as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 22, 2006

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After identifying himself as a competent judge of character, one of my gentle readers takes it upon himself to inform me that I am a self-hating Armenian devoid of all talent.

If I have learned anything from life is that nothing can be as misleading as assessing oneself. I speak from experience. I don’t mind admitting that, once upon a time when I was young and foolish, I too assessed myself as a good judge of character and trusted in the objectivity and accuracy of my assessments until the day I met a loud-mouth inbred moron who had assessed himself as a genius.

I am more than willing to concede that I have no talent whatever, and that all my notes and comments are those of a very ordinary person who uses only his common sense. Does that mean what I say is without merit? Does that also mean only those with special talents have a right to testify or voice their opinions? If so, who among us will come forward and declare himself qualified to separate the sheep from the goats?

As for being a self-hating Armenian: if I hate anything it’s being at the mercy of self-assessed leaders (be they bosses, bishops, benefactors, or academics) who feel authorized to tell who is and is not qualified to exercise his fundamental human right of free speech.

And to suggest that only self-hating Armenians criticize their fellow Armenians is to imply that Armenians, being the Chosen People, are beyond criticism. In the words of a wise Englishman, “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!” – including your own assessment of yourself as a connoisseur of character and talent.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

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At the center of our being there is a vacuum (Sartre’s “nothingness”) that needs to be filled. That’s one reason why man, who cannot create a single worm, has created ten thousand gods.

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During the Soviet era there were Armenians who believed the Soviet Union, very much like Hitler’s Germany, was going to last a thousand years.

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Believers like to speak in terms of millennia and eternity. It never even occurs to them that the most important factor that goes into defining their selection of belief system may well be the accident of geography, that is to say, real estate; that is to say, mud.

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In his travel impressions of Soviet Armenia, OLD DREAMS, NEW REALITIES (Beirut, 1982) Antranik Zaroukian discusses at some length the conversation he once had with a faithful member of the Party who had a prefabricated argument against all his doubts, objections, and criticisms of the regime.

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I have met several such specimens myself. One of them, also a former member of the Party and, in the words of a friend (himself an Evangelical minister), “a professor of atheism in Yerevan,” who after the collapse of the USSR, emigrated to the United States, saw the light, and became a born-again Evangelical preacher. Which may suggest that some believers let self-interest, rather than mud, handle their selection of belief system. Which may also suggest that their number one concern is neither God nor Country but taking care of number one.

#

[tigranisbasileus]

evkharisto para poli pou me thiavasis.

apo pou isse?

mtl

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

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The aim of dialogue is not to prove one side right and the other wrong but to advance towards the truth or to reach a consensus, which does not mean agreement on all points but agreement only to work together, because the alternative is Armenian history as we know it.

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He who is consumed with the idea of asserting infallibility is sure to be wrong.

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If he sits on his ass and does nothing on the assumption that in twenty or thirty years all our problems will solve themselves, he must be an Armenian.

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If he is a perennial underdog but speaks with the arrogance of a top dog, he must be an Armenian.

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If he is a loudmouth imbecile and brags about his IQ, he must be an Armenian.

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Please note that I am talking about myself now, or rather, the way I am perceived by some of my readers who invariably ascribe my failings to my identity as an Armenian. The implication being that had I been a Patagonian or a Hottentot, I would have none of these defects. So much for Armenian self-esteem…

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, May 25, 2006

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Is Marxism right or wrong?

That’s like asking, is a volcano right or wrong? Like the Koran and the Bible, DAS KAPITAL has reshaped the perception of countless people and the political map of entire continents.

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Many people have read the Koran and the Bible. How many have read DAS KAPITAL?

Very few, probably one in a thousand or even ten thousand. Many others, among them myself, have tried to read it and have given up after the first few pages.

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Is Marxism a science, a philosophical system, or a religion?

To the believers, it is all three.

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If it is incomprehensible to most laymen, why is it so popular?

People are attracted to the incomprehensible. Consider the mysteries of our own religion. Consider the popularity and longevity of astrology.

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What is its source of strength?

The short answer is, propaganda. We call ourselves Homo sapiens (man the knower), but “man the propagandizer” would have been far more accurate.

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If propaganda is the source of many wars, revolutions, and massacres, why is there no law against it?

Because all organized groups (religions, ideologies, and political parties) engage in it. Some day if we ever meet extraterrestrials that have never experienced war on their planet, we may be astonished to discover that the secret of their pacifism is an educational system that rejects propaganda as a medium of communication.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, May 26, 2006

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Whenever an Armenian wins an argument against a fellow Armenian, the nation loses because once more consensus eludes all three.

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For every article against Turks, our pundits should write at least two about Armenians, and I don’t mean stories about petty like successes (which may be moral failures) but articles exposing our filth . To concentrate only on Turkish criminal conduct means to cover up our own, which also means to conspire with crooks against their victims.

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With every drop of knowledge I acquire, I discover an ocean of ignorance within me.

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According to Aldous Huxley,”War has been one of the principal occupations of civilized human beings”; which amounts to saying, behaving like barbarians is a favorite pastimes of civilized men.

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If you wait long enough it will come to you, and the chances are, by the time it does, you will no longer need it.

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The less I need the happier I am.

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Huxley again: “Too much evil and too much suffering can make it impossible for men to be creative.” He could have added, “…or to value creativity in others.”

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, May 27, 2006

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AN ARMENIAN PIANIST

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In his travel impressions of Jerusalem, titled “Usually Destroyed,” first published in ADONIS AND THE ALPHABET (1956), and more recently included in his COMPLETE ESSAYS: Volume V: 1939-1956 (Chicago, 2002), Aldous Huxley writes: “Here, finally, was St. James’s, of the Armenians, gay with innumerable rather bad but charming paintings, and a wealth of gaudily colored tiles. The great church glowed like a dim religious merry-go-round. In all Jerusalem it was the only oasis of cheerfulness. And not alone of cheerfulness. As we came out into the courtyard, through which the visitor must approach the church’s main entrance, we heard a strange and wonderful sound. High up, in one of the houses surrounding the court, somebody was playing the opening Fantasia of Bach’s Partita in A Minor – playing it, what was more, remarkably well. From out of the open window, up there on the third floor, the ordered torrent of bright pure notes went streaming out over the city’s immemorial squalor.” As Huxley goes on reflecting on music, art, and religion, he hears his guide say: “In the year of Our Lord 1916, the Turkish Government massacred approximately 750,000 Armenians.”

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 28, 2006

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Of the many forms of cowardice, fear of free speech is the worst. I have said this before but it bears repeating.

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Some of the most devastating comments on Armenians, like the following, were made not by our critics and dissidents, but by darlings of the establishment, among them Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian): “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”

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Whenever I speak of corruption in high places, some of our defenders of the establishment are eager to inform me that, very much like the rest of mankind, we have our share of rotten apples. What they don’t say is that, the only way to explain the longevity of our rotten apples is that they enjoy the tacit support of semi-rotten apples like themselves.

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When you are wrong, they make fun of you, but when you are right, they hate you.

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I wear the insults of my readers like a medal of honor. As for those who insult me anonymously: I don’t see any reason why I should take cowards, that is to say, men without honor, seriously.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 29, 2006

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QUOTATIONS FROM

JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL (1924-2006)

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“Man has not yet acquired a taste for truth and freedom.”

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“In free countries, information is seldom designed to inform.”

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“Among the arts, the art of leadership is one of the least developed.”

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“Why is it that men feel the need to support a regime whose aim is their own destruction?”

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“I have met many remarkable personalities that were not famous, and many celebrities who were not in the least remarkable.”

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

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Sidney Morgenbesser (b. 1921), American philosopher: “”To explain why a man slipped on a banana peel, we do not need a general theory of slipping.”

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Love of freedom was the only reason why we rose against the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century, or so I was brought up to believe. It never even occurred to me to ask, Does that mean during the preceding 600 years we hated freedom?

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Sometimes what remains unsaid can be much more revealing than what is said.

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There is a Rashomon-type witness in every historian. A thousand historians writing about the same occurrence will have a thousand, sometimes even a thousand and one, different versions of it.

A dupe is one who believes only the version that is flattering to his ego.

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We rose against the Empire because we saw an opportunity; which means that our idealism was modified by a touch of opportunism.

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The Empire was disintegrating and may even have been a shadow of its former self, true. But in so far as believed as rabbits we were strong enough to deal with a wounded tiger, we behaved like dupes of our own illusions or wishful thinking.

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We had the moral or verbal support of the Great Powers, also true. But in so far as we believed that their support would translate into military alliance, we behaved like dupes.

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Reality is not an extension of our ego. If we want to understand and learn from it, we will be better off to choose the version that is most injurious to our vanity or least favorable to our self-interest.

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If we persist in thinking that which we thought a hundred years ago, it only means that we have learned nothing during the last hundred years.

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

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Standing between a hungry carnivore and his kill can be as dangerous as standing between a civilized man and his source of income.

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I think it was Jean-Luc Godard who once remarked that the most complex philosophical system can be reduced to a cliché. Consider the following passage in Levi-Strauss: “Sartre deplores the ‘mythopoetic thinking’ of primitives which he contrasts with the ‘logico-empirical’ thinking that permits the construction, or even the use, of machines that can melt cities.” Or, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change the more they stay the same). Or again, can we really speak of progress if a primitive kills with arrows and civilized man with weapons of mass destruction.

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Benefactors operate on the assumption that they are helping people who are in need of their help. But what if, by helping the wrong people, they end up doing more harm than good? Hence their need to surround themselves with flunkies whose most important function is to remind them, as princes among men, they can do no wrong.

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Once upon a time when I could not yet think for myself, I never questioned my infallibility. Now, all my efforts are concentrated on avoiding being spectacularly wrong. Some day I hope to be right once or twice a year.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 01, 2006

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GET OUT THE SHOVEL

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John Stossel (American TV correspondent and author. Title of his latest book): MYTHS, LIES & DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY: GET OUT THE SHOVEL – WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG.

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The difference between dialogue and argument is this: dialogue moves towards consensus, argument polarizes.

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Armenian dialogue: an oxymoron.

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You have a better chance to learn from an argument if you lose it.

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When confronted with a statement he neither understands nor wants to understand, an Armenian will contradict it simply because he perceives it to be anti-Armenian, thus implying that only pro-Armenian statements are valid, only chauvinist Armenians are good Armenians, and only dupes are honest.

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There are two kinds of disagreement: honest and hostile. The first is a result of divergent experiences, the second a result of brainwashing – that is to say, disagreement in the name of this or that received idea, ideology, or religion, and the misconception that if I speak in the name of God or Country, I can’t be wrong. It follows, if I kill in the name of patriotism, it is not murder; and if I massacre in the name of Allah, why apologize?

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To get angry during an argument means to reason not with your brain but with your gut. Hence the old Chinese saying, “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.”

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If you begin an argument with the intention of winning it, you have already lost it if only because you have condemned yourself to learn nothing.

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An Armenian argument may be defined as one in which both sides lose not only the argument but also their dignity, assuming of course they had any to begin with, which is assuming a great deal.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 02, 2006

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In my first book, THE ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE – A SHORT INTRODUCTION (Toronto, 1975), I included a chapter subtitled “National Characteristics,” in which I bragged about Armenians being adaptable, as if being adaptable were one of the cardinal virtues, as if adapting ourselves to authority no matter how brutal were a certificate of integrity, as if adapting ourselves to being subservient were a major achievement.

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Our revolutionaries challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire, true, but they did so not as self-reliant thinkers but as double dupes of the Great Powers and of their own megalomania. I say this because I refuse to spend the rest of my life adapting myself to their propaganda line and the lies of chauvinist charlatans who have adapted themselves into thinking they are our betters but who may well be our worst.

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The present is an extension of the past and history repeats itself. Today there are those who have adapted themselves to the lie that if things are left alone in the Homeland they will improve in one or two generations, as if anything has improved in the Diaspora during the last four generations, or for that matter, during the last thousand years. Which may suggest that we are so adaptable that we can even live with corruption, incompetence and degeneration and pretend they represent development and progress.

*

We are adaptable? So is the mafia. So are parasites and viruses. So are collaborators with evil empires.

#

[ara baliozian]

WHAT IT TAKES

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To survive as an Armenian writer, you need, in addition to the genius of a Shakespeare, the skin of a crocodile, the cunning of a fox, and the taste buds of a dung beetle.

*

Because I am critical of Armenians, some of my Turkish readers may think I am anti-Armenian, and some of my Armenian readers may suspect I am pro-Turkish. I am neither. Even when I discuss Turks or Armenians I do not write exclusively about them. I write about human beings regardless of nationality. I write about human beings even when they behave like swine. I know from personal experience that there is nothing easier for a human being than to behave like swine.

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I don’t expect anyone to believe me. Shaw is right: the trouble with liars is that they believe no one.

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The German head of state on the radio this morning: “A nation that doesn’t understand its past cannot have a future.” Do we understand our past? Not yet. We may begin to understand it only on the day we learn to answer such questions as, “Why is it that treason and betrayal are in our blood?” (Raffi); and “Why is it that Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another?” (Zarian).

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What about Turks? Do they understand their past? They might begin to understand it only on the day they realize that to massacre innocent civilians in the name of Allah is to confuse god with the devil.

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[ara baliozian]

WHAT IT TAKES

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To survive as an Armenian writer, you need, in addition to the genius of a Shakespeare, the skin of a crocodile, the cunning of a fox, and the taste buds of a dung beetle.

*

Because I am critical of Armenians, some of my Turkish readers may think I am anti-Armenian, and some of my Armenian readers may suspect I am pro-Turkish. I am neither. Even when I discuss Turks or Armenians I do not write exclusively about them. I write about human beings regardless of nationality. I write about human beings even when they behave like swine. I know from personal experience that there is nothing easier for a human being than to behave like swine.

*

I don’t expect anyone to believe me. Shaw is right: the trouble with liars is that they believe no one.

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The German head of state on the radio this morning: “A nation that doesn’t understand its past cannot have a future.” Do we understand our past? Not yet. We may begin to understand it only on the day we learn to answer such questions as, “Why is it that treason and betrayal are in our blood?” (Raffi); and “Why is it that Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another?” (Zarian).

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What about Turks? Do they understand their past? They might begin to understand it only on the day they realize that to massacre innocent civilians in the name of Allah is to confuse god with the devil.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 04, 2006

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ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

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Canadian saying:

If you hang around with sh**, don’t complain about the flies.”

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Propaganda has the power to transform a painful truth to a comforting lie. Expose the lie and make ten thousand enemies.

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History, especially our own, teaches us that God does not like to interfere in human affairs, and that we can no longer count on Him in a future conflict. Or, as the Yanks put it, you may praise the Lord all you want, provided you keep your powder dry.

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If all men are brother and we are all His children, why would He choose only some of us? It makes no sense. That’s when propaganda comes in. It is no exaggeration to say that the aim of propaganda is to make sense out of nonsense by introducing a bigger nonsense; and this bigger nonsense is readily accepted because it flatters the collective ego.

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By refusing to flatter those who need to be flattered, I let them know they are more unchosen than chosen, and they may even be swimming in the same soup with those they despise. If you think politics makes strange bedfellows, try the truth.

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You may have noticed that people are more eager to correct you when you are right for the simple reason that they hate to be exposed.

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A fat slob once justified his hanging beer belly by saying: “A good workman always builds a shed over his best tool.”

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Canadian saying: “You can’t polish a turd.”

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 05, 2006

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A CASE OF MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDING

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Armenians don’t understand Turks because they don’t understand themselves. I speak from experience. For many years I did not understand not only my fellow Armenians but also myself. I confused what I had been taught (misleading platitudes, clichés, and slogans, that is to say propaganda) with reality. And now that I can tell the difference between a half-truth and a lie, I am misunderstood by self-assessed patriotic readers. This much said however, let me add that inability to understand others and oneself is not a peculiarly Armenian failing.

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What we (regardless of race, color, and creed) really mean when we speak of understanding is the kind of misunderstanding that supports a specific self-serving political agenda. And when we speak of being understood, what we really mean is being misunderstood in a manner that reinforces our image of ourselves. Like dog owners who say “Love me, love my dog,” even when the dog happens to be a drooling, crutch-sniffing ugly mutt with menacing fangs, we say, in effect, “Love me, love my failings, and if you can’t love them, pretend they don’t exist.”

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When it comes to misunderstanding others and themselves, Turks are no different. If Armenians accuse Turks of being guilty of genocide, Turks retaliate by accusing Armenians of inventing a genocide and believing it for a hundred years. (I wonder, does this have a parallel in human history?) They go further and accuse Armenians, if not of genocide (even they wouldn’t dare to go that far) than of committing indiscriminate massacres of innocent Turkish civilians. It follows, Armenians, unlike Turks, must be born liars motivated by raw hatred. It also explains why, as civilized, compassionate people, Turks are outraged whenever the world fails to understand them, or misunderstand them in a manner that supports their political agenda and reinforces their image of themselves.

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Armenians and Turks don’t hate one another, they hate reality.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

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Descartes tells us common sense must be just about the most widely and evenly distributed faculty because no one complains he hasn’t enough of it.

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It is common knowledge that what shapes human thought and action is not science or logic but the absurd and the irrational.

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Our religion teaches us not to judge our fellow men, but it also gives us the tools with which to divide mankind into believers and infidels, and sometimes even who lives and who dies.

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If you are dependent on the goodwill of another, you are only half a man. Subservience, even subservience to an ideology or religion, deprives a man of that which divides him from animals: his reason.

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For a number of years I made a living as an organist in a neighborhood Catholic church. The parish priest once complained to me, “You will be surprised how many people call me on Christmas Eve to ask what time is the midnight mass.”

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Let others say “Inshallah!” (God willing). We should teach ourselves to say, “God unwilling.”

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[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

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THE WHITE AND THE BLACK

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If you want to understand the past, don’t listen to a politician, read a historian.

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If you want to read a historian, don’t read a historian who enjoys the support or agreement of politicians.

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The trouble with our ablest historians is that they enjoy the support of a political party with a specific agenda and propaganda line.

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If some people question our credibility it may be because we adopt the role of good guys and assign the role of bad guys to our adversaries, who, in retaliation, do the same. In other words we portray ourselves as white and our enemies as black. Life and common sense suggest that black and white distinctions may apply to Hollywood movies but seldom or never to reality, especially in cases where both sides portray the other as black and themselves as white.

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It is not my intention here to minimize the magnitude of a tragedy or to provide extenuating circumstances to killers, but to enhance our understanding of the past, of reality, and ultimately of ourselves.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 08, 2006

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NATIONS, TRIBES, CLIQUES AND GANGS

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Nikol Aghbalian (1873-1947), Tashnak leader, scholar, and educator: “We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks and Kurds, and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly rooted even among our leaders and elites.”

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We tend to confuse tribalism with patriotism. In reality, they have contradictory meanings. When we place loyalty to the tribe or party above loyalty to the nation, we also divide, fragment, weaken, and thus make the nation more vulnerable to the enemy. It follows, to be loyal to the tribe or party (that is, a fraction of the nation) means to betray the nation; and because I have been saying this I have become an enemy of the people in the eyes of our partisans.

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What have we learned from history? Answer: to sermonize, to speechify, and to propagandize, that is to say, to misrepresent reality and to be accountable only to an abstraction like the people, the nation, or god. To be accountable only to a god whom we have created in our own image is to be accountable to none.

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I learn something new every day and I cannot help reflecting that I must be just about the luckiest man alive for managing to survive for so many years with so much ignorance.

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Nikol Aghbalian: “When man does not submit himself to the rule of law, he will have to submit himself to the rule of men, that is to say, cliques and gangs.

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, June 09, 2006

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I first came across the expression “dysfunctional national psyche” in reference to the Nazis. But it seems to me it could equally apply to any society whose worldview or understanding of reality is based on propaganda.

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In your dealings with your fellow men, it may be useful to remember that whenever you are in a position to check what they say, they may speak the truth; otherwise the chances are they lie.

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In politics, very often our choice is between a brainwashed majority that cannot think and a minority that cannot act.

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The only way to understand some people is to think of them as denizens of a parallel universe in which laws governing reality are so incomprehensible that betrayal is seen as patriotism, apostasy as conversion, darkness as light, and vices as virtues.

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I began questioning my interpretation of history on the day I realized that most of my misery was self-inflicted.

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A good writer is also a bad writer you feel the need to go on reading.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, June 10, 2006

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TWO QUESTIONS

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To readers who complain that I repeat myself, I ask: Since no one is in a position to coerce you into reading me, why don’t you read a thousand other writers who don’t repeat themselves?

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Another question: Why should I agree with views that I held thirty years ago when I was a brainwashed dupe?

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If I have asked these questions before it may be because so far I have not received a satisfactory reply.

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It was said of communists that they were slaves of former slaves. It could be said of us that we are dupes of former dupes.

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There is no clearly marked yellow brick road leading to truth. Sometimes it is necessary to cross swamps. Truth can be a dirty business.

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ON FRIENDSHIP

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Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “Some people think getting to know someone is a waste of time. They prefer to buy things. But since there are no stores that sell friends, they no longer have any friends.”

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Jules Renard: “There are no friends, only moments of friendship.”

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Chamfort: “I gave up the friendship of two men because one of them never spoke of himself and the other never spoke of me.”

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Talleyrand: “Don’t speak evil of yourself. Your friends will do enough of that.”

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[ara baliozian]

ON B.S.

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In his book, ON BULLSHIT (Princeton University Press, 2005), the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt echoes Descartes’ words on common sense when he writes, “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this.” If we don’t talk about it, he goes on, it may be because “most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize it and to avoid being taken in by it.” Further down: “The realm of advertising and public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.”

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Among the synonyms of bullshit, Frankfurt cites: “humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel, buncombe, imposture, and quackery.” For some reason he fails to include baloney and propaganda.

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In her book THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY: REFLECTIONS ON AMERICA, GOD, AND WORLD AFFAIRS (New York, 2006), Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and, under Clinton, the first woman Secretary of State, writes that the central message of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (“involved in most political upheavals today”) are “compassion and peace.” Leave it to the b.s. of sermonizers and speechifiers to pervert compassion to murder and peace to war.

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The Romans used to say, “Si vis pacem para bellum” (if you want peace, prepare for war.” But the Romans were decent enough not to involve the Almighty in their imperial ambitions and bloodthirsty disposition.

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George Orwell, himself an expert on b.s., went further when he coined the slogan, included in his science fiction novel, 1984, “PEACE IS WAR.”

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B.s. is not a favorite topic of discussion among us perhaps because we are such gargantuan consumers of it. Instead, we prefer to focus and emphasize Turkish b.s., thus implying we are devoid of it.

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Consider the content of our weekly one-hour TV programs: nothing but singing floozies and hoodlums, sermonizing bishops, and speechifying bosses (mostly about Comrade Panchoonie’s favorite subject: raising funds for this or that worthy cause). On the positive side, since the programs last only 45 minutes (60 minutes minus 15 minutes of commercials) the speeches and sermons are drastically edited.

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The Romans had another saying: “Ride si sapis” (if you are wise, laugh).

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, June 12, 2006

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“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another,” Zarian tells us; and I suspect they will go on cannibalizing until the day laboratory tests reveal they contain dangerous levels of carcinogens.

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A nation that relies on propaganda digs its own grave.

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To be a sermonizer or speechifier means to speak of immortality during the day and to work as a gravedigger under cover of darkness.

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I am beginning to identify men not as members of this or that race, color and creed, but as either dupes or deceivers.

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When tolerance allows deceivers to deceive and dupes to be duped, is it really tolerance or conspiracy?

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A dogmatist is a failure who has been successful only in suppressing his own doubts.

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Whenever you understand them better than they understand themselves, they say you don’t understand them.

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To be insecure, or in Saroyan’s expression, “without foundation” (dabansez in Turkish), means to be eager and willing to swallow the most absurd propaganda line provided it flatters the ego.

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We call wise the man who has acquired the skill to hide his foolishness.

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I would have gone away, if only they had ignored me. By insulting me they challenged me to reiterate my position and to make a more convincing case.

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We are taught to respect a man’s convictions or beliefs, provided he is sincere. But according to Harry G. Frankfurt in his book ON BULLSHIT: “Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial – notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.” Frankfurt is right: if sincerity were a reliable criterion, we would have to respect suicidal terrorists and fanatics.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

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If I have not said this before I will say it now: I have been wrong most of my life and the chances are I am wrong today. I am certainly wrong in thinking that what I write matters and that it may even make a difference.

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Illusions don’t die; they adapt and reappear under a different disguise. Once upon a time I thought I was the center of the world. Once upon a time I was also led to believe Armenians were God’s chosen people. The ancient Greeks would say that it is for this egocentric arrogance (hubris) that we were punished (Nemesis).

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Why do I go on writing? I wish I knew. My only tentative explanation: writing has become a habit and habits are easier to keep than to give up.

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In so far as I make assertions, I am very probably wrong. But in so far as I question the validity of the assertions in which I believed, I am very probably right.

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Title of a poem by Francis Jammes (1868-1938), French poet and mystic: “Priere pour aller au Paradis avec les anes” (Prayer for going to Heaven with the donkeys.”

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In Michel Houellebecq’s THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND (New York, 2005) I come across the following phrase: “…bullshit [is] the death of civilization.”

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