as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 15, 2007

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DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

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Maurice Barres: “…the magnificent self-assurance of imbeciles.”

*

You can see the mountaintop from the valley, but the higher you climb and the closer you get to it, the less visible it becomes. After a while you may even be justified in suspecting it was a mirage. Something similar may happen to our ambitions.

*

Childhood dreams have a tendency to become the nightmares of old age. Had I been a carpenter or bus driver I would have been more useful to my fellow men. Take it from me: if your ambition is to be a writer, I suggest you write to entertain. The masses want to be amused not to be reminded of their moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

*

Tell a self-assessed smart man he is no better than a dupe and make an enemy for life.

*

The author of a book, titled THE END OF DETROIT, on the radio this morning referred to recent development in the American auto industry as an “existential crisis.” There was a time when no self-respecting American pundit would have dared to use the word existential in a serious context. It took fifty years for the academics to catch up. What is the difference between a crisis and an existential crisis? Nothing. But the qualifier existential seems to lend the word crisis an authority it doesn’t have on its own.

*

Don’t expect reality to catch up with you. It is you who must do the catching up.

*

Marquis de Sade: “More often than not charity is a vice of pride rather than a virtue of the soul.”

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Friday, February 16, 2007

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SUMMING UP

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What can I tell you that you don’t already know or suspect but pretend otherwise? What can I add to what far better men than myself have already said?

*

When asked if I dislike Armenians, I reply that I don’t know all of them. If I give the impression that I don’t particularly care for them it may be because I have never cared for dupes who pretend to be smart, or for charlatans who will say and do anything for minimum wage (which happen to be two of my own youthful transgressions). When it comes to judging my fellow countrymen, I rely more on the judgment of our writers as opposed to pseudo-pundits, speechifiers, and sermonizers whose aim is not to speak the truth as they see it but to flatter their audience on whose goodwill and financial support they depend -- and as everyone knows by now, brown-nosing pays and criticism leads to the poorhouse.

*

When I speak of writers, I don’t mean poets who sang the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and our “sun-flavored words,” but writers, who unlike me, lived among Armenians all their lives and wrote about and for them in Armenian. By contrast I live in the middle of nowhere, write in English, and I don’t go out of my way to meet them.

*

When I read writers like Baronian, Odian, Massikian, Shahnour, and Zarian (especially the Zarian of the posthumously published diaries and notebooks) I cannot help thinking, yes, we have somehow managed to survive, but to what end? – besides lamenting our dead and bragging about our survival? (Do you see the shadow of a contradiction there somewhere?)

*

About our survival: Should we ascribe it to our courage, initiative, solidarity (what solidarity?) adaptability, obstinacy, intelligence (don’t make me laugh!) and other positive factors, or to Turkish inefficiency?

*

We live in a world where there are many more answers than questions, even if most of the answers are wrong. Consider the answers provided by religious and political leaders as a case in point. As for answers provided by science: even when the right answers are available, some people (like flat-earth theorists and astrology buffs) will prefer to believe in the wrong ones.

#

 

[gmd]

Why do you sell yourself short? I am not trying to flatter you. I think there are people who view and/or participate on these forums to learn and try and understand Armenian identity. I know this applies to me. Regardless of agreement on our individual views, reading your posts has made me aware of Armenian writers and critics that I may not have otherwise discovered. Additionally, reading your posts has raised more questions for me... In pursuing answers to your questions I find myself drawn deeper into my Armenian identity and eager to seek out a path of balance.

By presenting a critics view you are helping to balance out the ultra-nationalism some of us adhere to. I cannot tell you that I have given up on nationalism, but I search for a deeper meaning in it that strives to provide a benefit to all Armenians, not just the elite.

 

Regards,

 

Garik

 

Friday, February 16, 2007

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SUMMING UP

*****************************

What can I tell you that you don’t already know or suspect but pretend otherwise? What can I add to what far better men than myself have already said?

*

When asked if I dislike Armenians, I reply that I don’t know all of them. If I give the impression that I don’t particularly care for them it may be because I have never cared for dupes who pretend to be smart, or for charlatans who will say and do anything for minimum wage (which happen to be two of my own youthful transgressions). When it comes to judging my fellow countrymen, I rely more on the judgment of our writers as opposed to pseudo-pundits, speechifiers, and sermonizers whose aim is not to speak the truth as they see it but to flatter their audience on whose goodwill and financial support they depend -- and as everyone knows by now, brown-nosing pays and criticism leads to the poorhouse.

*

When I speak of writers, I don’t mean poets who sang the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and our “sun-flavored words,” but writers, who unlike me, lived among Armenians all their lives and wrote about and for them in Armenian. By contrast I live in the middle of nowhere, write in English, and I don’t go out of my way to meet them.

*

When I read writers like Baronian, Odian, Massikian, Shahnour, and Zarian (especially the Zarian of the posthumously published diaries and notebooks) I cannot help thinking, yes, we have somehow managed to survive, but to what end? – besides lamenting our dead and bragging about our survival? (Do you see the shadow of a contradiction there somewhere?)

*

About our survival: Should we ascribe it to our courage, initiative, solidarity (what solidarity?) adaptability, obstinacy, intelligence (don’t make me laugh!) and other positive factors, or to Turkish inefficiency?

*

We live in a world where there are many more answers than questions, even if most of the answers are wrong. Consider the answers provided by religious and political leaders as a case in point. As for answers provided by science: even when the right answers are available, some people (like flat-earth theorists and astrology buffs) will prefer to believe in the wrong ones.

#

 

[Arpa]

Why do you sell yourself short? I am not trying to flatter you. I think there are people who view and/or participate on these forums to learn and try and understand Armenian identity. I know this applies to me. Regardless of agreement on our individual views, reading your posts has made me aware of Armenian writers and critics that I may not have otherwise discovered. Additionally, reading your posts has raised more questions for me... In pursuing answers to your questions I find myself drawn deeper into my Armenian identity and eager to seek out a path of balance.

By presenting a critics view you are helping to balance out the ultra-nationalism some of us adhere to. I cannot tell you that I have given up on nationalism, but I search for a deeper meaning in it that strives to provide a benefit to all Armenians, not just the elite.

 

Regards,

 

Garik

Dear gmd/Garik it is obvious that you are kind of new in this game. Do you know how to spell BUL L S H IT?

When you do so you will also know that there are thousands of other sources about Armenian Culture and heritage.

Until then, be my guest to wallow in the S H I T of that genius author of “Shithouses of Yerevan”.

I dare him to repost that all time masterpiece of his, so the rest of us will understand his underlying sick psyche.

How much does it take to understand the reason for his frustration?

Who has disheded out dollars/drams to buy his shiterature lately?

 

[gmd]

Dear gmd/Garik it is obvious that you are kind of new in this game. Do you know how to spell BUL L S H IT?

When you do so you will also know that there are thousands of other sources about Armenian Culture and heritage.

Until then, be my guest to wallow in the S H I T of that genius author of “Shithouses of Yerevan”.

I dare him to repost that all time masterpiece of his, so the rest of us will understand his underlying sick psyche.

How much does it take to understand the reason for his frustration?

Who has disheded out dollars/drams to buy his shiterature lately?

 

Arpa, I read your posts with the same interest that I read Ara's. I have made the mistake of attacking Ara in the past on a different forum. I found no satisfaction in it. I am no saint. I have a short temper at times. However, I did not join this forum or any other in order to pick fights with Armenians (regardless of their personal opinions). My goal is to learn and hopefuly grow closer to the Armenian community.

 

Prior to joining these forums any reading I did on or by Armenians was related to general Armenian history available in mainstream outlets. It is not simply that Ara quotes some Armenian author I had never heard of, but the context he places those quotes in. This is what has sparked an interest in me to read, what I though of previously, as obscure Armenian authors. So now you can make a judgement about me being an assimilated 'red-neck hick' who lacks any culture, especially Armenian. Ara despite his views has sparked an interest in me that was not there before, to learn about Armenian culture. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for all posts I encounter. For instance the Mamikonian is Chinese thread(s), while entertaining seems completely irrelevent to me on modern Armenian identity and concerns. (No offense intended to the many contributors of those threads.)

 

[Armenak]

Arpa,

 

You've mentioned the Shithouses of Yerevan many times but I can't find anything related to it in this thread/forum. Or was it in a publication of A.B.'s?

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, February 17, 2007

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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To speak of Genocide recognition as frequently, obsessively, and endlessly as we do is to imply that during more than two thousand years of history our most noteworthy achievement has been allowing ourselves to be butchered like sheep.

*

Claude Bernard: “No one has contributed more to science than frogs.”

*

In biographies of writers, the sentence that sooner or later pops up is “he read everything he could get his hands on.”

*

Major decisions are based on countless little ones that make the major ones inevitable.

*

If you plan to make an omelet, break eggs not windows and heads.

*

Alain: “It is said that the next generations will be harder to govern. I certainly hope so.”

*

Mathurin Regnier: “A wealthy villain is worth more than a poor gentleman.”

*

I question the validity of all my past beliefs and no doubt in the future I will question the validity of my present beliefs of which I have none.

*

Bertolt Brecht: “I don’t trust him. We are friends.”

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 18, 2007

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DEBUNKING MYTHS AND OTHER SCANDALS

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What could be more misleading, not to say arrogant, than for political leaders identifying themselves with the nation. They have more reason to identify themselves with the enemy, especially when they promise heaven and deliver hell.

*

Slaughters don’t happen in a vacuum and slaughterhouses don’t exist in the middle of nowhere. Where there is a slaughterhouse there will also be shepherds leading the sheep to butchers.

*

Political leaders add insult to injury when they have the temerity to say we should judge them by their intentions, even when their intentions were based on lies and illusions, the biggest lie being that they deserve our trust because they know better what’s good for us.

*

Inside every whore there is a Cinderella whose prince failed to show up. That is a tragedy deserving our sympathy. But the tragedy becomes a farce when this very same whore, now an aged bordello madam, identifies herself as a virgin.

*

The older I grow the more disappointments I accumulate. For a long time I believed experience combined with the wisdom of old age would make life less unbearable. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Almost every word I read these days, except “the” and “a,” has an unpleasant association.

*

Speechifiers and sermonizers speak of certainties. My own certainties –assuming I have any – are buried beneath so many layers of doubts and questions that they might as well be beyond reach. Which is why I will never speechify or sermonize.

*

The best way to understand others is to examine one’s own heart, which is something self-assessed admirable specimens of humanity are incapable of doing.

*

No one can be as ruthless and wrong as he who places his own narrow self-interests above the interests of his fellow men. Aberrations from massacres to verbal abuse stem from this egocentric view of life.

*

One good thing about the verbal abuse of imbeciles is that they all sound alike, so that after reading the first line or even word I don’t feel the need to read the rest.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Monday, February 19, 2007

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Because I don’t particularly care for loudmouth imbeciles who pretend to be smart, they say I don’t like Armenians.

*

Good explanations are not final answers, only small steps in their general direction.

*

To be dependent on the goodwill and understanding of another is to live in oppression.

*

It is not that he has a low opinion of you; rather, he has a very high opinion of himself.

*

Man doesn’t hate the truth, only those who speak it.

*

I have yet to see a politician, even an honest one, who did not sound like a compulsive liar.

*

Amiel: “One becomes a charlatan without knowing it.”

*

Sainte-Beuve: “Celebrity might as well be synonymous with prostitution.”

*

Lamartine: “Homeland: a structure that stands on the ashes of the dead.”

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

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ON PROPAGANDA AND

RELATED ATROCITIES

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On the radio this morning: “Censorship: When the powerful tell the less powerful what to say.”

*

Where there is power, there will also be propaganda.

*

Do we practice censorship? If you ask this question to a dupe or charlatan, you will never get the right answer.

*

It is the heights of naiveté to think that only the enemy engages in propaganda.

*

Alice completely divorced herself from reality by following a rabbit into a hole. The difference between Alice and the propagandist who believes in his own propaganda is that the propagandist becomes a permanent resident of Wonderland.

*

If we are alienated, it may be because our thought processes have been contaminated by propaganda.

*

Propaganda alienates people by divorcing them from reality, which is also what happens to compulsive liars when they start believing in their own lies. This may explain the short-lived and disastrous regimes under Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. As they became more and more dependent on their own lies, they further removed themselves from reality and its inflexible laws, one of them being, you cannot fool all the people, including yourself, all the time.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

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ON A QUINTESSENTIALLY

ARMENIAN ABERRATION

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We have all met the arrogant ignoramus who, just because he knows something about Armenians you don’t know, says with an air of self-satisfaction bordering on triumph: “And you call yourself an Armenian?” Asserting superiority even on flimsiest of grounds must be a quintessentially Armenian need. One reason why we have allowed the Genocide to become a collective addiction is that it allows us a sense of moral superiority. There is even a type of writer who, after writing about the Genocide, finds it extremely difficult to write about anything else. Writing about Turks, atrocities, and lies makes them feel morally superior, and the need to feel morally superior is especially pronounced in bastards.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 22, 2007

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WHITE TRASH I

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In an interview published in ESQUIRE James Watson, the DNA biologist, raises the following question: “Why do we have a government that’s run by rich trash?” His answer: “Because they’ve used their money to buy the presidency.”

*

WHITE TRASH II

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We share this in common with Turks: we think to apologize is for weaklings and losers. I remember, during the Soviet era, because I dared to criticize the regime, I would receive many hostile phone calls and letters questioning my patriotism. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, none of these gentlemen wrote or called to say he had been wrong. And I will never forget the letter written by one of these chic Bolsheviks, a white-haired elder statesman with a heart condition, which was so offensive that I was too stunned to reply in kind; and for a change, luck was on my side, because shortly thereafter I read his obituary. Had I retaliated, I would have felt partly responsible for his unexpected demise.

*

WHITE TRASH III

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We may have a better chance to come to terms with Turks on the day we show a willingness to listen to their side of the story. I say this in view of the fact that they have already gone as far as conceding that they will gladly plead guilty as charged provided we don’t escalate our demands. Probably a bogus condition, because they are smart enough to know that we are incapable of reaching a consensus on any issue, and they can always rely on an extremist minority to reject all preconditions.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Friday, February 23, 2007

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LIONS AND APES

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Victor Hugo: “Imitate nothing and no one. A lion that copies another lion is an ape.”

*

All brainwashed people behave like apes.

*

I don’t mind admitting that I was brainwashed as surely and thoroughly as any Bolshevik or Nazi; and if you think you were not, it may be because they have done a better job on you. Either that or you are too infatuated with your fiction to relinquish it in exchange of something that will be less flattering to your ego or superego.

*

My motto: Suspect everything that is flattering to your vanity.

*

If you search for the negative in the positive, you will find it; and that may save you from making an ass of yourself in the future.

*

Anything that removes or distances us from the reality principle is to be discarded. To put it differently: our choice is between reality and Alice’s Wonderland. And remember: reality can be more fantastic than any fantasy. Reality turns against us only if we ignore its inflexible laws.

*

What makes us trust our political leaders is not love of truth but love of country. The degree of patriotism in a man is relative to the spread of the real estate he owns. There are entire continents today populated by rejects, heretics, exiles, and white trash. A reasonable man is one who places love of truth above love of real estate, that is to say, dirt.

*

When it comes to politics and religion, every assertion is open to contradiction. When two sets of apes or brainwashed people maintain some contradictions are capital offenses, the result will be war and massacre.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, February 24, 2007

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REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS

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To achieve excellence is easy. What’s hard is discovering the specific endeavor in which you are destined to excel.

*

Someday, somewhere everything will be explained, by which time we may no longer be in need of explanations.

*

Readers are less interested to know how honest or wise you are and more interested to know how dishonest and foolish you have been. What’s the use of being positive in your assessment of yourself when others have an eye only for the negative?

*

There was a time when I wrote nothing but fiction. I continue to write fiction today but only to expose it.

*

To write against propaganda is to expose fiction.

*

Our national prestige is a fiction of our collective imagination.

*

Both dupes and charlatans live in a world of fiction where they imagine themselves to be not only honest and wise but also patriotic.

*

There is more imagination in conspiracy theories than in science fiction.

*

The Goncourt Brothers: “To believe in nothing is as bad as any religion.”

*

Victor Hugo: “Crowds are good only for rioting. For a revolution you need people.”

*

Raymond Queneau: “Humor tries to purge the idiotic from great and noble sentiments.”

*

Raymond Aron: “Every belief system begins as a heresy.”

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 25, 2007

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BARBARIANS WITHIN THE GATE

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To civilize a barbarian is easy. What’s hard is to civilize a barbarian who thinks he is better than you. I am willing to concede that our Turcocentric pundits may know more about Turks than I do, but I know something about us that they may not, namely, we are not all as civilized as we think we are and, which is worse, there are those among us who don’t seem to be favorably disposed towards civilization.

*

DISAPPOINTMENT

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We are disappointed in people because we cannot be objective about them, which means that the source of disappointment is not them but us.

*

HYENAS

********************

There is a type of reader who follows you from a safe distance hoping you will stumble, fall, and break your neck so that he can feast on your carcass,

*

FIRST AND LAST IMPRESSIONS

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My first impression of Canada: I thought I had landed on an alien planet. I now feel that way when I visit an Armenian community center.

*

ON THE ART OF WRITING

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I will tell you all I know about writing provided you promise to ignore and forget everything I say. What matters in writing is not following in someone else’s footsteps but in finding your own path.

*

I LOVE BRAHMS

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After a visit and on his way out, Brahms would say, “I apologize to anyone I may have failed to insult.”

*

ON COPS

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Charles-Louis Philippe: “It is practically impossible to speak to a policeman without seeming to lie to him.”

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Monday, February 26, 2007

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EXPLAINING THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

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For 600 years Armenians and Turks lived side by side in the same country, breathed the same air, ate the same food, and spoke the same language, with only one difference: Turks did these things as masters and Armenians as slaves. For 600 years Turks had their way with us, so much so that they think they can now convince us to believe the Genocide is a figment of our imagination.

*

Turks cannot understand Armenians because they continue to think as masters and they expect Armenians to behave as slaves.

*

Being subservient to Turks for 600 years! I cannot imagine a worse nightmare, except perhaps being subservient to Armenians for 6 minutes. That’s because it is one thing to be slaves to masters and another to be slaves to former slaves.

*

Turks may begin to understand Armenians only if they imagine themselves to have been subservient to Armenians for 600 years, for which they may need an imagination of Shakespearian cast.

*

As masters, Turks think it is not up to slaves to question their conduct or integrity. So that if the master rapes and murders one of his slaves and afterwards asserts the slave died of natural causes, the surviving slaves in his household have no choice but to corroborate his testimony. Not to do so would amount to mutiny and a capital offense. Hence, Hrant Dink’s execution.

*

After the Will of Allah comes the will of the master. And the Will of Allah is to the master what the will of the master is to the slave.

*

To convince Turks they are guilty of genocide is as hard as convincing a Stalinist (and our chic Bolsheviks) to believe Stalin was wrong and his innocent victims (all 25 million of them, give and take a million or two) were right; or to convince a jihadist to believe that he is on the wrong warpath.

*

As far as the average Turk goes, the Ottoman Empire is not dead but very much alive – if only in his own heart; in the same way that in the heart of every good Christian Jesus not only lives but also saves.

*

If you want to know more about masters and slaves, Hegel is your man. As far as I know Hegel did not write a single line about Turks and Armenians but he had a great deal to say about masters and slaves, and what he had to say is just about the best thing I have read about Turks and Armenians.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

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ONCE MORE ON IDENTITY

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Identity is one of those concepts about which you can say anything you want and get away with it provided you preach to the converted. Speaking for myself, I see my identity as a burden, or the final stage of a succession of defeats, tragedies, degradation, lies, blunders, and above all, futile efforts to misrepresent them as triumphs of endurance, nobility, perseverance, strength, dedication to principles…in short, not defeats but moral victories. If true, we should be grateful to our enemies, because if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have become the paragons of virtue we pretend to be.

*

The very same people who at the turn of the last century believed if we rise against the Turks we will be rewarded, now believe if we corner them into pleading guilty to the charge of genocide we will ditto. Even when some dreams turn into nightmares, daydreamers will continue to engage in self-deception.

*

There are those who don’t like me.

I don’t understand them.

Others like me.

I understand them even less.

*

He lived in fear of death all his life and as he was dying he thought living had been infinitely harder.

#

 

[Indra]

Why did our national leaders choose the way into the abyss?

Is the answer our psyche? Our wish for revenge?

 

’’...calls for justice could not be of any use in the end, since they were also appeals to fine feelings. They had but one effect: to delay mourning again and always to put it off, indefinitely, until later. Today, we can formulate in one sentence the deferred action of these two events, the pogroms of 1895 and those of 1909: The Armenians of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, collective murder imposed on the collective psyche of the victims a generalized interdiction of mourning. Only this old interdiction explains the modalities and the illusions of the political action of Armenians and, in particular, the development of a movement of ’’national liberation,’’ which has been only a long movement of national suicide. I won’t push this point; these matters are too painful.“

 

Marc Nichanian: Catastrophic Mourning, in: David L. Eng and David Kazanjian: Loss. 2003, p.100

 

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

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THE DEMANDS OF PATRIOTISM

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It is an unfortunate fact that the demands made on all of us by patriotism are stronger than the demands of truth, perhaps because all state-sponsored educational systems emphasize god and country at the expense of objectivity and honesty.

*

Once upon a time I too was infatuated with my own ignorance. So much so that, whenever I consider my past convictions, I feel like digging a hole and burying myself in it.

*

Some of my Turkish friends are disappointed in me because I refuse to accept the fact that the Genocide is a figment of our collective imagination. Because I have been critical of our political leadership, these Turkish friends assume I am the kind of Turcophile who thinks, as admirable specimens of humanity, Turks can do no wrong and are therefore as white as the driven snow.

*

I may question everything our side says but I have no reason whatever to question the testimony of such pro-Turkish historians as Lord Kinross, Bernard Lewis, and Arnold Toynbee (among many others) – and I don’t mean the young Toynbee who began his career as a bureaucrat in the belly of the British imperial machine, but the mature Toynbee who acquired Turkish friends, studied the Turkish language, and concluded that Armenian territorial demands at the turn of the last century had been totally unjustified. Even so he at no time questioned or doubted the reality of the Genocide and the ruthless brutality with which it was carried out.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Indra:

our leaders rose against the turks because they confused the moral or verbal support of the Great Powers with military support. /ara

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, March 01, 2007

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WHEN GOOD PEOPLE BEHAVE BADLY

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Some of my Turkish friends are outraged that their fellow countrymen stand accused of having committed unspeakable acts against innocent and unarmed civilians. To them I say, don’t take it so hard. Some of the most civilized people on earth – from Golden-Age Greeks (5th-century BC) and more recently to Germans – have been guilty of such acts. Most Turks may indeed be decent folk but that doesn’t and cannot alter the fact that raising and running an empire has at no time been an activity compatible with decency. Remember, even Mahatma Gandhi at one point called British rule in India “satanic,” and satanic is how the powerful appear to the powerless. As for the powerless themselves: on the day the British quit India, millions of innocent Hindus were massacred by Muslims, and vice versa. Which may suggest that if you give power to the powerless, they too will commit satanic acts; which is also why I have consistently maintained that if the Ottoman Empire had been an Armenian Empire, and the Turks had been a minority within that empire, the chances are we would have done to them what they did to us. Man is not only capable of behaving like a predatory beast in the jungle, but also doing so in the name of a loving, merciful, and compassionate god. Figure that one out if you can.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Friday, March 02, 2007

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Sometimes when one is right on one level one may be wrong on another. Life or reality is more accommodating to contradictions than logic and the human mind.

*

When two versions of the past are in conflict, it is self-serving to believe the version that is more flattering to our ego.

*

Another way to define a coward: “One who prefers propaganda to truth.”

*

One of the easiest things in life is to confuse what we should think and feel with what we really think and feel.

*

The world is full of disappointed people because they trusted their friends and mistrusted their enemies.

*

There is such a thing as being too self-righteous to be right.

*

To the oversensitive person, every encounter with reality can be a traumatic experience.

*

Whenever I take myself too seriously someone is sure to call me an idiot.”

*

Valéry Larbaud: “Affairs begin in champagne and end in chamomile.”

*

Eugene Goodheart: “The cure for loneliness is solitude.”

*

Anatole France: “Without irony, the world would be like a forest without birds.”

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, March 03, 2007

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FRACTIONS

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For a long time I thought Armenians were incapable of committing certain acts because they were more civilized than Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Muslims in general, Gypsies, Jews, Japs, Greeks, Germans, Americans, Russians…in short, the rest of the world. I know now that we all swim in the same soup. We are what the world made us and the world is not a nice place inhabited by nice folk. And whenever I hear a Turk saying, when others speak about them they lie, and when they speak about themselves they speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I know I am in the presence of someone who knows little about the world and even less about himself and his fellow men.

*

In a court of law, when a witness is caught in a lie, his entire testimony becomes suspect even if there is evidence to suggest he speaks the truth. Which is why when someone makes an absurd assertion, as I did about Armenians when I was a dupe, forever after what he says is tainted the way a perjurious witness’s testimony is.

*

It is a sure symptom of immaturity and insecurity to identify oneself with a group, be it a political party, a tribe, a nation, a race or religion. No one can speak for another or explain why he behaved as he did. When Freud, Adler, and Jung analyzed the human psyche, they began with their own: the first emphasized sex, the second power, and the third myths and archetypes. In other words, each saw only a fraction of the whole. Who was right and who wrong? They may have been right as far as the fraction goes, but wrong about the whole; thus proving that the human mind is better at dealing with fractions. But “a fraction of the truth,” is how propaganda is defined. The question we should ask at this point is: when one is wrong about oneself, can he be right about anyone else?

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, March 04, 2007

***********************************************

THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES

**********************************************

The only way to make Armenian and Turkish friends is to agree with them. Dare to disagree with them and you run the risk of insulting either Turkishness or Armenishness – two terms that as far as I know no one has ever bothered to define perhaps because they are indefinable -- unless of course they mean everything that is good, moral, just, right, humane, civilized, and in general, positive in life. Which would make both nations paragons of virtue and role models to the rest of mankind. And now, imagine if you can, a world inhabited only by Turks and Armenians. It would be hell on earth for critics and dissidents, and heaven on earth for yes-men and brownnosers, who on occasion like to engage in cannibalism. My guess is, after centuries of cohabitation and intermarriage (or is it interfornication?), the pureblooded Turk or Armenian is a figment of our imagination. So must be, by extension, the concepts of Turkishness and Armenishness.

*

The more you learn, the more aware you become of what you don’t know. Only the ignorant brag about their knowledge.

*

Gaston de Levis: “Of all sentiments, pride is the most difficult to fake.”

*

Barbey D’Aurevills: “It is that which we don’t understand that we try to explain.”

*

Paul Léautaud: “I believe in dictionaries.”

#

 

[phantom22]

Ara,

 

We know that Turks are primarily mongrelized Armenians. How much Turkish blood flows in the veins of Armenians? To what extent have we fornicated with Turks over our 1,000 year association? How much Turkish blood has been mixed into the Armenian genepool?

 

Sunday, March 04, 2007

***********************************************

THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES

**********************************************

The only way to make Armenian and Turkish friends is to agree with them. Dare to disagree with them and you run the risk of insulting either Turkishness or Armenishness – two terms that as far as I know no one has ever bothered to define perhaps because they are indefinable -- unless of course they mean everything that is good, moral, just, right, humane, civilized, and in general, positive in life. Which would make both nations paragons of virtue and role models to the rest of mankind. And now, imagine if you can, a world inhabited only by Turks and Armenians. It would be hell on earth for critics and dissidents, and heaven on earth for yes-men and brownnosers, who on occasion like to engage in cannibalism. My guess is, after centuries of cohabitation and intermarriage (or is it interfornication?), the pureblooded Turk or Armenian is a figment of our imagination. So must be, by extension, the concepts of Turkishness and Armenishness.

*

The more you learn, the more aware you become of what you don’t know. Only the ignorant brag about their knowledge.

*

Gaston de Levis: “Of all sentiments, pride is the most difficult to fake.”

*

Barbey D’Aurevills: “It is that which we don’t understand that we try to explain.”

*

Paul Léautaud: “I believe in dictionaries.”

#