as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

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WRITERS

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Treat them like welfare cases in need of handouts. If they don't get the message, reduce them to the status of beggars, then starve and silence them. As a tactic adopted by our bosses in their treatment of writers who refuse to recycle the party line, this may be slow but it is as effective as the tactic adopted by the likes of Talaat and Stalin. That's because power is power regardless of nationality, faith and ideology.

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Whenever I am asked why is it that so far I have done nothing to encourage a future generation of writers, I say, "More than writers, the nation is in need of readers."

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In the mail today, a short poem and letter that says: "Do you think my son has talent? Should I encourage him to be a writer?" "Only if you hate him," I am tempted to reply. Instead I say: "No need to encourage him. If he really wants to be a writer he will be one even if you discourage him."

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One can also understand oneself by first understanding the unspoken assumptions of the community within which one lives.

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The problem with solutions is not finding them (I could name four solutions in a single line: honesty, transparency, objectivity, mutual tolerance) but implementing them. Never say therefore "we need solutions," but "we need leaders who behave not as bosses but as public servants."

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[ara baliozian]

I could say with 99% certainty that majority of US stock players are faithful believers in US dollar. So are many other investors around the world. Surely, their calculations are based on history but taking into account the numerous market failures, they are nothing but religious believers. How else could anyone explain the Asian financial crisis in 1997? An army of professional analysis and finacial gurus was caluclating and comparing historical records and forcasting growth .. but suddenly the Asian Tigers turned into Asian Cats overnight. So, investors approach market with just that, religious faith. Only very few of them are Gods.

 

If by only making money people could solve all the problems we should leave in Haven on Earth by now. When comparing money with faith, money always wins. Sure! Who could argue with that?! We need money first and faith second. It is an iron logic. But there wouldn't peace and harmony even if today religion did not exist at all. Wouldn't Bush go into war just for money? It IS his primary reason. All the BS about Muslim fundementalism is nonsense. Westerners want the control of strategic oil reserves to insure their present lifestyle. There is no other reason. In 20th century religion has not been the primary real reason for wars. Making more money and securing maximized profits for national corporations was the real cause of wars. The last clash was between economic and social ideologies. Now that is gone as well. Currently we only have money against money.

 

Armen:

at the cost of repeating myself: history is only a tool and an imperfect one. that does not mean we can ignore or discard it; or even worse, rely on faith only. faith has been as much a source of trouble as money in the past. And american fundamentalists believe wealth is a form of blessing from god. figure that one out if you can. / ara

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 24, 2005

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Our prejudices are born with us and they are all rooted in the illusion that we are the center of the universe, our god is the only true god, and our country is always right. We know of course that countries don’t think, politicians do, and politicians are always wrong because they are motivated not by love of truth but by greed of power, prestige, and popularity.

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The only way to acquire a better understanding of the world is to master the difficult art of thinking against oneself. It is not enough to say, “I could be wrong.” We should say instead, as long as we think in terms of us and them, we can’t be right.

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Until very recently most Americans believed Saddam was wrong and Bush right. If they are having second thoughts today it may be because their thinking is following not their prejudices but the workings of reality.

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Twenty years ago I wrote a brief essay in which I summed up my convictions and I thought I had reached the end of the line and I had nothing further to say. But on waking up next morning I felt the urge to add a final note to emphasize one of the points made in my final essay. Twenty years later, on waking up this morning, once more I feel the need to underline and expand in the full knowledge that what I say will change nothing, and history will continue to be made by people who are convinced they are the center of the universe, their god is the only true god, and their country is always right.

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Edited November 25, 2005 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

Friday, November 25, 2005

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DIARY

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“He was brainwashed and traumatized,” I heard someone say on the radio this morning. One could say that to be educated, or to feel and think as a member of a specific racial, religious, ethnic or tribal group means to be brainwashed and traumatized to some degree.

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If to hate the many for the crimes of the few is racist, who among us can plead not guilty?

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I have discovered a wonderful new American detective-story writer, K.C. Constantine (not his real name). His plots advance on dialogue which is fast, furious, often witty, and always profoundly human – Chekhov with a touch of Dostoevsky.

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On the radio, Muti conducting Brahms’s 4th Symphony. In the first movement he emphasized not the charm but the monumental. I could not help thinking that this is what Brahms must have had in mind.

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Whenever Mother sees me writing, she says “Are you the director of a bank?”

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In Antranik Zaroukian’s NEW ARMENIA, NEW ARMENIANS, I read: “For six or seven centuries Armenia was a dream in the heart of every Armenian. Dreams are nice if they lead you somewhere, nasty if they take you to a dead end…” He could have added, “…and nightmares when they come true.”

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 26, 2005

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PARALLELS

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In the paper this morning I read the following brief news item: "A 15-year old girl with a peanut allergy has died after being kissed by her boyfriend following his snack of peanut butter."

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Socrates is right: Ignorance is the source of all evil, and to know is to remember. Didn't the boyfriend know about her allergy? If he knew, did he forget?

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Ignorance may be the most innocent of all transgressions but in life it is sometimes the most severely punished.

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What could be more natural for an oppressed people than to want to live in a free and independent homeland? What was it that made us forget the lessons of history? Why is it that before we decided to rise against the Empire we failed to ask the following questions? What did the West do during the Bulgarian and Greek massacres? How many innocent lives did their angry editorials, speeches, and pamphlets save? They didn't even bother sending Lord Byron. He volunteered. And how many lives did he save? He couldn't even save his own.

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I see no difference between a regime that butchers writers and another that silences them. In both cases a unique perspective that may add to our understanding of the world is rejected and ignored.

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[Armen]

Armen:

at the cost of repeating myself: history is only a tool and an imperfect one. that does not mean we can ignore or discard it; or even worse, rely on faith only. faith has been as much a source of trouble as money in the past. And american fundamentalists believe wealth is a form of blessing from god. figure that one out if you can. / ara

 

Ara, what I am saying is that spiritual cognition of the history is as necessary as the one based on facts, dates and names. I do not want to waste time on the American church. It is all well known.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 27, 2005

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After describing in some detail the rhythmic exuberance and melodic inventiveness of the final movement of a Mozart piano concerto, most of which I no longer remember, the announcer concluded: “This is what it means to be alive!” Sometimes the easiest explanation is also the most unforgettable.

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According to the press release of a new publisher, he is willing to consider any manuscript that qualifies as “entertaining trash.”

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I have been in the business long enough to know that nothing I write matters, and on the day I start taking myself seriously I will have to declare intellectual bankruptcy.

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Reason tells me it makes no sense writing for Armenians. Even so, I go on. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. Far better men than myself have fallen silent after five, ten, or at most twenty years, because they couldn’t take the insults of a vocal minority, the hostility of the establishment, and the apathy of the majority. I have been writing for thirty years now and even if nothing changes, my guess is, I will go on writing for another thirty (if I am lucky enough to live that long). So what if I have only two readers left, both of whom misunderstand and contradict every line I write?

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, November 28, 2005

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COMPASSION FATIGUE

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A young woman has written a commentary in our paper today the title of which is “Hello I’m a person, not some guy’s stereotype.” By yakking endlessly about massacres and Turks we have reduced ourselves to the status of a stereotype – a victim nation – and the world is full of them.

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People judge us by our contributions to the welfare of mankind, or how useful we can be to them, and not by how much we have suffered. This is true of individuals as well as groups. I will never forget the young, cool blonde co-worker of mine, Carol by name, who cut me short once with the words, “Listen, I’ve got problems of my own.” Politicians in need of our votes may not say as much, but they sure as hell think it.

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“I’ve got problems of my own!” A good explanation as to why Naregatsi may well be the most praised and least read Armenian writer.

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If I have learned one sure thing in life it is this: Never challenge the power of someone you are not in a position to kill with impunity. This applies to Turks as well as Armenians because power is power regardless of nationality.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

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I don’t trust a writer who belongs to a political party. I don’t trust political parties and politics. I trust politicians even less. I will go further and say that I see them as my natural enemies.

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Being Armenian is an abnormal condition. Being an Armenian writer is compounding the felony.

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It’s all right to be prejudiced as long as you have an open mind.

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History teaches us that it is easier to learn from it than to change it.

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All empires are warlike. There has never been a pacifist empire. A pacifist empire might as well be a contradiction in terms. A pacifist empire would cease being an empire before you can say Jack S. Avanakian. That’s because an empire is like an attractive wench. Everyone wants a piece of the action and if she doesn’t resist she becomes a woman with a past and no future, and in today’s parlance, history.

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The justice of victims can be as ruthless as the justice of victimizers.

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[ara baliozian]

dedicated to Armen:

 

 

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

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There came a moment in my life when I suddenly realized that all the knowledge I had acquired until then was worthless. It follows, all the knowledge that I have acquired since may also be worthless sometime in the future. If men in positions of power and authority experience such moments, they must pretend otherwise. The same applies to men of faith. And yet, somewhere in the scriptures we read: "If you think you are wise, behave like a fool so that you may be wise," or words to that effect. I suspect men of faith interpret these lines in such a way as not to question or doubt their faith-based assumptions, knowledge and understanding. And that's another problem with men of faith: not only they must not question their fundamental assumptions, but also their interpretations of scriptures. Not only the Pope must pretend he does not doubt his faith seven times every day (as an Italian adage has it) but also he must pretend he has at no time questioned his own infallibility. The same applies to bishops, mullahs, and televangelists. Hence orthodoxies and heresies; hence religious wars and massacres; and hence Voltaire's dictum, "Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors;" and Bertrand Russell's maxim: "The aim of philosophy is to introduce doubt in an environment of certainties."

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Speaking of certainties: in a fascist environment the press is exclusively anti-enemy, and if there is no enemy, it invents one. In a democratic environment the emphasis is on exposing corruption and incompetence in one's own power structure. By publishing 19 anti-Turkish articles in a 16-page weekly and ignoring our own filth, our press fully qualifies as a crypto-fascist medium.

Censorship is another prominent feature of fascism and all its crypto- and neo- variants. If I have said this before, it bears repeating. For, according to Socrates, "to know is to remember."

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[Armen]

I am truly humbled Sir. That wasen't necessary. Really...

 

It feals good to be noticed in the crowd. Or ... probably - and I feal that is the case - we alone here Just me, you and the Holy Ghost.

 

Frankly, I thought that our coversation on that subject had finished. And I thought that while putting a sign of equality between materia and idea I reached an agreement with you. But you don't make compromises with yourself. You have to eliminate my belief in the idea... OK let's go on.

 

Voltaire, Socrates and Russell are not authorities for me.

 

Faith already has a component of doubt in it, along with everything else.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 01, 2005

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ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN

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If one takes into account earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, epidemics and many other natural disasters which insurance companies call “acts of god,” one may have to admit that the design is deeply flawed and the intelligence not up to the challenge.

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ON POLITICIANS

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Paul Johnson, a noted conservative British intellectual, has published an essay in the SPECTATOR (August 20, 2005) titled “Wittgenstein and the fatal propensity of politicians to lie,” where he writes that lying has become a routine occurrence in British politics. What about Armenian politics? Shortly after the collapse of the USSR Sylva Kaputikian declared, “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party,” the very same party that murdered some of our ablest men and bankrupted (economically as well as morally) our homeland. And if you were to ask one of our average partisans or ideologues, don’t be surprised if you are informed that the leaders of his party never lie. This to me is another irrefutable proof of the fact that the design is seriously flawed.

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ON DEMOCRACY

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In the same issue of the SPECTATOR there is a letter to the editor in which I read the following lines: “Our democracy was not imposed from the top, it grew from beneath, well-rooted in our culture.” If democracy must grow from beneath, we have not yet begun, and even if we were to begin first thing tomorrow morning, we will have a long way to go. Our Big Brothers have nothing to worry about because the chances that they may run out of dupes are practically non-existent.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 02, 2005

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Flattering egos is a profitable enterprise, unlike exposing prejudices, which doesn’t even pay minimum wage.

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If by building a cathedral a benefactor thinks he will spend a minute less in purgatory he will build a cathedral. As for helping the poor and feeding the hungry, he will say what one of our brown-nosers once said to me: “There will always be poverty and hunger in the world and I doubt if it is in anyone’s power to abolish them.”

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Mistakes are the best teachers. Cursed are those who never make them for they will never learn.

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American literature welcomes writers from all four corners of the world – Nabokov (Russian), Bellow and Singer (two Jews and Nobel Prize winners), Saroyan… Something similar could be said of French literature – Zola (Italian), Cioran and Ionesco (Romanians), Beckett (Irish), Adamov and Lubin (Armenians). And I could make a long list of our own writers that we have silenced – among them Voskanian, Massikian, Shahnour, and Zarian. I have yet to meet an Armenian (and I include members of my own family as well as relatives) for whom the demise of Armenian literature rates as a fit subject for conversation.

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[ara baliozian]

Voltaire, Socrates and Russell are not authorities for me.

 

 

 

Armen, these gentlemen may not be authorities on anything.

the question is: is what they say true?

if they are wrong, can you prove it?

Edited December 2, 2005 by Edward

[Armen]

Armen, these gentlemen may not be authorities on anything.

the question is: is what they say true?

if they are wrong, can you prove it?

 

Ara, I do not think that they were wrong in what they said, therefore I don't have to prove them wrong.

 

However, in the context of thoughts you expressed while quoting them, the understaing of what they didn't say is more important for me then the things they said.

[Armen]

Thursday, December 01, 2005

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ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN

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If one takes into account earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, epidemics and many other natural disasters which insurance companies call “acts of god,” one may have to admit that the design is deeply flawed and the intelligence not up to the challenge.

 

This in some sense equals to saying:"If there was no gravity, things would move without effort".

 

Evil is a universal maximum. It sets the criterion for everything. If evil was not that evil, we would not be moving forward. And moving forward is the life itself.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 03, 2005

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Neither the victim's nor the victimizer's versions of the same story will agree with god's version.

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Some things we are destined to understand only at the hour of our death.

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Decent Armenians do not parade their Armenianism. It is only the phonies who feel the need to cover their nakedness with the flag.

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I like this thought by Jean Rostand: "In a future age we shall be just as astonished to find that we have had politicians as leaders as we are, today, to find that we once had barbers as surgeons."

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He who overestimates himself will underestimate the opposition.

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It is useless to speak in an environment where fools have succeeded in convincing themselves to be wise.

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[ara baliozian]

This in some sense equals to saying:"If there was no gravity, things would move without effort".

 

Evil is a universal maximum. It sets the criterion for everything. If evil was not that evil, we would not be moving forward. And moving forward is the life itself.

 

many theologians have tried to explain the existence of evil but none of their explanations has convinced anyone but themselves and their followers.

[ara baliozian]

Ara, I do not think that they were wrong in what they said, therefore I don't have to prove them wrong.

 

However, in the context of thoughts you expressed while quoting them, the understaing of what they didn't say is more important for me then the things they said.

 

one could say the same about all organized religions and metaphysical systems: what they don't say sometimes is more important than what they say...at least to non-believers or non-members of the club. to a muslim, islam says everything, but to muslims only, not to giaours....

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 04, 2005

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If what I repeat is worth repeating then it isn’t repeating but reminding. For two thousand years Christians all over the world have been reciting the Lord’s Prayer. If the Good Lord needs reminding, how much more so poor mortals like us? Every day we beg Him not to lead us into temptation and that’s exactly what He does. Even so, we keep reminding him as history keeps repeating itself ad nauseam…

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Sometimes you are dead wrong not when you suspect you may be wrong but when the possibility of being wrong doesn’t even occur to you.

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The most effective way to introduce democratic reforms in an authoritarian environment is by teaching our children to disagree in a civilized manner and our adults to disagree without violating someone’s fundamental human right of free speech. As long as we fail in these two enterprises, our fascists will continue to think they know better and they are fully qualified to lead us, without even suspecting for a single moment that a hundred years ago they led us straight to hell and, even as I write, history is repeating itself.

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[Armen]

many theologians have tried to explain the existence of evil but none of their explanations has convinced anyone but themselves and their followers.

 

I can say the same about any law of physics.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 05, 2005

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QUESTIONS

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By selecting and emphasizing certain aspects of reality and ignoring many others one can construct any number of theories. This may explain why philosophers, historians, theologians and even scientists have formulated many systems of belief and thought, none of which enjoys universal and unanimous support.

What are the choices open to a layman who is defenseless against the sophistries of his so-called "betters?"

What if the tree of knowledge has so far yielded nothing but poisoned fruit?

What if even the wisest among us is no better than a damn fool?

What if millions have killed and died for a belief system that has as much merit as the shadow of a non-existent black hat in a dark room?

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A favorite political joke of mine goes something like this: A heckler at a political rally interrupts the long-winded speech of a Republican presidential candidate by shouting: "My grandfather was a Democrat, my father was a Democrat, I am a Democrat!"

Whereupon the candidate demands to know: "Suppose your grandfather was a jackass and your father was a jackass, what would you be?"

"A Republican!" replies the heckler.

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A final question: what if the most important decisions in our lives, decisions that are extensions of our identity or belief system, are based not on reason or free choice but accident of birth or geography?

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[ara baliozian]

I can say the same about any law of physics.

 

one difference:

nobody has every killed or died in the name of a law of physics.

[Armen]

one difference:

nobody has every killed or died in the name of a law of physics.

 

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"

 

J. Robert Oppenheimer (quoting the Bhagavad Gita)

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

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Sooner or later all blunders boomerang, and all blunders of policy or deed begin with blunders of thought.

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When the free speech of a few is violated, the many swim in verbal crap.

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Our propagandists like to speak of defeats that are moral victories, but not of victories that are moral defeats; and to those who think silencing dissent is a victory, may I remind them that it is also a moral catastrophe.

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An infallible Armenian is also a self-assessed smart Armenian who knows many things except how to think for himself.

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Where there is intolerance, there will be dissent; where there is dissent, there will be censorship; where there is censorship, there will be lies; where there are lies, there will be fear; and fear is not good policy.

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