as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 02, 2004

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AUTHENTIC AND INAUTHENTIC IDEAS

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How to define an authentic idea?

After you eliminate all phony or inauthentic ideas, what remains (if anything) qualifies as authentic.

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How to identify an inauthentic idea?

Easy. Any idea that is based on hearsay, which means words uttered by sermonizers and speechifiers, or anyone in a position of power, be he pope, bishop, imam, king or president, cannot be authentic. That’s because the primary concern of all power is to preserve or enhance its authority and prestige and not to advance on the endless road whose destination is truth. In that sense, power and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts.

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An authentic idea is based on insight based on experience, provided one remembers that experiences too are necessarily partial or personal, hence limited and lacking in universal application and acceptance.

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To be authentic an idea cannot be dogmatic or infallible. On the contrary, it must have a margin of error, doubt, and uncertainty. There is nothing new in what I am saying. Philosophers from Socrates and Plato to Hegel, Marx and Sartre believed truth (or understanding reality) is a goal that can be reached only by means of dialectic or dialogue – the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or assertion, contradiction, and compromise/consensus.

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Truth is God’s realm not man’s, and no one is qualified to speak in His name, because “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates). Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism because “only matter exists, consciousness being a manifestation of motion in brain cells” (Marx).

#

[Armen]

Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism ...

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I would take it further. All talk is charlatanism.

[Nakharar]

Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism ...

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So is vineyard philosophy...

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 03, 2004

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GETTING WISDOM

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Ever since I read the words “man’s primitive belief in explanations” (Paul Valéry), I find most explanations suspect, especially explanations that are flattering to my ego.

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It is not easy being objective. One way to achieve objectivity is by acquiring the difficult habit of “thinking against oneself” (Sartre), or, in Gandhi’s words: “I have always held that it is only when one sees one’s own mistakes with a convex lens [or with a magnifying glass], and does just the opposite in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two.”

I dare anyone to play the blame game with an easy conscience after reading these lines.

*

For a long time I could not understand why our academics insist on producing books on the Genocide and the Middle Ages and totally ignoring our present situation, thus implying we are in good hands, when we are, in fact, at the mercy of charlatans whose number one concern is number one. Then I read Brecht’s four-word formula, “grub first, then ethics”), and saw the light.

*

Whenever I am misunderstood, I console myself by remembering Hegel’s famous last words, “No one understood me, except one and even he did not understand me.” I am not implying here that my ideas are as complex as Hegel’s, but I am suggesting that only readers, who are clear-cut cases of arrested development, and whose understanding of our past and present never ventures beyond partisan slogans, find my ideas easy to misunderstand.

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Whenever one of my outraged readers engages in verbal massacre in order to assert his superior brand of Armenianism, I am reminded of Zarian’s dictum, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”

*

Whenever one of our partisan editors rejects my commentaries, I remember Zarian’s letter written in the 1930s to a fellow writer, in which the following lines occur: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And if you think, as an anti-establishment writer, Zarian’s judgment cannot be trusted, consider the words of a pro-establishment writer, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian), who wrote mostly harmless fiction and was on friendly terms with all our bosses, bishops and benefactors: “Once upon a time, we fought and died for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”

*

The words I have quoted above are to me what booze is to an alcoholic. Reading them for the first time was like acquiring a golden key to a door that until then had remained locked. I know now that understanding reality is an endless process, and one of the worst mistakes one can make is to rely on the words of sermonizers and speechifiers, whose conception of being positive or constructive is based on the false assumption that a friendly lie is better than a hostile truth.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 04, 2004

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ON GOD

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Sartre was an atheist. And yet, he concludes his memoirs by saying, "I depend only on men who depend on god, and I don't believe in god. Figure that one out, if you can."

Elsewhere he describes himself as an atheist whose aim in life was to find salvation not only for himself but also for his fellow men.

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Gandhi identified himself as a Hindu but he at no time dismissed atheists as infidels or blasphemers. On the contrary. If we define god as truth, he said, even atheists become believers because they believe in the non-existence of god.

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When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.

*

When Toynbee concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by attempting to reconcile all religions into a single universal belief system, wasn't he, in a way, expressing tacit agreement with Gandhi? Because by reconciling, say, Buddhism (an atheist religion) with Islam or Christianity, also meant reconciling a belief in the existence of god with a belief in his non-existence.

*

Like Gandhi, Toynbee clearly saw that when religion legitimizes intolerance, hatred, and violence, it becomes the instrument (and thus asserts the existence) not of god but of the devil.

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When kings and sultans claimed to represent god on earth, did they believe it? When bishops and imams speak in the name of god, do they mean it? Italians are fond of saying that even the pope doubts his faith seven times every day. As for bureaucrats (be they secular or religious): they will say anything to maintain and enhance their powers, privileges, and prestige.

*

Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 05, 2004

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After Bach, the Beatles; after Socrates, Stalin; after Elgar, Elvis; after Sibelius, Sinatra; after Hegel, Hitler; after Vermeer, Warhol; after Gostan Zarian, Nairi Zarian…I could go on. The human race does not seem to be open to reason or esthetic and moral values.

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No matter what your field, you will have competitors who will be more successful by prostituting its integrity.

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After Jesus Christ, televangelists, who amass vast fortunes by perverting his message of love and compassion to greed, intolerance, and hatred.

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Speaking of man’s primitive faith in explanations: we are fond of saying that what made of us perennial losers is our geography, thus implying that we have been enslaved by our mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys; or we have allowed our longitudes and latitudes to be masters of our destiny. If true, emigration would mean liberation. But consider our academics in America, our crème de la crème, who are in no position to plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance or unawareness: not only are they subservient to our mini-sultans and pseudo-imams but also to their flunkies.

*

To assert their independence of mind, courage, and daring, some readers insult a defenseless and harmless scribbler anonymously and from a safe distance, all in the name of patriotism, of course, which means allegiance to the Homeland, namely Mount Ararat, Mount Aragats, Lake Sevan, Dilijan and Hraztan.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 06, 2004

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When Schopenhauer called Hegel an “arch-charlatan,” his unspoken intent was to replace Hegel’s philosophical system with his own; or, to propound an antithesis to Hegel’s thesis. Which means, in his rejection of Hegel, he was being a Hegelian.

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When your average layman calls an intellectual giant like Marx, Freud, or Sartre a charlatan without having read their works, he only succeeds in exposing his prejudice and arrogance.

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I define an intellectual giant as one who unveils something that has been hidden from view, and having done so, he changes our worldview or understanding of reality. He may be proven wrong and corrected by future thinkers, but only in the sense that Einstein corrected Newton.

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Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) publicly condemned communism. But when he declared in one of his encyclicals, “Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, whereas man are corrupted and degraded,” he might as well have been speaking as a Marxist. And this indeed is an unmistakable mark of an intellectual giant: it becomes impossible to speak about anything that matters without in some way quoting or paraphrasing him.

*

Sartre put it best when he said: “An anti-Marxist argument is only the apparent rejuvenation of a pre-Marxist idea.” Which also means, you cannot contradict a new thesis with an obsolete anti-thesis; or again, any effort to arrest the advance of human thought is destined to fail.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

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ON INTERMARRIAGE

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In the Armenian ghetto where I was born, raised, and brainwashed, I was led to believe intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy. I know better now because I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages, namely, racial and religious tolerance. And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals, from Abovian to Zarian, and from Arlen to Saroyan, married odars.

*

How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? -- (about 80% in the U.S., I am told). A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the two meet, everything else – moral and esthetic values, political orientation, financial status, religious and ethnic affiliation – fly out the window. What remain are a man, a woman and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.

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ON BEST-SELLERS

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In the U.S. best-selling books are as a rule either ignored or torn to shreds by critics. What makes them best sellers are average readers and word of mouth. We Armenians don’t have best-selling books because we don’t have average readers. Every Armenian who knows how to read considers himself not only a distinguished literary critic with impeccable esthetic criteria but also an expert on any given subject.

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ON GENTLE READERS

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Whenever I am described by some of these distinguished scholars and gentlemen as a purveyor of b.s. I am reminded of a popular saying in Hollywood, which brought a smile, when I first read it: “It may be shit, but it has integrity.”

*

I once called one of my abusive readers an “inbred moron,” and ever since then he has done his utmost to prove me right.

#

[Armen]

When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as  much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.

 

"Within you" doesn't mean your brain only.

 

Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.

#

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You speak in the name of money and I don't trust you.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

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ON FUNDAMENTALISTS

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A fundamentalist is one who uses (make it, abuses) the scriptures to camouflage his carnivorous instincts and cannibalistic disposition.

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"A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of national origin," Lenin said. So is a fundamentalist -- regardless of belief system.

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Lawyers, theologians, politicians, sophists and charlatans in general have at one time or another proved that a man may behave like swine and portray himself as a noble specimen of humanity. History is very clear on this point.

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A fundamentalist believes being virtuous, superior, or one of the "chosen," consists in basing one's conduct on the scriptures, and by cunningly isolating certain lines and completely ignoring the spirit of many other lines, he can prove to be (to his own satisfaction, at any rate) a man of compassion even as he engages in the massacre of innocent civilians.

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Those who commit massacres don't like that word. They prefer the word war, and in war sometimes "bad things happen."

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Fundamentalism in both the West and the Middle East might as well be reflections of one another. One reason Kerry lost is that as a moderate he could not see this, he thus underestimated the evil in both camps.

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How can any reasonable man change a message of love and compassion to one of hatred and murder? Easy. Listen to Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him."

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[ara baliozian]

"Within you" doesn't mean your brain only.

You speak in the name of money and I don't trust you.

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yes, of course, within you also means within your heart, stomach, intestines, throat and nose....

 

and how can i speak in the name of money if as an armenian writer i am the underdog of underdogs? -- unpaid, unread...and when read,

misunderstoood!

 

i have been accused of all kinds of nefarious things but never, NEVER, of speaking in the name of money. but leave it to an armenian to see things that are not there.../ ara

Edited December 9, 2004 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 09, 2004

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A DISGRACE TO THE NATION

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Because I speak of tolerance and the brotherhood of all men, some of my readers accuse me of all kinds of nefarious and un-Armenian sentiments, as if tolerance and brotherhood were incompatible with Armenianism.

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“You are a disgrace to the Armenian nation,” a gentle reader writes, as if our nation had been a role model among nations.

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“Unlike you,” writes another, “some of us refuse to forget 3000 years of history.” What’s 3000 years of history to millions of years of evolution? And what if our history has been a catalogue of dynastic rivalries, tribal divisions, internecine feuds, defeats, subservience to foreign tyrants, collaboration with enemies, treason, betrayal, and the persecution of our ablest men?

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What about the voice of the people? Why is it that it has been an absent factor in our history? Why is it that the only time we hear about them is when they are victimized by the thousand and the million?

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Who speaks for the alienated, the unemployed and the hungry who prefer to emigrate to Turkey and to engage in prostitution in foreign lands in order to make ends meet?

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These questions must be raised because fear of confronting reality and fear of free speech are the worst kind of cowardice.

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What about our masters of the blame game who assert all our problems must be ascribed to the bloodthirsty disposition of Asiatic barbarians, the double-talk of the so-called civilized West, our geography, and to the obvious fact that we are a peace-loving people? May I reminded these holier-than-thou charlatans that during the 20th century alone we fought both for Stalin and Hitler, and some of the most warlike emperors and generals of the Byzantine Empire were Armenian.

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Speaking of forked tongues: what if the version of history we are taught in our schools is not history but propaganda whose aim is to soothe bruised egos?

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Where are our intellectuals? Do we have them? Are they too busy writing books about the Middle Ages and the massacres to have any time left to raise their voices against the kleptocracy in the Homeland and the tyranny of mini-sultans and pseudo-imams in the Diaspora? What happened to their kind after they were systematically exterminated by Talaat and Stalin? Did they stay exterminated or were they followed by successive generations of brown-nosers, charlatans, sleazy liars, and a proliferation of phony pundits and commissars of culture?

#

[nairi]

Happy birthday Ara! Hope you make it the best!

 

 

[ED]

Happy Birthday Ara jan.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 10, 2004

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IN TODAY’S PAPER

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According to an international watchdog group, political parties and the media are two of the most corrupt institutions in the world. To put it more bluntly: our “betters” are the worst scum on earth and anyone who defends them is either a brown-nosing dupe or a brainwashed pervert.

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ON GOD

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At age 81, a British philosopher and confirmed atheist by the name of Antony Flew, has seen the light and he now believes in the existence of god. But his god, he tells us, has nothing to do with the god of bishops, televangelists, and imams, who depict him as an “omnipotent Oriental despot,” or a “cosmic Saddam Hussein.” His proof of god’s existence? The complexities of the DNA (the material in the nucleus of a living cell that determines heredity) which must be the creation of a highly developed intelligence. Flew may now believe in god, we are further informed, but “he does not believe in an afterlife.”

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ON THE DEADLY SERIOUS BUSINESS OF ARMENIAN HUMOR

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Some of my readers have a sense of humor so delicately tuned and balanced, it seems, that whenever I fail to amuse them they call me a sick racist and a disgrace to the nation.

In a movie today I heard Woody Allen deliver the following line: “My grandmother left me nothing: she was too busy being raped by Cossacks.”

If an Armenian comedian were to say as much (changing Cossacks to Turks or Kurds) I suspect, he would be lynched by his audience. I have myself received death threats for far lesser transgressions.

No wonder Armenian comedians, like Armenian writers, are on the list of endangered (perhaps even extinct) species.

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UNDERSTANDING REALITY

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Reality is not pretty; neither is it fair. Reality supports the mighty and allows the massacre of the weak. I don’t support reality; but I want to understand its secret intentions. I want to know its schedule and where it will strike next. Organized religions and closed systems of thought are popular because they promise a better reality, sometimes even a utopian heaven on earth, thus legitimizing our wishful thinking. The weak shall inherit the earth, they tell us, the oppressed shall be liberated, and the lamb shall lie down with the lion. Maybe so. But for the time being, I have no desire to make friends with carnivorous beasts, unless their teeth and claws are pulled out or they are converted to vegetarianism. And if I cannot be a dragon in a world of lions, then I want to know all I can about his territory, feeding habits, and schedule so that I may avoid being his lunch.

#

[ara baliozian]

thank you both --dear Nairi and Edward -- for remembering my birthday!

such a pleasant surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!/ ara

[ED]

Ara I just want to say this

You’re the voice some people will oppose vigorously in public, but admire and agree with you in private when no one can hear them but themselves

[Armat]

Ara I just want to say this

You’re the voice some people will oppose vigorously in public, but admire and agree with you in private when no one can hear them but themselves

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Ed well said!

Ara jan happy tsnundet shnorhavor lini.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 11, 2004

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BLIND SPOTS

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We all have them, and they are called blind because we can't see them. The blind spot of a self-assessed genius: his mediocrity.

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MY POLLYANNA LIST

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Captains go down with the ship,

kings and presidents are assassinated,

femmes fatales and sexy stars grow old,

New Yorkers and cab drivers are mugged,

businessmen go bankrupts,

chief executive officers go to jail,

televangelists are exposed as fornicators

and clergymen as pedophiles,

and writers are insulted by hoodlums

parading as self-assessed role models.

It all comes with the territory.

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AS I SEE IT

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There are intelligent and semi-intelligent readers, but they are in the minority. There are also self-assessed geniuses and role models. After reading one of my critical comments dealing with the Homeland, one such specimen writes: "Anyone who does not love his country does not deserve to live," or words to that effect.

My questions to him: "Do you also love the charlatans, bloodsuckers and gravediggers in your country? What about the pimps and the assassins? Is it conceivable for anyone who is neither a pimp nor an assassin to be on their side?"

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The problem with assessing oneself is that one is bound to stress the ass in assessing.

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Traitors have also assessed themselves as patriots.

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JULES RENARD TO ONE OF HIS CRITICS

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"Yes, yes, you may be right, but it seems to me, you are tougher on me than on yourself."

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[ara baliozian]

Ed well said!

Ara jan happy tsnundet shnorhavor lini.  

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dear friends:

 

i appreiate your generous sentiments and thoughts.

many thanks!!!!!!!!!!! / ara

[DominO123]

Ara I just want to say this

You’re the voice some people will oppose vigorously in public, but admire and agree with you in private when no one can hear them but themselves

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I'm not sure. Again, I've seen no concrete solution comming from Ara, for all the problems he think exist.

[Twilight Bark]

Dear Mr. Baliozian,

 

Yerchanig daretarts. May you have happy and productive years.

 

This is as good a time as any to say a few concluding remarks before I wrap up my presence on this board. Yes, I have been among your critics, and I probably said harsh things when criticising the flaws in your thinking. Let me repeat, if not for you, then for the intelligent little crowd here, that the majority of what you write has merit, and should have been obvious to thinking Armenians, however few they may be. But you also have serious deficiencies in your thinking. For instance, you give the example of warlike Byzantine emperors of Armenian background to counteract the idea that the Armenian culture is peace-loving. You don't seem to ask yourself why it was that a warlike leader had to enter the Byzantine hierarchy in order to fulfill his aggressive instincts. Perhaps Armenian culture was too docile for them? Many other points that you make, hardly justified by a rational and cool-headed analysis, basically advocate how pointless it is to be or to remain Armenian, the occasional lip service via a short lamentation to the contrary notwithstanding. Being among the most erudite Armenian scholars, you have the responsibility to think and write more carefully.

 

However, I want you to know that I sympathize with you fully, when I see you insulted for no reason other than a wish to disagree with what you write. Having been called a "wise-ass", a "liar", and being promised to have another disgruntled brute insert a candle into me, just for having the audacity to question a set of beliefs or convictions, it would be hard not to.

 

So, Mr. Baliozian, while I count myself among your critics, I would like to assure you that I am even harder on myself. And I certainly hope that criticizing you or what you write does not necessarily mean that the critique is a self-absorbed hoodlum that thinks of himself as a genius. Lucky is the writer whose only critics are such.

 

Take care, and good luck in navigating the maze of thoughts.

 

TB

[Arpa]

You guys are barking up the wrong tree.

Wishing happy birthday to someone who hates, among others the day he was born.

Maybe we should start a fund drive to buy him this;

 

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0689854757-3

 

And have Lucy the perennial peanuts psychiatrist analyze his broken psyche.

It is cheap. Only 5 cents a session. At that rate he can afford a thousand sessions and leave us at our miseries without having to listen to his miserable effluum.

Edited December 11, 2004 by Arpa

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 12, 2004

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QUOTATIONS FROM RAFFI (1835-1888)

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“Self-satisfied people are, as a rule, unaware of their failings. Progressive and enlightened people are far more critical of themselves. As for us: we live in a world of lies and illusions.”

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“Our values are rotten and our traditions have been obliterated. From the West we have appropriated not the best but the worst. Our literature is less than mediocre and our people intellectually starved. We want them to read but we don’t give them books. Our schools have become toys in the hands of mediocrities and pedants. Our churches have lost their ancestral integrity and have degenerated into commercial enterprises of unbelief. Its hierarchy is dominated by venal speculators. The deserving are shunned and the undeserving promoted.”

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TRANSLATIONS FROM JULES RENARD (1887-1910)

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“There are friends; there are no true friends.”

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“To be clear is a writer’s way of being polite.”

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“As a man, Christ is admirable.

But as God, one can’t help thinking that he could have done much better!”

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“The sleep of the just? But who says the just can sleep?”

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THREE PROVERBS

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Arab proverb: “There are no faults in a thing we want badly.”

 

Estonian proverb: “What you are afraid of overtakes you.”

 

German proverb: “Luck sometimes visits a fool, but never sits down with him.”

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[ara baliozian]

i thank those who have kind sentiments.

 

about solutions: i think it was chekhov who said, "My solution: gentlemen, let's behave more like gentlemen!"

 

about warlike byzantine emperors of armenian descent: they were the offspring of losers, refugees, and survivors -- beginning with the greatest of them, basil I the macedonian, so-called because his father took refuge there...