as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

 

Saturday, June 09, 2007

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PARANOIA, BIGOTRY, & FEAR OF NEW IDEAS

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According to I.F. Stone, American history has always “been marked by recurrent periods of paranoia, bigotry, and fear of new ideas.” I feel justified in suspecting that what has been recurrent with Americans has been a permanent condition with us.

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There are those who try to share their understanding, others their ignorance and you can recognize them by the fact that they pretend to know everything they need to know, and by the frequent use of such clichés as “I learn something every day.”

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Fools and liars spend so much time trying to deceive others into believing they are neither fools nor liars that they have very little time left for self-improvement.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 10, 2007

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ON A VARIETY OF THINGS

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If television is “a vast wasteland,” the Internet is a bordello without boundaries. If television is “chewing gum for the eyes,” the Internet is cholesterol for the heart and a burst vessel in the brain.

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They say misery likes company. So does idiocy. As an idiot, I had many friends. As a non-idiot, only one or two – three at most.

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We brag about being the first Christian nation, but unlike good Christians, we are neither humble nor meek.

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There is only one thing I envy the rich – their teeth. On the negative side, nothing strikes me as phonier than an old geezer or a prehistoric crone with a perfect set of shiny white choppers.

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Two of the most influential men in the history of mankind -- Buddha and Marx – were atheists; and according to Tolstoy, so was Jesus when he stated, “the Kingdom of God is within you.”

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 11, 2007

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A DICTATORSHIP OF IDIOTS

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In a recent issue of NEWSWEEK magazine I read the following rhetorical question in bold letters: “Are we doomed to a democracy of idiots? Or can we expect the cream to eventually rise to the top?”

More often than not, what rises to the top is not the cream but the scum. Consider what happened to Germans under Hitler, Italians under Mussolini, Soviets under Stalin, Chinese under Mao, Americans during the McCarthy era, and so on and so forth. Even more to the point, consider what has been happening in our homeland or, for that matter, in the Diaspora. I am personally acquainted with some of these gentlemen who think of themselves as la crème de la crème but who are in fact no better than la crème de la scum.”

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

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AN INFANTILE DISEASE

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Einstein: “Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.”

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Armenian nationalists are blind to the obvious fact that the Genocide is a quintessentially nationalist crime; and they are blind because they live outside history, in a realm of their own imagination, which is completely divorced from reality.

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We brag about the fact that 98% of Armenia’s population is Armenian. But is that something to brag about? What if it means we are intolerant of foreigners? What if, like Moliere’s bourgeois who spoke prose all his life and didn’t know it, we practice apartheid and don’t know it? What if Turks being more tolerant of foreigners are more cosmopolitan and progressive than we are? What if, very much like Southern racist bigots in America, we are afraid to “mongrelize” the nation or the race, as some prefer to call it? Why is it that Armenians with mixed parentage prefer not to mention the fact? How can I ever forget or forgive the Armenian nationalist who called a good friend of mine a “Turkish bitch” simply because her mother happens to be Azeri?

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

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I.F. STONE SPEAKS

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“If you believe everything you read in the papers, lack imagination, and feel no need to think for yourself, you can be very happy.”

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OPTIMISM

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On more than one occasion I have been called a pessimist. If I go on writing it’s because I believe some day common sense and decency may prevail. If that’s not optimism I should like to know what is.

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WRITERS, READERS, & CHARLATANS

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We have more writers than readers, and more charlatans than both.

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THE EGO AND THE BRAIN

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The larger the ego, the smaller the brain.

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When the ego speaks, the brain is silenced.

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BIGOTS & BULLIES

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All bigots, like all bullies, are cowards because they are afraid of being exposed as bigots. Hence, their phobia of free speech.

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Phobia of free speech is bad; what’s infinitely worse is unawareness of it.

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The children of prejudiced parents will not think of themselves as prejudiced. The same applies to a nation led by prejudiced leaders.

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In the mind of the average brainwashed dupe, a collective phobia, like a collective prejudice, is not a liability but an asset, a virtue, and a patriotic duty.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 14, 2007

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AS I SEE IT

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We have two distinctive, perhaps even contradictory, approaches in our dealings with the Turks: treating them as enemies or as potential friends. To those who say, Turks are destined to remain our enemies for the foreseeable future and nothing can change that, I reply: Allow me to rephrase my question: Will the chances of reaching a consensus with them be enhanced if we treat them as potential enemies as opposed to future friends? While you ponder that question, please remember that the present generation of Turkish diplomats are products of a culture and educational system that has consistently denied any past crimes against their minorities, and it goes without saying, they trust their culture, educational system, and leadership more than they trust our own, in the same way that we trust our own schoolteachers and bosses more than we do theirs. To those who may object and say our schoolteachers and bosses are morally superior to theirs, therefore more trustworthy, I suggest all assertions of moral or any other kind of superiority are suspect and will convince only those whose ego is flattered by such transparent flattery. On a more personal note: I have dealt with some of our bosses and educators long enough and often enough to say that I don’t even trust them as far as I can throw them, preferably in the nearest garbage dump. Or, to repeat my favorite mantra first formulated by Zarian, “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And now, imagine if you can, an educational system that bans free speech or educators who are afraid to speak of fundamental human rights.

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P.S. I read today that one of our notorious bosses, also right-hand man of a national benefactor and self-appointed pundit – we might as well refer to him as a renaissance man – has been expelled from the party on grounds of corruption. Are you surprised? I am not. And I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if some day those who expelled him are themselves exposed as both corrupt and inept.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 15, 2007

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TO BRAG IS TO BRAY

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Angela Carter: “I think it’s one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves.”

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Al Gore: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a diminished role in the way we make important decisions?”

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Sometimes readers verbally abuse me because I dare to expose failings that are universal in nature. Case in point: when I speak of divisions, I am reminded there are divisions everywhere, as if that were enough justification to cover up and ignore that particular failing in our collective existence. Who profits from this line of (un)reasoning? The dividers, of course. As for the nation: we have an answer for that too: we have survived where many others have perished. It follows; even the Genocide must be seen as a positive factor in our history because we survived it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Our genocide thus becomes the ultimate test of our endurance. First nation to survive genocide in the 20th century! Who could ask for more? As for the best and the brightest that did not survive because they were betrayed to Talaat’s and Stalin’s butchers: that too is good because it allows the jackasses among us to parade as leaders and pundits. And then there is the narcissistic fraud who becomes infatuated with what he writes and ends up believing what he says regardless of its transparent absurdity. As the often quoted Armenian saying goes, “Mart bidi ch’ellank” (We shall never acquire the status of human beings). Now then, go ahead and brag about that.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, June 16, 2007

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A SELF-SERVING THEORY

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The question that is consistently avoided by our Turcocentric pundits is: Where did we go wrong? We had so many warnings in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909…Why is it that we trusted the empty verbiage of the West and ignored the actions of the Turks? Was it wishful thinking? What else? Why is it that we cling to the theory that the Genocide was an inevitable fact of life? If it was so inevitable, why didn’t we see it coming? History, it has been said, is a series of occurrences that could have been avoided. Subscribing to the theory of inevitability is the phoniest of all justifications. Even more dangerous: if history is predetermined, it follows we can’t learn from past blunders; and if we can’t learn from past blunders, what’s the use of studying it?

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[ara baliozian]

INSANITY

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“You read too much and you quote too much,” one of our academics once said to me. “You should rely more on your own experiences and judgment.”

Yes, ultimately I hope to do exactly that, but in the meantime I want to shed the heavy baggage of nonsense that was foisted on me when I was too innocent and naïve to think for myself.

I have since discovered that to unlearn is much more difficult than to learn. If in your formative years someone you trust and respect tells you something, anything, no matter how absurd, you believe him. It is on this principle that all organized religions are based.

What is an organized religion if not a belief system that is force-fed on children at a time when they are not yet aware of the fact that the majority of mankind rejects it as untenable, blasphemous, and dangerous.

To accept a belief system as infallible is bad enough. What’s infinitely worse, not to say contradictory, is to be willing to hate, kill and die in its name. The average dupe – and the world is full of them – is programmed to accept as infallible a religion in which understanding and love have been replaced with intolerance and blind hatred. To know and understand this is to see the world as an insane asylum divided into different camps whose aim is the extermination of all competitors and rivals.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 18, 2007

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PERSPECTIVES

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In the years preceding the Genocide we saw ourselves as an ethnic minority within the Ottoman Empire claiming what was rightfully ours. That was our perspective. Turks, on the other hand, saw us as part of an international infidel conspiracy (Russia and the Great Powers of Europe on the other side of their borders, Greeks and Assyrians from within) to dismember the Empire. For obvious reasons the Turks don’t like emphasizing this aspect of the conflict because doing so would mean alienating some important players in the European Union by identifying them as giaours. Our Turcocentric pundits pretend unawareness of it because awareness would somewhat moderate the image of the bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarian slaughtering innocent civilians for the fun of it.

To those who are itching to accuse me of pro-Turkism or anti-Armenianism, I say, my aim is to replace blind hatred and prejudice (the very same emotional state that is at the root of all massacres) with a touch of understanding. Granted, not a very popular undertaking in the eyes of those who are addicted to hatred and are too self-righteous and dogmatic to consider any perspective but their own.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

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JANISSARIES

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One reason I suspect some of my critics to be wrong is that they echo the very same sentiments and thoughts that were mine before I was successful in deprogramming myself. And I can understand why they are having difficulties abandoning their views: deprogramming oneself can be in some ways a painful undertaking.

Another indication that they are probably wrong is that they have a marked preference for thinking in black and white terms by painting their adversaries all black and themselves all white, not because reality is on their side but because it is flattering to their ego. What could be more naïve to the point of being infantile than to believe in something simply because it is flattering to one’s vanity? The rule is: if you assume everything that flatters your ego to be wrong, you will be right more often than wrong.

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If we approach a subject objectively, a great many invisible things become visible.

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In Mohsin Hamid’s THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, I read the following definition of janissaries: “Children of defeated nations who conscripted into the army of the enemy, and fought to erase their own civilization.”

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

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THERE IS NO BUSINESS

LIKE SHOAH BUSINESS

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If you were brainwashed as a child, the chances are you will die brainwashed.

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If patriotism means total blindness to our own failings and 20/20 vision to the failings of adversaries, I am proud to assert I cannot qualify as a patriot.

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Have you ever tried to argue with a Jehovah’s Witness? What about an Armenian in whose mind politics is synonymous with theology?

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Whenever friends ask me why I bother reacting to nonentities, I explain that I was born and raised in a slum. I love slumming. Call it nostalgia.

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Some of my critics may think if most Armenians don’t contradict them, they must have the majority on their side. The sad truth is smart Armenians stay away from Armenian controversies because they know they are “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

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To sum up Armenianism in two sentences: “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves."

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 21, 2007

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CONTEXTS AND DIMENSIONS

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Truth is a dimension in which all contradictions are resolved. One way to explain this is to say that contradictions make sense only in sub-dimensions or false contexts. In a tribal, national, or political context, for instance, mankind will be divided into adversaries and allies, friends and enemies, victimizers and victims, butchers and sheep. But in a higher or religious context all men will be said to be brothers. It is up to us to choose in which dimension we wish to live and think.

In a world in which the truths of religion are only preached but the lies of politics are practiced, inevitably there will be more intolerance, hatred, and war, and less brotherhood and peace.

When mankind speaks with a forked tongue, double-talk, deception, and lies are sure to follow.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 22, 2007

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CONFESSION

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There is a type of mediocrity who will sell his soul to see his name in print. This is well known to our editors who operate on the assumption that the views of these mediocrities are representative of the majority. The truth of the matter is, these charlatans don’t write what they really think and feel but what will have a better chance to be printed. If anti-Turkish venom and pro-Armenian crapola have a better chance than objective, impartial, and critical assessments, they will produce venom and crapola. As a result, what we see in our weeklies is not a multiplicity of views but a uniformity of predictable and unreadable nonsense. I know what I am saying because I was there once – that’s when I was popular with our editors and my things appeared everywhere.

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[ara baliozian]

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Saturday, June 23, 2007

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REFLECTIONS

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Man has the peculiar ability to think he is absolutely right even when he is catastrophically wrong.

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In war one no longer thinks in terms of right and wrong but only in terms of kill or be killed. Something similar could be said about our controversies, which may be said to be civil wars by other means.

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One should write as a human being and not as a member of a specific club, group, nation or race. To write in the name of a fraction of mankind is to elevate an accident of birth to a commandment from above.

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I have nothing but contempt for our charlatans but I have become as attached to them as a criminal is attached to the rope from which he hangs.

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The most dangerous and universal fallacy: Because I believe, it must be true. How many of our conflicts will vanish if we teach ourselves to say: Because I believe, it must be a lie.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 24, 2007

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GOOD QUESTIONS / BAD ANSWERS

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“Instead of telling us we are on the wrong path, why don’t you tell us where the right path is?” a reader demands to know.

My answer: The right path does not exist. It must be invented, and everyone must invent it for himself; and even after you invent it, there is no guarantee it will take you where you want to go, assuming of course you know where you are going.

Perhaps the best way to come up with a good answer is by rejecting all bad answers, even if you may end up with no answer; even if the choice is between a bad answer and no answer at all, or between collective catastrophe or individual anxiety.

Remember our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire: because they settled for a bad answer, we were visited with a collective catastrophe. Something similar happened in Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and more recently with Bush’s reaction to 9/11.

No answer is better than an answer that will create bigger problems. Remember, if an answer makes perfect sense to you and every fiber in your body tells you it must be the right answer, it’s sure as hell to take you straight to the devil.

Perhaps all questions are good and bad at the same time: they are good as long as they remain questions; they are bad when we try to answer them.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 25, 2007

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ILLUSION AND REALITY

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Max Jacob: “An authentic work is one with enough power to change illusion to reality.”

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Whenever I am called a loser by one of my gentle readers, I think, it takes one to know one; and by that I mean, as a loser, I may be in a far better position to understand my fellow Armenians. As for those who think of themselves as winners: I suppose, illusions are commodities within the income bracket of even beggars.

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If you want to understand your fellow Armenians, don’t read our partisan weeklies that recycle an ideological line (99% illusion), read Raffi, Odian, Baronian, Zohrab, and Zarian.

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I have lost several friends because I could not take their religion or ideology seriously.

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Smart readers, who think I am a fool, are my most faithful readers. Figure that one out, if you can.

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Ideologies have a way of bringing together top dogs with underdogs – the first as deceivers, the second as dupes.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

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GOD, DANTE, AND GALILEO

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As a rule, people feel more comfortable with people who are aware of their own failings and limitations; and their first thoughts on meeting a megalomaniac is, “the conceited ass!” This minor detail seems to have escaped our fascist charlatans who pretend to be leaders of men on grounds that they know better.

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Like all fascists, ours too need not only foreign enemies but also traitors among themselves.

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Galileo was silenced because his scientific theories contradicted the Bible which being the word of God could not be wrong. Dissidents and critics are silenced because they dare to contradict charlatans who think they know better and they might as well be if not gods than as infallible as God. Megalomania was their undoing but they seem to have learned nothing from history.

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A contemporary Armenian Dante would populate his entire Inferno with our self-righteous megalomaniacs.

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If you believe in something to be true, it is true, provided you don’t expect others to believe it too.

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Whenever I assess myself as smart, some anonymous imbecile is sure to take advantage of me.

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

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CRITERIA

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Since it is impossible to know everything there is to know about the past, we must assume there are some things we will never know. Historians disagree because they operate on the assumption that what they don’t know cannot be as important as what they know. And who decides what’s important, what’s less important, and what’s irrelevant?

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CASE IN POINT

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It is common knowledge that letters to the editor that express agreement with an editorial have a far better chance to be published that all other letters. Once, when I disagreed with an editorial, I was told: “We don’t as a rule publish letters critical of our editorials.” Translated into dollars and cents, this simply means: “Brown-nosers are welcome! All others might as well be irrelevant.”

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CONCLUSION

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An Armenian with partisan loyalties is an Armenian who has allowed his animus to blind his judgment. One is therefore justified in suspecting that those who take it upon themselves to formulate editorial policy or criteria in general are individuals who suffer from an advanced case of narcissism and an inferiority complex of monumental dimensions. This may suggest that what we need more than Turcocentric pundits are psychiatrists.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 28, 2007

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THEORIES

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According to one theory, there are no good men and bad men; there are only situations that bring forth the best and the worst in us. If true then both saints and sinner, victims and victimizers, might as well be morally interchangeable by-products of blind forces beyond their control.

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According to another theory, we are responsible for all our decisions and actions. Circumstances do not determine our actions, and by extension our character, but our choices do. Does that mean victims and victimizers, top dogs and underdogs, choose to be what they are?

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The problem with theories of human conduct, or for that matter, belief systems, views, perspectives, and opinions is that at best they can be only partly true. Perhaps our choice is not between true or false, or black and white, but between shades of gray. Perhaps when we think we are with the angels, we should take a closer look to make sure they are not devils in disguise.

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Overheard: “Armenians and Turks, Turks and Armenians: man, I am telling you, I am getting tired of this sh**!” This offhand remark may suggest that our choice may not always be between shades of gray, but between shades of brown.

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Please note that it is not my intention here to minimize the seriousness of the Crime and the innocence of the victims, but rather to expose the hypocrisy of leaders and self-appointed phony pundits on both sides that have degraded a tragedy to an endless game of political football.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 29, 2007

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

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Gide says somewhere there are two kinds of writers, those who fight injustice and those who ennoble the soul. What he doesn’t say is that it takes a noble soul to fight injustice when fighting it may well be against his own interests.

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There are readers so programmed to contradict me that even if I were to say something with which they are in complete agreement they will contradict me not because they disagree with it but because it is I who say it.

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Whenever I insult a reader I acquire an enemy for life as well as a faithful reader.

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What is said about a writer when he is alive is irrelevant. What matters is what will be said about him fifty years after he dies.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, June 30, 2007

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WHAT’S TO BE DONE?

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If so far we have failed to develop a consensus among ourselves, how can we ever hope to reach a consensus with the Turks? – Unless of course we eliminate from the process all defenders of the faith who confuse ideology with theology and tend to view moral issues in terms of black and white as opposed to shades of gray or brown.

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MEMO TO OUR TURCOCENTRIC PUNDITS

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If your aim is to reach an agreement with the Turks, admit failure and abdicate your self-appointed position as representatives of the nation.

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ON RECONSIDERATION

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What are the chances that these charlatans will see the light and shut up? My guess is, none! These gentlemen are not in the habit of admitting failure or defeat. To them all defeats are moral victories and the Genocide is still another proof of our superior morality and their bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarism. Those who see the best in themselves will invariably see the worst in others.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 01, 2007

 

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PROVERBS

 

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From 1001 YIDDISH PROVERBS

 

by Fred Kogos (New York, 1970).

 

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A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing.

 

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A half truth is a whole lie.

 

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A liar tells his story so often that he gets to believe it himself.

 

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One God and so many enemies.

 

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One lie is a lie, two are lies, but three is politics!

 

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When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are talking.

 

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When God wants to break a man’s heart, he gives him a lot of sense.

 

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Truth is the safest lie.

 

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The masses are asses.

 

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The rich have no sense of justice.

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The heaviest burden is an empty pocket.

 

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, July 02, 2007

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

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We preach freedom of speech to others but among ourselves we practice censorship, and we are too self-righteous and arrogant to see a contradiction or even an inconsistency.

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Hatred becomes pathological when you hate even those who don’t share your hatred.

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Born to Armenian parents in Greece, educated in Italy, now a citizen of Canada and living in the shadow of the United States, I know to what extent nationalism and patriotism limit, distort, and even pervert a man’s perception of the world and his fellow men.

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Anyone who is against us is not necessarily wrong and anyone who is with us is not necessarily right.

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Adopting an anti-Turkish stance does not in any way strengthen our case. On the contrary.

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To proceed on the assumption that Turks are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarian and compulsive liars is to guarantee that we will never reach a consensus with them.

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We are unaware of our failings because they have become habits.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

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PHONY PUNDITS

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When a charlatan speaks the truth, he is bound to contaminate it with charlatanism. One reason why I am against phony pundits speaking about the Genocide…or anything else, for that matter.

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PARADOX

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In her acknowledgments to her novel THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL (New York, 2007), Elif Shafak writes: “I am particularly indebted to Armenian and Turkish grandmothers, who have an almost natural ability to transcend the very boundaries that nationalists on each side take for granted.”

There you have it, the paradox of our collective existence: the generation that experienced the massacres and deportations is more progressive in its thinking than the generation that followed it.

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PROPAGANDA

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Between writers and politicians, the masses will always choose to trust the politicians not because politicians know better or are smarter but because they control the media and the machinery of propaganda.

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CENSORSHIP

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Censorship in defense of truth, never. Censorship in defense of lies, always!

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MORE YIDDISH PROVERBS

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God protects the poor from expensive sins.

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God loves the poor and helps the rich.

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He who is silent means something just the same.

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The worst libel is the truth.

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