the same language regardless of nationality. (For more on this subject, see Aldous Huxley’s PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY.)

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Most failures in communication occur when one speaks the language of mystics and the other of logic.

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Great writers like Tolstoy and Shaw make writing seem easy because they have the ability to simplify complexities, and when we read them, we see only the result, not the labor that preceded it, and the labor consists in making the invisible visible, and the incomprehensible accessible. Tolstoy was an atheist who believed in Christ, and Shaw was an agnostic who believed in the Holy Spirit.

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If I were to reduce our problems to a single formula, I would have to say that we are good at thesis, better at antithesis, but lousy at synthesis.

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To make of thesis and antithesis permanent stages (as opposed to one that is transitory) also means to arrest progress.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 26, 2005

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Ignorance is bliss, they say, and knowledge is power. If knowledge is power it is also the power to understand, and to understand means above all to be able to see what’s on the other side of the hill. It was because he lacked the power to understand his own brother that Abel became Cain’s victim; and he did not understand his brother because he did not want to understand him. It never even occurred to him to ask: “What’s eating you, bro?”

*

Adam and Eve lived in bliss in the Garden until they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. What followed was shame, exile, hard labor, pain, and murder, that is to say, history.

*

For 600 years we lived in ignorance under the Turks. Then our revolutionaries ate the fruit from the tree of freedom, whereupon history fell on us like a thief in the night: deportation, starvation, massacre, civil war, destitution, envy, divisiveness, corruption, alienation, exodus.

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How much of this we have understood? The answer must be, nothing, because we prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

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