as i see it - Pt. I

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 12, 2002

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

In a recent interview in the NEW YORK TIMES,

and speaking of the characters of his latest film, THE TOWN IS QUIET,

Robert Guediguian is quoted as having said:

Most of them have no real concept of the world.

They go step by step, struggling, without thinking of the big picture.

They have lost their sense of direction and their beliefs.

But how can one live without some plan,

some sort of hope for the future?"

To those who accuse me of spreading despair, I say:

only at the spectacle of those who accept the status quo

as an inevitable fact of life

and those who have become virtuosos

in the performance of the blame game:

they blame the massacres on the Turks,

the exodus on the earthquake and the war in Karabagh,

and our high alienation/assimilation rate

on socio-cultural-historical conditions beyond our control.

As for our tribalism, Philistinism, dogmatism, and above all,

contempt for free speech and selfless intellectual labor:

we don't even like mentioning them and those who do

are dismissed as enemies.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 13, 2002

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

We are all brought up (I prefer, brainwashed) to believe either God,

reason, or the majority is on our side. What we are not told is that we

can't all be right and it is much more probable that we are all wrong.

Even a so-called majority (when real) may be ephemeral or based on an

illusion or misconceptions. Think of the Romans versus Christians, Nazis

versus inferior races, Stalinists versus dissidents. And closer to come,

consider the situation of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire who

thought they had reason, God, and the Great Powers on their side. And

consider the situation of the ARF today: a member of the ARF or any other

political party for that matter is brought up to believe reason is on his

side. He reads the ARF press, he frequents ARF community centers and

participates in ARF activities, he is exposed to the ARF version of our

recent past, and is thus convinced the majority is or should be on his

side and anyone who disagrees with him is at best a second-class

Armenian, perhaps even an enemy that should be silenced, and whenever

political conditions permit it, shot.

In short: the world is populated by morally superior scumbags and

smart-ass imbeciles who oppress and murder in the name of God, Truth,

Reason, and a majority that is only a projection of their own arrogance

and stupidity.

To those who say: What about you? Are you always right? My answer is: I

have spent the second part of my life proving the first half wrong, and I

can only hope that there will never come a time when I will say ignorance

is better than knowledge, or violations of human rights morally superior

to respect for human rights, or fascism is better than democracy.

[ara baliozian]

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

[13 January, 2002]

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

1.

People who ignore good advice have no right to say

"What was bound to happen, happened!" or

"It was written!" or

"It was God's will!"

2.

It is an unfortunate fact that

some people tend to confuse kindness and civility with weakness.

I hate rude people and I hate being rude.

But what I hate even more is being intimidated or shouted down

by morally superior scumbags and

smart-ass imbeciles.

3.

Patriotic poetry has as much appeal to me

as patriotic music, patriotic art, and patriotic science.

Frankly, I'd rather watch a TV commercial

than read our patriotic poets

at least TV commercials seldom last more than a few seconds.

4.

There is money in flattering idiots, especially wealthy idiots.

There is no money in calling them idiots.

That's why Socrates bragged about his poverty.

5.

I wish I were a good actor

so that I could drive my enemies nuts

by pretending to love them.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 14, 2002

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

1.

Perhaps I should warn my readers that I don't write as a writer,

or as an Armenian, or for that matter, as that most contemptible of all

beings:

an Armenian writer.

Once upon a time I did write as an Armenian writer --

a nightmarish experience I wouldn't wish on a Turk.

I write instead as a human being who happens to be an Armenian

√ a condition and an identity imposed on me by circumstances beyond my

control.

2.

Again and again I have to deal with Armenians

(and I don't mean average joes

but doctors, lawyers, and academics)

who insult, threaten, and bully me and call it criticism.

To how many of them I could say:

"I have worked for Armenians long enough to know

the difference between a critic and a commissar of culture,

or, for that matter,

between a commissar of culture and an executioner;

and you, my good friend, are neither a critic nor a commissar!"

And to those who blame it all on our Ottoman or Soviet background,

I say: "My own experience tells me,

there are no good guys and bad guys,

only bad guys, worse guys, and their victims.

If you want to change the world,

begin with yourself

and may the Good Lord (if He exists)

have mercy on your soul (if you have one).

Amen!"

[ara baliozian]

PARTISANS AND PREACHERS

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

1.

We are afraid of the unknown, so we invent a god whom we call our father;

and when things go wrong, we put the blame on ourselves √ or rather:

those who make a living by preaching the word of god, blame it on man▓s

sinful disposition and loss of faith. A win-win situation for the

preachers; a lose-lose situation for the victims.

2.

In a recent issue of HORIZON (an Armenian-language ARF publication in

Montreal), I read the following (I quote/translate from memory): "No one

denies that Armenian literature of the Diaspora is in deep crisis, and

what▓s even worse, this is not seen as a subject worthy of

discussion┘.The loss of our literary and cultural profile must be seen as

a symptom of other losses, among them, the loss of our identity."

The writer of these lines is a member of the ARF whose survival depends

on asserting the infallibility of the Party. But a member of the ARF

writing about the demise of Armenian literature is equivalent to a member

of the Communist Party writing about the decline of Russian literature in

the Soviet era.

3.

Elsewhere, in the same issue of HORIZON, I read: "We must not lose faith

in man and that which is divine in man." There you have it: the

identification of a partisan with a preacher.

4.

According to our partisans: the decline of our literature must be seen as

a result of our loss of faith in that which is divine in man, and not in

their contempt for free speech and dissent. Writers are to blame, not the

Party.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

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

1.

I am not paid to lie.

Would I lie for 30 pieces of silver?

That remains to be seen.

But if I ever change my tune,

please feel free to doubt my honesty.

2,

Their holocaust produced many brilliant humorists.

Our Genocide only one or two.

3.

Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks.

Imagine an honest partisan.

4.

After making himself as hateful as he possibly can,

an Armenian will accuse you of hating Armenians.

5.

My father was a law-abiding citizen.

He never said a word against anyone.

No, not even Turks.

He kept to himself.

He kept his distance.

He didn't see anything wrong in that.

Neither did I.

Subservience comes naturally to all Armenians.

But they don't call it subservience.

They call it good citizenship.

They call it respect for authority.

[ara baliozian]

LATER / 15 January, 2002

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

1.

After reading one of my things,

an old friend writes: "I am glad you continue to be a patriotic

Armenian."

I don't have the heart to tell him that

I loathe patriotism.

I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality;

and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.

2.

I have several patriotic readers

who operate on the assumption that

I am always wrong and they are always right,

but they continue to read me

for the simple pleasure of asserting their infallibility.

3.

There are those who think that which is (or the status quo)

has been defined by powers beyond our control

(God, history, the invisible forces of the universe),

and our only option is to understand and accept it

as an inevitable fact of life, very much like death and taxes.

Whereas I think the status quo is a colossal blunder

committed by sadistic morons and incompetent fools

and our only option is to correct it.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

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

Speaking of the coup that toppled him, Gorbachev had this to say in a

recent interview: "They did it because their time was up, and they

couldn't agree to that. They wanted to prolong being in power and keep

it."

This is what all ideologies boil down to: lust for power.

On the one hand you have Marx who had no power and harmed no one; and on

the other, Stalin who murdered millions in the name of Marxism.

It is the same with religions. First comes Jesus. Then the Inquisition,

religious wars, and the Pope saying no to contraceptives. Imagine Jesus

getting involved in the bedrooms of the nation. We are told he befriended

whores. Can you imagine the Pope inviting whores to the Vatican? Signing

a concordat with Hitler, yes! Shaking hands with a whore, never!

And now closer to home, consider our own divisions: our bosses and

bishops will tell you that their disagreements are ideological or

doctrinal, and there will always be naОve souls who will believe them.

But I for one feel fully justified in calling them charlatans whose

number one concern is "to prolong being in power and keep it," and to

hell with the welfare of the community and the integrity of the nation.

[ara baliozian]

LATER [16 January, 2002]

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

1.

All Armenians are my brothers

but only in the sense that all men are my brothers

but only in the sense that Cain was Abel's brother.

2.

Faith can remove only those mountains

that were raised by our own fears, ignorance, and prejudices.

3.

Never judge an Armenian as an Armenian

but as a human being. As a rule,

Armenians who insist on being judged as Armenians

use the flag to hide their true colors.

4.

Identity is revealed not only in what we say,

but also in what we choose not to say.

To the discerning ear,

silence can speak louder than a thousand speeches

delivered by a thousand stentorian speechifiers.

5.

Great nations need big lies;

small nations need bigger lies.

6.

There are many kinds of dupes, but the worst are those

who are easily seduced by the strength of their own arguments.

7.

There is common sense

and there is common humbug and

it is not always easy to tell them apart.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 17, 2002

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

1.

If I repeat myself, what about our sermonizers and speechifiers?

When was the last time anyone heard them deliver a single original line?

2.

In Herman Melville I come across a new word:

"sultanism," meaning the exercise of authority with a touch of sadistic

pleasure.

3.

Nothing nauseates me as much as hearing someone

repeating the very same lies that I believed in twenty or thirty years

ago.

4.

When one of Moliere's characters first delivered the line

"A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant!"

he no doubt alienated several members of the audience.

That's the problem with good lines:

they tend to alienate self-satisfied jackasses.

5.

To those who find me unreadable, I say:

"You obviously have a problem which I will be happy to solve:

stop reading me."

6.

After silencing our ablest writers and promoting partisan mediocrities,

these very same mediocrities are encouraged to publish articles

in which they blame the decline of our literature on an indifferent

public.

7.

A mediocrity will be subservient to any regime or power structure

that gives him a regular salary, or a title, or a uniform,

or the license to persecute better men than himself

there it is: the root of our sultanism.

[ara baliozian]

MAXIMS & REFLECTIONS

#####################################

The ambition of every Armenian dunghill is to be Mt. Ararat.

###

Some people fail only after they achieve success.

###

When midgets are in charge, giants become outlaws.

###

Memoirs by survivors and novels inspired by the massacres:

I am beginning to see them as atrocities by other means.

###

The torch of truth burns many asses.

###

Someday, a solution that creates more problems

will be known as an "Armenian solution."

###

What is the penalty for being wrong?

If nothing, anyone can say anything he wants.

###

To ignore or cover up our problems

is also to reject in advance all possible solutions.

###

The rich are swine. Even as I curse my fate,

I thank God for making me poor.

###

Rude people are easily offended by imagined insults.

###

In a democracy, truth is not a source of terror

because it can be easily buried beneath an avalanche

of harmless half-truths and pleasant lies.

###

We will mature as a nation only

when we take ideas as seriously as money.

###

To be easily satisfied with one’s own arguments

is an unmistakable symptom of mediocrity compounded by narcissism..

###

I like to read a writer who is not infatuated

with the sound of his own voice.

###

Here is a good subtitle for a book on the history of Armenian literature:

"From Casting Pearls Before Swine to Sticking Pins into Swollen Egos."

###

A man who is his own worst enemy cannot be anyone’s friend.

###

From nature’s point of view,

chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion

than all the others put together.

###

Emigration, alienation, assimilation, assassination:

they too may be said to be manifestations of criticism and dissent.

###

At this point in our career as a nation

we have a choice between two sets of leaders:

the bloodsuckers and the charlatans.

Let’s hope and pray we will make the right choice.

###

Show me a man who is an expert on any given subject

and I will show you an Armenian.

[ara baliozian]

INSULTS

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

The reason why I don't always reply to insults is that,

that’s how some of my role models behaved

when I insulted them as a teenager;

and I have every reason to suspect

that’s how those who insult me today

will behave too when twenty or thirty years from now

they are themselves insulted by

smart-ass, loud-mouth, know-it-all hoodlums.

To those who say,

"I did not insult you, yet you ignored me,"

I say: Some of the worst insults are unintentional.

Such as, when a total ignoramus, and not always a teenager,

sincerely believes that he knows better

and is thus in a position to disagree with you.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 20, 2002

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

1.

A writer's function is to explore the human psyche

(beginning with his own)

and to expose its frailties.

As for singing its many virtues:

for everyone who dares to speak the truth,

there will be hundreds willing to parrot seductive clichИs

in exchange of 30 pieces of silver.

2,

Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies;

that's because for every bitter truth

there are a thousand sweet lies

and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.

3.

An Armenian may tolerate himself more readily

if he thinks of himself as a man of principle

who loves God and Country,

rather than as a fanatic who uses his chauvinism

as a license with which to hate anyone who dares to question his

infallibility.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 21, 2002

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

1.

The worst mistake an Armenian can make

is to confuse Turkish venom with Armenian voki.

2.

What stands between us and solidarity

has nothing to do with Armenianism

and everything to do with Ottomanism.

3.

Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus.

Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs.

4.

To have been victimized by the enemy

does not justify victimizing your brother.

5.

What if Armenianism as understood and practiced

by our bosses and bishops is nothing but sugarcoated Ottomanism?

6.

Prejudices are stonewalls erected to obstruct the path of reason.

7.

Give an Armenian enough rope

and he will cut your throat before he hangs himself.

[ara baliozian]

LATER / January 21, 2002

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

1.

People don't speak of sweet truths and soft facts

but of harsh truths and hard facts.

Which may explain why some of my tender-hearted readers

wish to silence, starve, and even shoot me:

that’s their way of expressing a preference for

sweet illusions and soft lies.

2.

Only fools brag.

Decent men are, as a rule,

too busy trying to maintain their decency

in a crooked world to have any time left to brag.

I don't remember to have met a single decent Armenian

who bragged about his Armenianism.

But I have met quite a few windbags with single-digit IQs

who bragged about their moral and intellectual superiority.

3.

He who brags will insult and threaten.

The secret ambition of every windbag

is to be a fire-breathing dragon.

4.

Why is it that whenever one of our eminent authors

writes an honest book he is eager to inform everyone

that it will be published only posthumously?

[ara baliozian]

SEMI-INTELLECTUALS

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

If an Armenian pundit or academic wants to be published in the ARF press

he must be very careful to say nothing remotely critical

about the ARF’s past, present and future.

The same applies to the ADL, AGBU, AAA

and the rest of our alphabet soup organizations,

power structures, bureaucracies and their satellite cultural

institutions.

This is one reason why our academics

specialize in putting the blame of all our problems on others

(Turks, Americans, the opposition, and so on)

thus giving the inexperienced reader the impression that

our bosses can do no wrong and we are in good hands.

Speaking of these academics,

Zarian once called them semi-intellectuals.

A semi-intellectual may thus be defined as one

who specializes in telling only one half of the story

not because he doesn't know the other half

but because he has no desire to acquire the status of a pariah or a

non-person.

As Brecht put it once: "Grub first, then ethics."

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

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

1.

Since theologians have so far (after two millennia) failed to reach a

consensus,

it is safe to assume that only God is qualified to speak about God.

2.

I don't trust the judgment of partisans, politicians, and anyone with

political ambitions.

In my eyes they might as well be in cahoots with the devil.

3.

Most Armenian controversies boil down to:

"My lies are better than your truth!"

4.

From a distance, difficult to distinguish paper dragon from the real

thing

– if you believe in dragons.

5.

Almost every other Armenian writer alive today

has been my friend – until I failed to translate or review his latest

masterpiece.

6.

What if the spotted owl survived because the dinosaurs didn't?

7.

An Armenian will demand your agreement (meaning subservience)

even when he contradicts himself.

8.

Armenian saying:

"It is easy to lust for fame,

much harder to achieve greatness."

9.

The evil is not Turkish, German, Italian, or Russian fascism;

but fascism, period! including Armenian fascism.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 24, 2002

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

At the beginning of my career as an Armenian writer

I was as vulnerable to criticism as an earthworm

crossing a busy intersection at high noon.

After decades of verbal abuse –

and when I speak of Armenian verbal amuse

I mean massacre by other means –

I have become as fortified as a callused crocodile.

Is it possible to be an Armenian among Armenians

without being to some degree Ottomanized?

Why is it that getting involved in Armenian affairs

means trashing and being trashed?

Will I ever forgive a reader who insulted me

or an editor who was my friend when I was dishonest

and became my mortal enemy

when I decided to be more objective?

Even more to the point:

Will my critics ever accept the fact that

honesty and patriotism are not incompatible concepts?

[ara baliozian]

MEMO

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

While we applaud the work of our genocide scholars,

let us also remind ourselves once in a while

that a thousand Dadrians cannot reclaim a single inch of Armenian soil

or minimize by a single iota the suffering of our victims.

Doing the right thing is the best revenge.

As for appeals to the conscience of the world:

the world is too busy with its own real problems

(not to say, past, present, and future massacres)

to afford the luxury of a conscience.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 25, 2002

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

If it’s not religion that leads man astray,

it’s ideology, or self-interest, or the ego, or a childhood trauma.

The safest road to objective assessment is thinking against oneself.

The ancient Greeks knew more about astronomy

than contemporaries of Galileo

because they (Greeks) didn't have the Old Testament to obstruct their

path.

Where there is disagreement and conflict

(and ultimately war and massacre)

you will also find the total absence of objective judgment.

There is no such thing as Japanese and Italian mathematics,

or socialist and capitalist chemistry;

but there are many religions and ideologies,

which amounts to saying:

in the field of faith and politics

there are ten thousand half-truths and lies

for every truth.

It was this fact that prompted a wise man to observe:

"Man cannot create a single earthworm,

yet he has created ten thousand gods."

Which is why I rate the objective judgment of an ordinary citizen

much more highly than

the passionate beliefs of a charismatic genius or messianic figure.

The Chinese are right when they equate

interesting times and great men with trouble.

[ara baliozian]

LATER / January 25, 2002

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Armenia is wherever a single Armenian is allowed to live in peace:

it could be Siberia as easily as Istanbul or New York City.

I say this to point out the fact that

we have friends even among our enemies

and some of our worst enemies may be among us.

There was a time when I thought of Mt. Ararat

as a sacred mountain and of Yerevan

as the most wonderful place on earth.

I know better now.

Mt. Ararat, geologists tell us, is a bad mountain

because it absorbs rain water like a sponge;

and Yerevan is a city like any other industrialized city

with its own share of crime, corruption,

mismanagement, pollution, poverty, filth, and prostitution.

Where I now live may be drab and in the middle of nowhere,

but it has allowed me to work and survive in relative peace

(except for the occasional death threat by a fellow Armenian).

I shiver to think what would have happened to me in Armenia,

where, in the words of a reader in an angry letter to the editor,

"they know how to handle people like you!"

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 26, 2002

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

When recently I quoted Gostan Zarian to the effect that

our political parties have been of no political use to us,

one of our loyal party members reacted by asserting

the same could be said of some of our writers.

I agree that we have produced our share of dupes

and opportunistic mediocrities who recycled propaganda,

composed odes to sultans and commissars,

or, at best, tributes to the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.

But what has been our treatment of writers

who performed their function as writers

(which is understanding reality)?

When Raffi said the Ottoman Empire was no place for Armenians

because the Turks had no respect for human life,

he was ignored. At one point a wealthy Armenian merchant

even hired a Kurdish bandit to have him assassinated.

When Zarian said Soviet despotism was as bad as its Ottoman variant,

he too was ignored with the result that

even writers like Zabel Yessayan and Charents

went on recycling Soviet propaganda.

And when the same Zarian said

"the greatest enemy of our political parties today is free speech,"

he was ostracized, silenced, forced to emigrate to Soviet Armenia

where he was eventually buried alive.

As another one of our writers (Antranik Zaroukian) once asserted:

we are the kind of people who even as we lament the dead,

we see nothing objectionable in crucifying the living.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 27, 2002

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

One reason I reject all claims of moral superiority

is that it is an illusion.

To those who say, if it is an illusion,

surely, it is a harmless one;

I say, there is no such thing as a harmless illusion.

All illusions are harmful if only because

they distort and sometimes even obstruct our understanding of reality.

Because if we are morally superior,

it means we must also be nearer to God,

and with Him on our side we can safely assume

to be less vulnerable to the enemy.

But history, reality, and even the scriptures seem to suggest that

the Good Lord does not favor those who rely too much on Him

and less on themselves.

[ara baliozian]

LATER /27 January, 2002

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

1.

Ideological truths become lies

when they justify violations of human rights,

the first of which is always freedom of speech.

Where there is censorship of ideas

there will be censorship of lives.

Next time you promote censorship,

ask yourself this question:

"Do I really want to legitimize murder

in the name of God and Country?"

2.

The spirit of contradiction in some Armenians

is so highly developed that

if you were to agree with them

they would disagree with you.

3.

May I confess that I don't always read my critics.

It is painful to the extreme reading thoughts

that I entertained as a child but rejected as an adult.

4.

Our dividers never say it is a good thing to divide the nation.

What they say is:

"We are for unity; it’s the other side that divides."

And to think that these are the kind of people

who accuse me of repeating myself.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 28, 2002

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

1.

Hugh Trevor-Roper in THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER:

"The competitive servility of a court is always odious;

combined with eloquent humbug, it is nauseating."

We will grow up as a nation on the day

we produce writers capable of writing such sentences.

2.

We don't know the truth; only fractions of it.

We don't know the past; only versions of it.

Propaganda has been defined as a fraction of the truth.

In that sense, we are all victims of half-truths.

3.

A fanatic who thinks of himself as a moderate

is one who cannot tell the difference between extremism and moderation,

or, for that matter, honesty and charlatanism,

or truth from half truths,

or half-truths and lies.

4.

A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma

at the expense of love and charity, is an invention of the devil.

5.

If your number one concern is taking care of number one,

everyone else is bound to be number two.

This is a rule with only one exception: love.

In love, the other (or number two) becomes number one.