as i see it - Pt. III

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

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

I have at no time experienced Turkish ferocity

on my own skin – I have read about it

but never experienced it.

But I have come close – damn close:

I have experienced Armenian hostility.

And what has been my worst transgression?

Trying to share my understanding.

*

About convictions, certainties, and faith:

If the braying of an ass is louder

than the whisper of a wise man,

does that mean the ass knows better?

*

Fools and fanatics read not to learn

but to justify their hatred.

*

In 1915 we were massacred as a nation:

why can't we behave as one today?

*

We are so used to modifying history

with our own brand of nationalist propaganda that

any assessment that may be remotely objective

is branded as pro-Turkish.

*

To hate those who have injured us:

what could be easier?

To love them: what could be more difficult?

But what if both hate and love are,

in this context, irrelevant

and what matters is taking care of business

by doing what must be done?

[ara baliozian]

MOUSETRAP

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

It is a mistake to use the mind

as if it were a disposable mousetrap

good for catching only one mouse

and in the process of catching it

to kill it.

An idea is not a dead end;

it is a living organism in an endless chain reaction

of assertion, contradiction and synthesis.

In saying this I am saying nothing new,

only paraphrasing the teachings of philosophers

from Socrates and Plato

to Hegel and Marx.

What killed Bolshevism was Bolsheviks

who appear to have forgotten or ignored

Marx’s dialectic and his assertion

"I am not a Marxist."

And what prevents us from solving our problems

and moving forward is our obsession

with received platitudes such as

first nation to accept Christianity and

first nation to suffer a genocide in the 20th century.

[ara baliozian]

THE LEVANT

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

The Levant has not been kind to Armenians.

It has made them mercenary,

which means more materialistic, unprincipled,

cunning, and philistine.

I am not saying all Armenians from

the Middle East are crooks.

What I am talking about here is

the dominant mentality, which no doubt,

like every dominant mentality,

has produced resistance,

and sometimes even active opposition

in a non-representative minority.

*

To say that the Levant has done

more harm than good to our ethos

is to state the obvious.

Think of our medieval architecture,

liturgical music, and illuminated manuscripts:

they are quintessential manifestations of our voki

and it is this very voki that the Levant negates.

*

"Money is rust and dirt in the hands;

to taste it is like eating one’s own flesh,"

Khachatur Abovian tells us.

And more: "Man must sell his soul

in order to covet money."

*

I see no connection between

our authentic self and the Levantine mentality.

They are both Armenian only in the sense that

Bach’s music and the Nazi ideology are German –

but the one might as well be a contradiction of the other.

[ara baliozian]

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS

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

In 1998 I published a book titled

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS in which I raised

a few questions about our present situation,

among them the following two:

"If the threat of annihilation in 1915

could not unite us, what can?

If we remain as divided today as we were then,

what have we learned?"

In the acknowledgments of that book

I mentioned the names of 25 friends

whose encouragement and support I enjoyed

and to whom I dedicated the book.

On rereading these names

I notice that nearly half of them

are no longer on speaking terms with me.

It can truly be said of Armenian friends:

Easy come, easier go.

If keeping Armenian friends means

subscribing to anti-Semitism, racism,

fascism, Stalinism and similar aberrations,

I suppose I shall die friendless.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 20, 2002

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

Endless tribal conflicts,

deranged fanatics preaching fear and hatred,

and ultimately war and massacre,

and countless dupes willing to kill and die.

No, I am not talking about Armenians and Turks

but the human condition.

Why do these things happened?

We may never know the answer

but in our efforts to find it

we may expose many lies.

*

I dream of the day when odars will learn Armenian

and Armenians themselves will speak only one language:

their own. Dreams are cheap, they say;

which is why the poor have as many of them

as the rich have privileges and luxuries.

*

I once knew an old lady in her eighties

who bragged about her devotion to honesty

and was honest enough to admit that

she had no friends but many enemies.

Such is life.

*

Once in a while I am urged to read the Bible.

Millions have read it and will continue to read it

but can anyone say the world has been

or will be a better place as a result?

*

In his old age, Tolstoy – an intensely religious person –

was not averse to uttering profanities

in his private conversations with fellow writers

like Chekhov and Gorky.

I am reminded of the Mekhitarist monk

who used four-letter words in his Armenian translations

of Greek classics and this

long before D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller.

[Sip]

I think Diogenes would have been happy to finally find an honest man, but then would have slapped me in the face for my lack of self control in bringing up a point that ended up corrupting a whole thread ...

[nairi]

So what happens if we take Diogenes into account?

[ara baliozian]

Monday, October 21, 2002

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

When dissidents are silenced,

the bloodthirsty grow fat on the blood of the innocent.

*

Both Zohrab and Shahnour asserted that

the word prostitution should be used more often

in our environment.

*

A fanatic would rather walk a thousand miles

in the opposite direction to misunderstand you

than take a single step in your direction

to understand you.

*

For a fool, winning an argument

is more important than opening his mind.

*

I don't hate Jews, only Zionists.

DEATH TO JEWS!

I don't hate Americans only the American government.

DEATH TO AMERICA!

*

Crusade is an anti-Islam word, granted;

but what about jihad?

What kind of word is that?

*

God helps those who help themselves

even when they go against His will.

Example: men or nations bent on suicide.

*

Some Armenians, define Armenianism

as murderous hatred for anyone

who dares to disagree with them.

It follows, disagreement and treason

might as well be synonymous,

and, as everyone knows,

treason is a crime punishable by death.

Other synonyms of Armenianism:

Ottomanism, Stalinism, Oxymoronism, moronism

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

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

When a man utters nonsense,

we call him a crackpot and ignore him.

But when a hundred million crackpots speak in unison,

we call it a religion.

*

To how many of our superpatriots – whose unspoken slogan is:

"My country, right or wrong!" – I could say:

Massacres happen because

there are people like you on the other side – people

who subscribe to the very same values and credo,

people with the very same outlook and disposition,

brainwashed, self-righteous, dogmatic, narrow,

and yes, bloodthirsty.

*

Apache Indians, Eskimos, Patagonians, Arabs…:

they all claim God speaks in their own language,

and I say they are all crackpots.

It is common knowledge and an established fact

that God speaks in Armenian,

and I say this not because I am an Armenian

but because it is the truth!

To say otherwise is to utter nonsense!

*

In his POINTS FOR A COMPASS ROSE,

Evan S. Connell, Jr. writes:

"…one thing about the Incas sounds unpleasantly familiar:

they thought they were the Sun God’s favorites.

It’s been suggested that the Incas

might have been descendants of Armenians…."

This may come as a surprise to some but,

speaking for myself,

nothing surprises me any longer.

[nairi]

Actually I do understand you (most of the time), and I respect and learn from your work each time. At the same time, it's true that I like to look at matters from as many angles as possible. Most of the time I end up disagreeing with myself, or changing my mind. Whatever I have posted on this forum so far have been different angles of how I view the world. As such, I may firmly disagree with abortion in one discussion, and firmly agree with it in the next. I do this because I agree and disagree with practically everything. I'm still looking for the one truth, if it exists. Meanwhile, I take life seriously when I have to, and josh when I can (see below).

 

It was my fault. Please don't blame Sipan.

[Sip]

On the bright side, Ara thinks IF there were a million Sips, we would have a new religion

 

[ October 22, 2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

[ara baliozian]

A TOUCH OF EVIL

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

Nice guys don't always finish last.

Sometimes they just don't last.

What is human history if not a cemetery

of tribes, nations, and empires?

If we have come close to extinction

it’s because we were massacred mercilessly

by our enemies; and if we have barely managed to survive

it’s because we did to them

before they had a chance to do it to us.

During World War I, Tolstoy’s daughter

was a nurse in the City of Van.

In her memoirs she writes that

Armenians massacred Turks

with the same savagery

that Turks massacred Armenians.

According to Azeri historians,

our celebrated General Antranik

was a master practitioner of ethnic cleansing

(a euphemism for massacring innocent civilians,

including women and children).

Here is another historic incident

that may also be dismissed as anecdotal evidence.

About a thousand years ago

there was a Byzantine emperor by the name of Basil II

and a Bulgarian czar by the name of Samuel.

They were both warlike rulers with territorial ambitions.

Inevitably, there was a war from which

Basil II emerged victorious.

To render his enemies inoperative

and to pacify his western borders,

Basil had the entire Bulgarian army blinded.

When Czar Samuel saw his blinded army

he had an epileptic fit and died.

And now the punch line:

both Emperor Basil II Bulgaroktonus

(Greek for Bulgar-slayer) and

Czar Samuel of Bulgaria were Armenians.

.

Moral I: Real history is much more interesting

than the bowdlerized version we are taught at school.

.

Moral II: To have had an Armenian education

means to have been systematically moronized.

.

Moral III: To say we are "the good guys"

and our enemies "the bad guys"

is to confuse military inferiority

with moral superiority.

[nairi]

You mean if we had a million Aras, Sipans, Nairis, Vahans and 564312s, we could call it a religion. Why IF though? Don't we already have seven million crackpots (incl. 878 on this forum)?

[nairi]

Because we are all unique, right?

 

Thank god.

 

Agreed.

 

I don't remember saying I didn't have a fixed opinion about ANYTHING. For instance, do I think the Dutch government should FORCE immigrants to integrate (a hot debate at the moment in my country of birth)? I DON'T KNOW. Do I understand why Dutch people want immigrants to integrate? Yes. Do I understand why immigrants do not want to integrate? Yes. It's these kind of issues that leave me confused and without a concrete answer, not whether a nation should be exterminated or not, or whether it's okay to molest children or not.

 

My two pence (please feel free to ignore it or use it as a stimulant in your next essay): what you recognize in others is what you are yourself. And, the stupidest people are those who call others stupid.

 

The emphasis of my course is on literary criticism. Does this mean I understand everything, know better and am wiser? NO! But you can't blame me if I treat your work in the same way as I treat Shakespeare and Chaucer's (sorry!).

 

If literary criticism equals attacking an author, then you might as well stop writing, because insulting an author is not in the course program. Joshing is one thing, insulting another. So far I've merely asked you questions. That's all.

 

If there's anything unclear about my reply, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll be glad to provide you with a decent answer.

 

Nairi

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 24, 2002

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

To understand another does not mean

to adopt his values and worldview.

To understand an Armenian does not mean

to think and feel as an Armenian

in the same way that to understand a Turk

does not mean to think and feel as a Turk.

Understanding should not be confused

with surrendering one’s identity as well as humanity.

And yet, this is exactly what we are expected to do

by those who feel misunderstood.

*

If truth shall set you free,

lies shall enslave you;

and very much like truth,

lies do not recognize racial, religious,

ideological, and tribal barriers.

Soviet lies are as bad as Ottoman lies,

and Armenian lies are worse than both

because their aim is neither oppression nor exploitation

but cannibalism.

*

You may say what you wish about the Turks

and I will not contradict you.

But let us agree on this:

Turks have coined many lovely and

sayings and expressions. For instance:

when someone makes an unwarranted assumption

hostile to their image or interests, they say:

"Yedii boka bak!"

Words are easy to translate but not

their music and rhythm.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, October 25, 2002

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

Is it possible to systematically moronize

a person of average intelligence

by brainwashing him to believe that

he is just about the smartest operator around,

so that he no longer cares what he says

and he ends up uttering nonsense worthy of a crackpot?

Is it possible to moronize an entire nation that way?

Isn't that what the Nazis did?

Didn't they mongolize Germany by chanting the slogan

DEUTSCHLAND, DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES?

Gentle reader, suppose I were to tell you,

I don't hate Arabs but I support people

who advocate their extermination;

or, I love Arabs, they are nice folk,

but the world would be a better place

if they were all driven into the desert to die of thirst;

or, Arabs are wonderful folk,

DEATH TO ARABS!…

Suppose I were to say these things:

what would you think of me?

No need for an answer.

May I guess?…

[ara baliozian]

LATER

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

About my critics:

I read them only when I am in need of stimulation,

and nothing stimulates me as much as

human arrogance and stupidity.

*

Never judge an Armenian

by the opinion of another Armenian.

Some of our ablest men were shot, silenced, and

betrayed by their fellow Armenians.

As a result, what survives today

is not the best but the worst.

The survival not of the fittest

but of the scum,

and sometimes even

the scum of the scum;

or the lunatic fringe

of the lunatic fringe.

Der voghormia.

Kyrie eleison.

Lord have mercy.

*

It is not easy to share your understanding with readers

who understand everything,

know better,

are wiser.

*

"Hyena with a fountain pen!"

"Running dog of the bourgeoisie!"

In case you are too young to remember,

these were Bolshevik insults

levelled at critics of the Kremlin.

If you cannot criticize the views,

attack the person!

Stalin lives.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, October 26, 2002

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

A hundred years ago an Ottoman sultan

could fornicate with as many as

a thousand concubines,

some young enough to be his granddaughters,

and no one saw anything remotely questionable in that.

That’s because he was not just a political

but also a religious leader.

He represented Allah on earth.

He was accountable only to Allah.

Which means he could fornicate

as well as massacre infidels in His name.

And I can imagine Clinton thinking

of Abdulhamid II and saying to himself again and again,

"Lucky bastard!"

Islam may be repressive and hidebound

to the point of being medieval

but it also has deep pockets of liberalism

for the privileged few.

Allahu akbar!

[ara baliozian]

LATER

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

What do I share with some of my fellow Armenians?

Nothing but an Ottoman background.

A source of degradation rather than pride.

*

In the kingdom of the blind

the one-eyed is king.

But if the kingdom is Armenian,

the one-eyed is blinded too.

Misery likes company, they say,

and envy is tough on the privileged.

*

I don't believe in the moral superiority of the underdog.

I have been an underdog all my life

and I have no illusions about them.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 27, 2002

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

A fundamentalist has been defined as one

who believes the Scriptures

(such as the Bible or the Koran)

contain all the answers to all our past,

present and future problems,

and everything said or written after them

is either repetition or deviation.

If deviation it can't be worth reading or preserving.

So that if all the libraries of the world

were to burn down and only one copy

of the Scriptures remained,

mankind would lose none of its spiritual

and intellectual patrimony.

*

What is the difference between

a Christian and a Muslim fundamentalist?

To answer this question is not easy

because it raises many social, political,

historical, philosophical, theological and semantic issues.

But if I were to somewhat simplify these complexities

and take a rough guess, I would say that

the difference is about the same as that

which exists between a bishop’s b.s.

and a mullah’s merda.

In saying this I realize I may lose

some of my fundamentalist readers

(assuming of course I had one or two to begin with)

and in the process a fraction of my income from royalties.

To which I can only say, So be it.

Allahu akbar!

[ara baliozian]

LATER

********

To believe in a lie

is the best way to understand it.

If I write against organized religions,

ideologies, fascism and other misconceptions and fallacies,

it’s because once upon a time I believed in them,

or rather, I was brainwashed to believe in them

at a time when I was too young and gullible

to think for myself.

*

As a rule the fascism of the underdog

is more to be feared than the fascism of the top dog.

Likewise, the authoritarianism of the imperialist

is not as ruthless as the fascism of the nationalist.

But there is nothing as fierce as

the fanaticism of the tribalist.

*

There is no power on earth

that can stop an Armenian from making

an ass of himself in public and in broad daylight.

Why this should be so is a mystery,

but a mystery not worth investigating.

*

It is easy to be pro-Islam in a Christian environment,

or anti-West in the West,

or anti-American in America.

That’s because all schools of thought, systems,

ideologies, religions, and movements in general

generate their own share of useful

as well as useless idiots whose convictions

are extensions not of knowledge and understanding

but of ignorance, wishful thinking,

and lack of experience.

*

Those who are in need of understanding

refuse to open their minds

as if having a closed mind or

surrendering themselves to a closed system of thought

were something to brag about.

I assure you, my friends, it is nothing of the kind.

History is very clear on this point.

If you doubt my word,

read the works of medieval theologians

and consider the number of orthodoxies, heresies,

and their victims.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, October 28, 2002

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

Some of my readers disagree with me

and that is as it should be.

I would be astonished, perhaps even shocked,

if they all agreed with me because then

it would mean that I have sunk to their level of moronism.

*

Why is it that mighty intellects like some of my critics

who appear to know and understand everything

waste their precious time reading

a minor scribbler like myself?

If they were to concentrate more

on sharing their wisdom perhaps then

our chances of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

would increase drastically.

*

If you think ideas or abstractions are worthless commodities

invented by idle minds, consider the important role

that the invention of the cipher zero

has played in the history of mathematics and the sciences.

Progress advances on invisible wheels.

*

Some people collect stamps; I collect insults.

At one time or another I have been insulted

by partisans, poets, shoemakers, janitors,

charlatans, flunkies, hooligans, Oriental carpet dealers,

physicians, fascists, fanatics, friends and relatives.

An archbishop once told me,

"If you decide to establish yourself in Armenia,

they will take good care of you there!"

To this day I cannot get rid of the suspicion that

he spoke not as a concerned clergyman

but as a mafia don.

*

There is one thing that I like about our anti-Semites.

When exposed they protest violently that

they are nothing of the kind

and if they hate some Jews

their hatred is fully justified;

and they appear to be too naïve to see

the oxymoronism of their position.

Did I say too naïve?

Strike that. Make it either too ignorant or too obsessive.

On second thought ignorant is out too.

I could never trust an Armenian

who pleads ignorance after asserting again and against

that he knows better because he is smarter.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

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

Trading insults with individuals is a waste of time.

Why insult a single individual

if you can insult a whole class of them?

Why insult fools or charlatans

if you can expose them?

*

Is calling a fool a fool an insult?

Not if he is a loud-mouth brainwashed moron

who thinks he is smart enough to insult

far better men than himself.

*

Is calling an anti-Semite an anti-Semite an insult?

Not if he pretends to be the soul of tolerance

and supports bloodthirsty fanatics

with a genocidal hatred of Jews.

*

Am I being undiplomatic?

Allow me to reply with an anecdote.

When warned not to spit on the floor,

Diogenes is said to have spat at his host’s face

explaining he could not find a baser receptacle.

*

According to Confucius,

if you recompense hatred with love,

then how do you recompense love?

I am quoting from memory but you get my drift.

*

I once met an Armenian who bragged about the fact that

he was born in a house with a thousand books

after which he proceeded to demonstrate his total ignorance

of a thousand and one subjects.

Gide was right when he said:

"It is when we brag that we expose our limitations."

If only braggarts were smart enough

to keep their traps shut.

*

There is knowledge and then there is

Potemkin-village type knowledge

whose sole aim is to dazzle the uninformed.

I will let you guess as to the value

of this type of knowledge.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

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

When asked to suggest a good name

for a future Hollywood star,

Humphrey Bogart is said to have replied:

"How about Dungg Heap?"

Does Cher know the Armenian word for urine?

*

The name of Diogenes came up recently.

It is said that when caught masturbating in public

and in broad daylight and reprimanded by passersby,

he explained: "I wish I could satisfy my hunger too

by fondling my belly."

*

If you were to ask:

"What are you doing here?

Haven't you got anything better to do?"

I would reply that I am gathering the material for a book.

But perhaps you don't consider that a worthwhile enterprise.

*

About the Pope and contraception:

If in a thousand years the population explosion

reaches unprecedented and unforeseen dimensions,

what then?…

*

One of my cousins despises me

because he thinks writing is a silly game

of mirrors and smoke played by idle people

incapable or unwilling to do anything useful.

He is a taxi driver.

His contempt for writers is shared by many,

and I don't mean charlatans, mullahs,

ayatollahs, bishops and archbishops,

but also commissars, partisan editors, merchants….

Do you want me to name names?

The trouble with that is that

by naming one or two or even twenty-two

the rest may think of themselves as beyond criticism.

*

The Turks will never admit responsibility for the Genocide.

There is no power on earth that can open the mind of an Armenian

that has decided to keep it closed.

You may not see any connection between these two statements,

but I see them as two sides of the same coin.

*

If you are familiar with Hindu religious art

you may agree with me that one culture’s ****ography

is another culture’s religion;

or, to put it more succinctly:

it takes all kinds.

*

"Our Father Who art in heaven."

This sentence makes no sense to a Buddhist

because Buddhism is a godless religion.

Did you know that the number of atheists

exceeds the number of both Christians and Muslims combined?

[ara baliozian]

LATER

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

As a boy Gourgen Mahari spent a number of years

in an Armenian orphanage.

In his memoirs he quotes extensively

from the diary he kept there.

Here are two typical entries:

*

"Ardash’s mother came today and found Ardash.

She wept. Ardash wept too.

The orphans came and they too wept.

The young ladies of the orphanage came and wept also.

We all wept. And of course I too wept.

We had a wonderful time."

*

"Something very nice and strange happened today.

Miss Nazig and I went to her room

and saw our reflection in a mirror.

Beautiful no? she said.

Yes, it was beautiful.

And then she said: Who is taller, you or me?

And of course she was the taller one.

And then she said:

And now give me a kiss and go to bed.

I kissed her. And then she said,

Kiss me here too, and here.

And I kissed her.

It was a day unlike any other today."

*

Had he written in English,

Mahari would now be considered a precursor

of Gertrude Stein and Hemingway.

*

A Turk once wrote a letter to the editor

of our local paper and said

his fellow countrymen have been unfairly accused

of many crimes against humanity

but the truth is the West had committed

similar and worse crimes in the Middle Ages.

When no one objected to this line of reasoning

I wrote a letter to the same editor and said:

The West had somewhat advanced since the Middle Ages

and perhaps the time was ripe for Turkey to do likewise.

*

When the son misbehaved,

the Romans slapped the father.

Roman jurisprudence was not big

on the insanity plea either,

as the following legal maxim may suggest:

"Let him who sins when drunk

be punished when sober."

In this connection let me also mention

George Bernard Shaw who believed

insane criminals should be punished much more severely

because they were more unpredictable and dangerous to society.

What about bloodthirsty fanatics willing and eager

to kill and die in the name of God?

*

What happened to our Baronians and Odians?

Would anyone dare to write like them today?

Has something gone seriously wrong with our sense of humor?

Were we more open to satire under the Red Sultan?

You may not think of such things but I do.