as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 13, 2007

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“YOU REPEAT YOURSELF!”

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Who doesn’t?

First nation this, first nation that, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money)…At least when I repeat myself I don’t send you a bill.

*

I repeat myself? When was the last time you heard one of our sermonizers or speechifiers speak in favor of sin or Turks. Why single me out? Because I refuse to flatter your ego? Is that how you classify your fellow men and their ideas? Only brown-nosers are welcome because they speak the truth? Everyone else is either an enemy or a liar?

*

Our speechifiers and sermonizers never give up telling us we are right because god and truth are on our side. Isn’t that what their mullahs do too? What if both them and us are brainwashed by identical sets of charlatans who speak with a forked tongue?

I am not casting aspersions. I am only asking questions.

#

 

 

[ara baliozian]

Friday, September 14, 2007

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MICE THAT ROAR

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A good example of an irrefutable argument, Armenian style: What I say is right not because it is right but because I say so, and if you dare not to take my word for it, you deserve to die.

*

There is a Pope of Rome in all of us. We assume to be infallible when we argue, and we argue as if what we say not only matters but it may also change the course of history.

*

I have yet to hear an Armenian say, “After reading Naregatsi, Raffi, or Zarian, I changed my mind about my fellow Armenians.” If our greatest intellects cannot change anyone’s mind, what can we hope to achieve, except perhaps to expose ourselves as pompous asses.

*

There is this about a pompous ass: no need to deflate him. Leave him alone and he will inflate himself until he self-destructs.

*

When Shakespeare coined the phrase “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” I have no doubt whatever he had an Armenian discussion forum in mind. How do I know this? The way you know everything: I feel it in my gut.

*

My take on the human condition in general and ours in particular: crooks feel more at home in a crooked world and they will do their utmost to keep it that way.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, September 15, 2007

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THEORIES

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A foreign traveler (I forget his name – may have been Lynch) once said that there are two distinct types of Armenians: the honest, hard-working peasant born and raised on Armenian soil, and the Levantine merchant whose number one concern is the bottom line. This traveler did not live long enough to observe the evolution of the naïve peasant into a murderous commissar infinitely more ruthless than the most cynical Oriental carpet dealer of the Diaspora.

*

I had nothing to do with World War I that reduced my parents into penniless orphans and refugees. Neither did I have anything to do with World War II during which I spent my childhood in a ghetto as a “Turkish gypsy.” But after that every major source of misery has been my own doing. I say this to point out two morals: (one) no one gets away with anything, and (two) we are our own worst enemies. Consider the two first stories in Genesis: Eve tempts Adam, and Cain kills Abel.

*

There are a number of theories explaining why we survived where many others perished. One of them maintains the reason we survived is that we are not biodegradable. Is that good or bad? It depends. If you ask an ecologist he will say being non-biodegradable is not good for the environment. You may now draw your own conclusions.

#

 

[Louise]

Saturday, September 15, 2007

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THEORIES

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There are a number of theories explaining why we survived where many others perished. One of them maintains the reason we survived is that we are not biodegradable. Is that good or bad? It depends. If you ask an ecologist he will say being non-biodegradable is not good for the environment. You may now draw your own conclusions.

#

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My experience is that it is impossible to eradicate a whole population, be they human beings, or insects, plants, microbs, because all units are different and there are always some ones which escape. I heard that in Hiroshima . flies have not been irradiated. If not the flies, may be another kind of living being.

[ara baliozian]

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My experience is that it is impossible to eradicate a whole population, be they human beings, or insects, plants, microbs, because all units are different and there are always some ones which escape. I heard that in Hiroshima . flies have not been irradiated. If not the flies, may be another kind of living being.

 

what about the dinosaurs? / ara

[Louise]

what about the dinosaurs? / ara

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The problem with the dinosaure is that he has a very small brain and very big body

And he wants to lead the world

 

[nairi]

what about the dinosaurs? / ara

 

Crocodiles survived.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 16, 2007

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UNDER FIRE

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The law of the jungle says if you are alone, you will be vulnerable to predators. There is a biological (i.e. primitive and unconscious) component in patriotism: we identify with God and Country to be less vulnerable. It follows, anyone who questions the legitimacy of our faith and patriotism (like yours truly) is an enemy that deserves to be verbally abused, chastised, and whenever possible, silenced. This type of reasoning ignores the fact that if I dissent it may be because, instead of uniting us, God and Country have done the exact opposite – they have divided us not only from the rest of mankind but also from one another. Common sense and history (i.e. reality and facts) are on my side here. A religion or ideology that preaches solidarity and brotherhood but practices division and fragmentation ends up legitimizing prejudice, hatred, war, and massacre, in other words, the law of the jungle. The only thing God and Country have done for us so far is to allow the ephemeral feeling or illusion of being less vulnerable. Now then, how fair are some of my patriotic readers when they estimate the value of my person and work somewhere below their “spittle,” “vomit,” and “sh**”? And the following in reference to my person: “This mother-f***ing Turcophile son-of-a-bitch should not be permitted to post his garbage on this forum and must be kicked out forthwith!” No doubt the sentiments of an ardent patriot who may inspire patriotism in others.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Crocodiles survived.

 

my guess is, if a dinosaur (the carnivorous species) met a croc, he would have him as an appetizer.

[Louise]

Sunday, September 16, 2007

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UNDER FIRE

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The law of the jungle says if you are alone, you will be vulnerable to predators.

quote

 

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All the society says that man must not stay alone. He must belong to a community.

Homere said that a man "apolis" is a civil war

Herodote wrote: no humain being isolated can be self_sufficient

 

All that is wrong. There has been lonely men, who have been most happy: ermits, wanderings, shamans, centrifugals, solitaries, who have been the happiest men.

 

[ara baliozian]

Monday, September 17, 2007

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ON OUR COLLECTIVE IQ

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In a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper I read the following: “…by funding more than one public system we are wasting our valuable dollars on bureaucracies.”

In another letter, a reader comments on the promises of politicians: “This is just garbage and we all know it. It is time to make politicians responsible for their words and actions.”

In still another letter a reader comments on the “shallow dogmatism and irrational rhetoric” of his fellow Canadians.

*

It is not at all unusual for a fool to assess himself as smart, and the distance from smart to very smart, and from very smart to smartest might as well be invisible to the naked eye. But if I were to rate our collective political IQ, I would place it somewhere between Latvians and Albanians. Why Albanians? Because they too think they are just about the smartest people on earth. For more on this subject see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, one of the very best books ever written about countries on the Mediterranean coast. According to Theroux, Albanians think as they do because they were brainwashed by their own leadership. Does that ring a bell?

*

If I write in this vein it’s not because I am anti-Armenian but because I have seen the light of objectivity and impartiality. The question we should ask but we never do is: to what extent our status as perennial victims may be said to be an extension of our collective single-digit IQ? And if you say we have been victimized because we are only sardines in a pool of sharks, I say biology may be destiny in the animal kingdom but not in Homo sapiens, and that our size and vulnerability is a direct result of our political moronism and nothing else. I could prove this with almost mathematical precision by quoting our own writers from Yeghishe (5th century) to Zarian (20th century)(*) but I won’t even try because I know an Armenian cannot convince another Armenian of anything, and if an odar were to try, he would be promptly dismissed as a Turcophile which in our lexicon means the lowest form of animal life.

*

FOOTNOTE

(*)See my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS, which contains relevant passages from the two writers mentioned above as well as many other Armenian and odar observers.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

 

 

these happy hermits

have been the exception rather than the rule;

history is made by unruly mobs led by charlatans.

Edited September 17, 2007 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

. Edited September 17, 2007 by ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

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DARKNESS AT HIGH NOON

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Polybius: “Knowledge of the past is the readiest means men can have of correcting their conduct.”

*

Knowledge of the past or understanding history does not mean who did what to whom, where, when, and number of victims – that’s journalism not history – but where did we go wrong?

*

Why is it that he who has seen the light of faith becomes blind to the light of reason? Why is it that when it comes to belief systems, one man’s light is another’s darkness? If two men have seen the light and they disagree with one another, it may be because one of them or both cannot tell the difference between light and darkness.

*

I write as I do because I cannot stomach the spectacle of a poltroon who, after learning one or two things, sits on his fat ass with the conviction that he knows everything he needs to know, when in fact all he knows are a handful of newspaper headlines and a couple of slogans that flatter his ego.

*

On the subject of the Genocide, we speak like jihadists who have seen the light of truth, and the truth is: they are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. If it took us six hundred years to reach that “obvious” and “self-evident” truth, it may be because either they are consummate dissemblers or we are not as smart as we think we are.

*

Between a lie that flatters his ego and a truth that exposes his limitations, a man will invariably choose the lie, and he will compound the felony by calling it the light of truth. I am reminded of a passage in the Bible that goes something like this (I quote from memory and I paraphrase): “If you think you are smart, be a fool so that you may be really smart.” And I say, amen to that!

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

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MARK MY WORDS

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Dissent is unpatriotic only in an environment where propaganda is truth.

*

Never make the mistake of thinking that your status as underdog or victim bestows on you any kind of superiority. If power corrupts, so does weakness. If money is the root of all evil, so is the lack of it.

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Where there are Armenians there will be disagreements, not the kind that are only stages in a dialogue that move towards consensus, but dead-end disagreements that are nothing but dogmatic assertions in a closed system of thought, and closed systems of thought are favored by closed minds.

*

If I ever regain my childhood faith in God, one of my first prayers (repeated thereafter daily) will be: “Dear Lord, give me a critic who has not undergone a frontal lobotomy or is in no need of professional help.”

*

Memo to a pompous ass:

If tomorrow we vanish from the face of the earth, my guess is we will make fewer headlines than Britney Spears’ haircut or O.J.’s most recent shenanigan.

#

 

[Louise]

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

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MARK MY WORDS

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Memo to a pompous ass:

If tomorrow we vanish from the face of the earth, my guess is we will make fewer headlines than Britney Spears’ haircut or O.J.’s most recent shenanigan.

#

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But our children at school learn the etruscan history

 

[ara baliozian]

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But our children at school learn the etruscan history

 

i suspect we rate below the etruscans...and we nenever studied their history...and if we did, i don't remember a single line of it.../

[Louise]

The same thing may happen to our poor armenian people.

One day, somebody will talk about them and may be it will

be a big success.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 20, 2007

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ON WRITING AND READING

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Well-adjusted readers see humor in my writings; others see gloom and doom, even treason and betrayal. The only way to explain these contradictory reactions is to say that because I speak of reality, readers project their perception of their own reality onto me. Briefly stated, they read between the lines, which also means they don’t read me, they read themselves.

*

Notwithstanding the verbal abuse leveled against my person, I intent to go on writing because it is not unreasonable to hope that just because someone speaks like a fool today, he will continue to think like a fool tomorrow. Foolishness, like youth and inexperience, are not permanent conditions but transitory stages.

*

Speaking of minor local historians, the equivalent of our present-day Turcocentric pundits, Polybius comments: “We cannot obtain a comprehensive view from writers of mere episodes. For indeed some idea of a whole may be got from a part, but an accurate knowledge and clear comprehension cannot. Wherefore we must conclude that episodical history contributes exceedingly little to the knowledge and grasp of universal history.” O how I wish Armenians read more historians, real historians, as opposed to monomaniacal ghazetajis “of mere episodes.”

*

A ghazetaji writes what everybody knows – that’s his way of flattering his readers into thinking they know and understand all they need to know and understand because they are just about the smartest people on earth. To a traumatized ego, flattery is manna.

#

[ara baliozian]

The same thing may happen to our poor armenian people.

One day, somebody will talk about them and may be it will

be a big success.

 

poor armenian people?

i suspect our poverty, like the poverty of hermits, is self-imposed.

if some day we run out of enemies, we will be our worst enemies.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, September 21, 2007

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PHENOMENA

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For 1500 years our writers failed to penetrate the thick skulls of our Neanderthal leaders and their assorted dupes, hirelings, and brown-nosers. And yet, I go on as if there were a glimmer of hope that this shituation (sic) is about to change. Call me an optimist, though I have also been called a pessimist.

*

I repeat myself only in the eyes of those who read me daily, faithfully, and religiously. But being of modest disposition, I operate on the assumption that most of my readers read me once or at most twice a year, and by the time they read for the second time, they have completely forgotten what they read the first time. In that sense, I do not repeat, I remind.

*

An Armenian who has a score to settle with Turks, will also have a score to settle with his fellow Armenians; and if some day he succeeds in settling all his scores, he will have an unsettled score with himself. If memory serves, it was Nietzsche who said, “In time of peace the warlike man fights with himself.”

*

There are so many books on how to succeed that I can see a time when being a failure will be more interesting, unusual, and fashionable.

*

With every new enemy, I also acquire a new source of inspiration. In that sense I owe more to my hostile readers than to my friendly ones who seldom or never comment on my things perhaps because they no longer read me – and why should they if I express thoughts, which are also theirs?

*

I have had several friends who after a minor political disagreement became enemies, and not just garden-variety enemies, but Armenian enemies, i.e. enemies unto death. Which only means that they were never friends, only potential enemies. But then that’s what an Armenian can ever be at his very best – never a friend, only a potential enemy. In defense of Armenians, may I add that, if we are to believe President Truman (“You want a friend? Get a dog!”) this is not an exclusively Armenian phenomenon.

#

 

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, September 22, 2007

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CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

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That’s what I have been doing; and if you say anyone can do that, I suggest you think twice before quitting your day job. Far better men than myself have been arrested or assassinated for doing exactly that. That’s because if you call a spade a spade, the chances are sooner or later you will end insulting men with egos the size of Goliath, Godzilla, and King Kong combined.

*

POLITICS AND HISTORY

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Political leaders will invariably favor a version of history in which their blunders are covered up. It follows; a historian that enjoys the support of a power structure has allowed his objectivity to be contaminated by propaganda.

*

TO BRAG OR NOT TO BRAG

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Our survival is a positive if we were destined to perish. It is a negative if we were meant to be an empire or a force to be reckoned with.

*

STAGES

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Life advances through many stages, and the truth of one stage becomes the lie of another. We either move forward to the next stage or come to terms with a lie, which also means silencing anyone who dares to call a spade a spade.

*

ON VERBAL ABUSE

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Verbal abuse may intimidate some and stimulate others. So far it has stimulated me. As for our Goliaths, Godzillas, and King Kongs: they are only paper tigers.

#

 

[Louise]

poor armenian people?

i suspect our poverty, like the poverty of hermits, is self-imposed.

if some day we run out of enemies, we will be our worst enemies.

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Even if I was a millionnaire I would not change nothing in my living:

the "minimum vital".

If the Armenians were poor they would not have been eliminated.

It is because they were rich, and all people around them were poor

and wanted their houses and gold and cattle.

The Armenians' interest is to be poor.

As soon as they become rich they will be killed.

[ara baliozian]

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Even if I was a millionnaire I would not change nothing in my living:

the "minimum vital".

If the Armenians were poor they would not have been eliminated.

It is because they were rich, and all people around them were poor

and wanted their houses and gold and cattle.

The Armenians' interest is to be poor.

As soon as they become rich they will be killed.

 

armenians worship ther millionaire-benefactors. who, according to Raffi, are the lowest scum on earth.

armenians also brag about their moral superiority.

but a morally superior being does not brag.

moral superiority and bragging are mutually exclusive concepts.

furthermore, to assert any kind of superiority is racist.

[Louise]

armenians worship ther millionaire-benefactors. who, according to Raffi, are the lowest scum on earth.

armenians also brag about their moral superiority.

but a morally superior being does not brag.

moral superiority and bragging are mutually exclusive concepts.

furthermore, to assert any kind of superiority is racist.

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Even if they don't brag, they think they are morally superior.

You cannot prevent a thought to cross your mind.