as i see it - Pt. III

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 28, 2003

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The hardest people to convince are those who contradict because they want attention.

*

To recycle propaganda is not sharing your understanding but someone else's lies.

*

A Casanova may write about his conquests, an adventurer about his many exploits, and an explorer about the places he has seen, but a writer can write only about things he didn't understand before but he does now.

*

A man in love is an ass who will bray the same old cliches; but, a man who understands this, will see more wisdom in silence than in empty verbiage.

*

Vanity is the source of all assertions of superiority - be they Jews identifying themselves as the Chosen, or Germans claiming racial superiority. One important difference however: the Jews never went as far as saying they were chosen to exterminate Germans.

*

From Jesus to Freud: Jews have been in the business of casting out demons, and demons have been in the business of multiplying and organizing themselves.

*

Strindberg: "Ever since childhood, I have looked for God and found the devil."

*

Charles Issawi: "Where there are Muslims, there is oil."

 

Monday, December 29, 2003

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Failure may lead to wisdom; success, seldom.

Tolstoy was right when he said: "The higher I rise in the eyes of my fellow men, the lower I sink in the eyes of God."

*

Writing for Armenians is like composing music for a tone-deaf audience or selling vegetables to cannibals.

*

 

I repeat myself? If propaganda relies on repetition, can anti-propaganda do otherwise?

*

Our charlatans and I agree on one thing: we have charlatans among us. Our disagreement is on semantics. They define literature as dung and propaganda as gold.

*

One reason why I prefer to write more about Armenians than Turks is that Turks are beyond my reach. But I am beginning to realize that the more I write about Armenians the greater the distance that grows between us; and I can already see the day when that distance will be almost the same as that which exists between Turks and me.

*

In his NAKED LUNCH, William Burroughs quotes a doctor saying: "Baboons always attack the weakest party in an altercation. Quite right too. We must never forget our glorious simian heritage."

*

I am reminded of the words of a biologist acquaintance of mine: "You don't need psychology, philosophy, sociology or anthropology to understand and explain Armenians: all you need is zoology."

*

The Allah of Muslims and the God of our priests have nothing to do with the real God - assuming He exists, of course.

*

Wilson Mizner: "The worst-tempered people I have ever met were people who knew they were wrong."

*

Translating a writer may be an excellent way of self-discovery because translating means following someone else's line of thought and in doing so becoming aware of one's own.

*

Every Achilles has a heel, every Goliath a David, every Samson a Delilah, every Messiah his Judas, and every Armenian another Armenian.

*

Historians and philosophers disagree because when they speak, they generalize and emphasize. To generalize means to ignore the uniqueness of each phenomenon or occurrence, and to emphasize means to focus on one aspect of reality at the expense of another. Which is why Aristotle contradicted Plato, Schopenauer called Hegel a charlatan,

Freud was followed by Jung, and pro-Capital Keynes questioned Marxism. Which is also why when I focus on the negative, my critics demand that I emphasize the positive and to join them in covering up criminal conduct.

*

And speaking of philosophers: it is useful to remind ourselves once in a while that, after thousands of years of research, speculation and analysis, they have not yet found the answer to the question, why things exist.

*

Science may explain the laws of nature and the forces that move the planets, stars, and galaxies, but it cannot yet explain the existence of a single atom.

*

In life, nothing makes sense. In writing, everything must make sense. Even when I write "nothing makes sense," I introduce an order of meaning, namely, the absence of sense.

*

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Tuesday, December 30, 2003

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Gandhi defined God as Truth; but when he fell by an assassin's bullets, his last words were "Hai Rama!" that is, "O God!" which is closer to "O Father!" than "O Truth!"

*

Nothing comes more easily to a man than to think he is the center of the universe, and even if he were to spend the rest of his life combating this fallacy, he would fail to eradicate it completely.

*

The hardest thing in the world: to practice what you preach. The easiest, to say: "Do as I say, not as I do."

*

After making himself as hateful as he possibly could,

an Armenian once accused me of hating Armenians.

*

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 superiority.

*

All Armenians are my brothers -

but only in the sense that all men are my brothers -

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

*

Raffi: "If you want to save your fellow men

you must be prepared to be crucified by them."

*

Djivani: "Solidarity can move mountains."

(But only those mountains that were erected by our divisiveness. )

*

After witnessing forty years of steady decline and degeneration, I find it extremely difficult to be optimistic. The best I can do is being a pessimist who has lost his faith in miracles, but not quite yet.

*

The danger of ignorance is in its unawareness.

If I know that I don't know,

I am harmless because I will concentrate my efforts

on educating myself - an activity that can harm no one.

But if I don't know that I don't know,

then I might as well be a blind man

negotiating a busy intersection.

*

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "The Devil is most devilish when respectable."

*

[ara baliozian]

Yes Ara I am in agreement with your last posts.Lately I am having a hard time of even having an opinion.I guess it is true that more one knows more one feels how little he knows.

it's always good to know that a fellow armenian agrees.....

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

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To those hungry for solutions, I say: If "the kingdom of God is within you," what makes you think the solutions you are seeking have a different address?

*

The eyes are the windows of the soul: which may explain why most people look better in dark glasses.

*

Man feels the need to assert moral superiority only when he behaves like swine.

*

Only men who cannot tell the difference between God and the Devil claim to have God on their side.

*

If an Armenian engages in verbal massacre only because the real thing is not an option, in what way is he morally superior to a Turk?

*

And if you were to tell me, when it comes to verbal massacre I am in no position to plead not guilty, I will say: If true, why accept me as your role model when you can choose far better specimens than myself?

*

There are those who share their understanding and then there are those who share their hatred. To the first belong Socrates and Gandhi; to the second their assassins and executioners.

*

When it comes to God and life after death, fear and wishful thinking combine to paralyze our powers of perception. Hence, the need of another faculty, namely faith. The contradiction in faith is that, on the one hand it allows us to identify God as our Father, and on the other, to look down on the overwhelming majority of mankind as misguided fools, infidels, dupes, and sometimes even as swine.

*

Krishnamurti: "The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth." And one could add: And if the one you follow claims to follow Truth, you are sure to follow a Big Lie.

*

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Thursday, January 01, 2004

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Why would anyone rise in defense of charlatans unless of course he is himself one of them?

*

A.H. Weiler: "Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself."

*

There are those who plunge the knife; there are also those who after plunging it, give it a twist.

*

If God created the cosmos, who created volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, vipers, cancer, fools, fanatics, and syphilis?

*

One reason I ignore all extremists is that sooner or later they will have to deal with not only with extremists in the opposite camp but also with moderates in their own.

*

Saul Bellow: "The arts of disguise are so well developed that you are sure to undercount the number of bastards you have known."

*

What if love, as it is generally understood, is nothing better than an epidermic imbalance?

*

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Friday, January 02, 2004

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If history makes one thing very clear, it is this: ideologies and religions, and in general all closed systems of thought, twist minds, pervert ideas, corrupt morality, undermine values, and legitimize criminal conduct. If they have done this in the past, what are the chances that they will not do so in the future?

*

To repeat that which is worthy of repetition is to remind, to reinforce, to underline, and to emphasize.

*

Why would anyone lower himself in order to lower his adversary? Unless of course he does not lower himself so much as display his true level.

*

As in Hollywood movies, there are good guys and bad guys in the history books of all nations; and a nation will never portray itself as a bad guy. This is a rule without exceptions.

*

When losers write their own history, they will invariably portray their enemies as wolves, and the wolves will portray themselves as shepherds. Toynbee writes somewhere that, in their Ottoman phase, the Turks portrayed themselves as shepherds and their subject nations and tribes as flocks of sheep in need of their guidance.

*

Single-minded or intense love makes an ass of a man, that's why there is an "ass" in passion.

*

Patriotism allows us to overestimate our good qualities and to underestimate those of our adversaries; it thus effectively perverts our ability to assess a situation objectively and accurately.

Result: at the root of all confrontations that end in defeat and tragedy you will find men who allowed their passion to make asses of themselves.

*

All arguments that prove one side morally superior to another will convince no one but the intellectually inferior.

*

Extremists come in all sizes and shapes; the most dangerous are the ones who consider themselves moderates.

*

How can religions and ideologies legitimize murder in the name of God or a noble cause? The only way to explain this is to say that the slide from good to evil is so gradual that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.

Here are some stages of this descent:

(i) since truth is beyond our reach, let's settle for a half-truth; (ii) since the difference between a half-truth and a lie is small, we might as well settle for a profitable lie; (iii) if a big lie means big profits, then let us leave half-truths and small lies to the weaklings of this world.

*

To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say:

Just because you and I are Armenians, don't think we share anything else in common.

*

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Saturday, January 03, 2004

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If we think of hatred as a quintessentially unChristian or Turkish attribute, to what degree is an Armenian who hates like a Turk is less of an Armenian and more of a Turk?

*

There is a lunatic in all of us.

Most of us behave sanely most of the time not because we are 100% sane but because we are capable of suppressing our lunatic fraction.

*

All nations, societies and organizations generate their lunatic fringe or individuals who cannot suppress their lunatic fraction.

*

Intolerance, prejudice, hatred, wars and massacres are promoted and committed by the lunatic fringe.

*

To believe in a false god is worse than atheism;

and in a world where everyone claims his god is the only true god, all gods must be false.

*

Why are some Armenian patriots phonies?

Because if you disagree with them they turn into Turks.

*

To prepare them to kill and die for their country, every nation teaches its own version of history to its children, and this version of history is related to reality or world history as a sausage is related to a pig.

*

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Sunday, January 04, 2004

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In NATASHA'S DANCE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA by Orlando Figes, I come across the following footnote on page 507: "Stalin's father had been murdered by an axe wrapped in a quilted jacket, and his likely killer, an Armenian criminal who had worked with Stalin for the Tsarist secret police in Tiflis in the 1900s, was killed on Stalin's orders, sixteen years later in 1922, when he was run over by a truck."

*

This may have been a contributing factor in Stalin's pro-Azeri stance on the Karabagh issue. But I suspect an even more important factor was the threat of pan-Turkism. He probably saw dividing Turks as a more real challenge than dividing Armenians -- if only because Armenians could always be relied on to divide themselves.

*

If an Armenian writer achieves popularity, he should ask himself: "What am I doing wrong?"

*

Even if you were to follow the same routine for twenty or thirty years, if you have an eye for detail, you will notice that something different or unexpected happens every day; which means that our brains can never grasp all the complex operations of reality.

*

If a partisan is a man of faith, he will assume to have God on his side.

*

A partisan may also be defined as someone who knows all about the crimes of the opposition and, by endlessly dwelling on them, he either ignores or covers up the blunders of his own party.

*

To killers who plead insanity (whose legal definition is an inability to tell right from wrong) we should ask: "When you are slitting your victim's throat or pulling the trigger after aiming at his heart, did you think you were doing the right thing?" Or: "Do you think murdering innocent people is right?"

*

If God exists, why would He be remotely interested in getting involved in the quarrels of bloodthirsty fanatics or damn fools?

*

If you are wise, you will be insulted by fools;

if you are honest, you will be hounded by crooks;

if you promote tolerance, you will be torn to shreds by bloodthirsty fanatics;

and if you are objective, you will be buried alive by chauvinists.

*

An honest man expresses his disagreement honestly. By contrast, a charlatan does so with passion. That's because it is not his views that he defends but something much more important: his self-esteem, his prestige and power, perhaps even his source of income. Yes, he has every reason to be furious in the name of God and Country. Give such a man a friendly regime and a machine gun and he will gladly terrorize and massacre to prove his loyalty to the Leader.

Am I talking about Turks and Germans?

No, my friends, I am talking about homo sapiens and I am saying we don't belong to a different species.

*

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Monday, January 05, 2004

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Socrates was wrong. Instead of saying "Know thyself," he should have said "Know thine enemy." And because he knew himself and not his enemies, he was condemned to death. Something very similar happened to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire.

*

To know our enemy and to know ourselves should not be seen as mutually exclusive or even incompatible concepts, especially if we define enemy as a brother towards whom we can afford being objective.

*

Misunderstanding or underestimating your enemy is the surest formula for defeat.

*

To involve God in human affairs is to blur the line that separates politics from theology.

*

Where there is a will there is a way.

Where there is no will there is endless palaver.

*

In an asylum where the inmates are in charge, the obvious, the logical, the undeniable and the self-evident will either be rejected or become sources of endless controversy.

*

Morality cannot be legislated, especially when the legislators are crooks.

*

Only someone who knows nothing (and I mean NOTHING) about Armenian literature will assume that if you come up with the right words or verbal formulas you will solve our problems and the nation will be grateful to you.

*

I criticize with words. The people are much tougher - they criticize with their feet. I can be contradicted - and I am, every day. But can anyone contradict the people or arrest the exodus from the Homeland or slow down the assimilation rate in the Diaspora?

*

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

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From Gostan Zarian's posthumously published notebooks and diaries: "In our environment, authentic literary works will elicit nothing but envy and hatred."

*

Alan L. Otten: "The length of a country's national anthem is inversely proportional to the importance of the country."

*

I see parallels between a prisoner and a man with a closed mind: the first is shut behind bars; the second wallows in his own verbal crap.

*

Zarian: "The biography of an Armenian writer is the story of a struggle against devils…and these devils come in a variety of shapes and sizes: mercenary priests, pusillanimous partisans and schoolmasters…ants, toads and sometimes slithering snakes…."

*

When both sides assume to have God on their side, the chances are it's the Devil.

*

The gradual disintegration of a fascist personality in a democratic environment:

what "a virgin subject pregnant with possibilities!"

*

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Wednesday, January 07, 2004

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Some of my anti-American readers demand that I criticize America for its many past and present abuses of power and blunders. To criticize for the sake of criticizing? To what purpose? If I can't reform or educate a single one of our charlatans and partisans, what chance do I have with an alien continent?

*

Why is it that some of my readers equate being a good Armenian with being a nasty human being?

*

The hidden message of an insult:

I have nothing to contribute to this dialogue

but verbal pollution.

*

The only way to explain my choice of career as an Armenian writer is to say that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

*

More from Zarian:

"We understand the world only in so far as we understand ourselves. There it is: the function of literature."

*

"By explaining a situation, we may change it."

*

"So far Armenians have not yet made Armenianism a subject for study. It would be even more accurate to say that Armenians are not yet in a position to study Armenianism."

*

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Thursday, January 08, 2004

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The ambition of every original sentence is to become a cliché.

*

Avedik Issahakian: "To be born an Armenian: what misery! To live as an Armenian: what heroism!"

*

In every Armenian disagreement there is an unsettled score.

*

Among my friends, I count a concert pianist who thinks the greatest patriotic service an Armenian can provide for his country is to achieve success in an odar environment thus allowing his fellow Armenians to brag about him. As for serving the interests of the nation: that thought never enters his head. To him, celebrity and the pride it inspires in his fellow Armenians (be they mediocrities, charlatans, and the kind of riffraff who brag about Gulbenkian and Mikoyan) is the noblest aim in life: not justice, brotherhood, peace, progress, mutual understanding, solidarity, and tolerance, but fame and fortune.

*

Karekin Nejdeh: "Before you qualify as an Armenian, you must qualify as a human being."

*

I don't expect to be loved or admired by those whose charlatanism I expose. The most I can hope to expect from them is to be read…and as long as they go on insulting me, I know they have been reading me, for which many thanks!

*

Charlatanism: how to disguise concern for number one

as concern for God and Country.

*

We initiate fresh feuds even as we discuss stale ones.

*

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Friday, January 09, 2004

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You can always find a lawyer or academic willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Barabbas was framed and Desdemona was a nymphomaniac; and if you control the media, you can even convince millions that a military defeat was in fact a moral victory.

*

Zarian on the ARF: "Singers of dead songs from a dead past."

*

Even a certified moron knows that one should not judge a political party by its propaganda. You may now assess the IQ of a partisans.

*

A line from Charents: "They are butchering us without a knife."

*

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 10, 2004

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In his RESURRECTION: THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW RUSSIA, David Remnick writes that everyone in Moscow is interested in making money, no one gives a damn about literature. So much so that even a giant like Solzhenitsyn has become a figure of fun and derision. Things are not much different in Armenia, it seems, according to Markar Sharabkhanian in his recently published RETURN TO THE HOMELAND.

*

More from Remnick's book: In a section devoted to Zhirinovsky, who is identified as a half-Jew and a notorious anti-Semite, we read the following: "At one point Zhirinovsky walked over to Talman Gdlyan, a well-known prosecutor, and said to him: 'So when will you be appointed head of the Armenian army?' Gdlyan replied: 'When you are appointed head of the Jewish army.' With that Zhirinovsky bashed Gdlyan in the ear."

Further down: "In 1992 he [Zhirinovsky] went to Baghdad and embraced Saddam Hussein, saying, 'We have the same enemies as Iraq: America, Israel, and Turkey.'"

*

Napoleon didn't much care for music. "Music is the most expensive noise," he once remarked to a composer, who retorted: "Not as expensive as the noise of cannon."

*

To the question, "Are you faithful to your wife?" the well-known French actor and womaniser, Lucien Guitry, replied: "Yes…of course…frequently!"

*

A definition of hell: In our next life we will be those we hate.

*

I remember to have read somewhere: "What's the use of defeating a castle if you will be defeated by its termites?"

*

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Sunday, January 11, 2004

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We don't know our history and our literature: this point is made again and again by Gostan Zarian in his many interviews collected in TOWARDS ARARAT. One reason: our literature has been an orphan dependent on the charity of swine subservient to a veritable bordello of ideologies and orthodoxies all of them eager to prove that they have the best interest of the nation at heart and all of them at one another's throat. Someday if our literature acquires its own voice, we may be astonished to discover that it is not a flower but a volcano.

*

Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a

full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy

propaganda and a total absence of ideas.

*

An infallible man cannot learn from his mistakes and is thus condemned to repeat them.

*

When asked to explain why he bought himself a parrot, Nasreddin Khodja is said to have replied: "I was told a parrot lives to be two hundred years old. I wanted to make sure this is true."

*

We preach dialogue but practice monologue.

We preach brotherhood but practice Cainhood.

Our eleventh silent commandment: Preach sugar and honey, practice venom and vinegar.

*

The tragedy -- or is it farce? -- of most phonies is that they are convinced their dishonesty is a secret known only to themselves.

*

The flat-earth theory says: since we see the world as flat, it must be flat. Personal feelings and experiences matter,

but they are not the alpha and omega of human knowledge.

*

Man is a reasonable being - especially when it comes to explaining, justifying and rationalizing his own brand of insanity.

*

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Monday, January 12, 2004

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Hooliganism is a mindset, not an identifiable title or uniform; and hooligans comes in all sizes and shapes: some are chief executive officers and heads of state, others are imams and bishops, still others emperors and popes.

*

Where there are men of faith there will be men who believe in nothing except power.

Where there are fools and dupes, there will be smart operators who will victimize them.

Where there are honest men, there will be crooks who will exploit them.

Where there are dedicated patriots, there will be cynical opportunists with a forked tongue.

The moral is: Don't drop your pants, and if you do, don't bend over.

*

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Tuesday, January 13, 2004

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If a writer cannot change our perception of reality, he might as well identify himself as an entertainer.

*

There are two kinds of Armenians: those who think and those who recycle propaganda. Those who recycle propaganda speak louder and they are never wrong; and armed with that conviction, they persecute and silence anyone who dares to think for himself. Examples from the past: writers from Abovian to Zarian.

*

It never fails: as soon as I run out of things to say, God sends me a hostile reader whose arrogance and stupidity stimulate me to keep buggering on.

*

Voltaire's, Rousseau's and Marx's criticism

(of the Church, the Monarchy and capitalism)

produced revolutions that changed the map of the world.

By contrast, our criticism has produced only hooligans

parading as commissars of culture.

*

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Wednesday, January 14, 2004

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Some Armenians are so used to criticizing the world and everyone in it that they are shocked to discover that they themselves may not be beyond criticism and they find it extremely difficult to step down from their imaginary pedestals and join the ranks of ordinary human beings with their share of failings, prejudices, shortcomings and limitations.

*

It is not unusual to lose a friend; sometimes a friend may even become an enemy; but if he becomes a mortal enemy, he is sure to be an Armenian.

*

There is a natural tendency in all of us to overestimate the intelligence of those who agree with us.

*

For the Prince of Denmark, the question was: "To be or not to be." For us it is: "Where does Armenianism end and Ottomanism begin?"

*

Most ideas, as long as they remain ideas or verbal formulas, are good, sometimes even admirable. It is in their implementation that they reveal not so much their own shortcomings and contradictions but the greed, ignorance and arrogance of the men in charge.

Consider the idea of a free and independent homeland: who would dare to be against it? And yet, it cost us two million lives.

*

An example of a typical Ottoman(ized) Armenian tactic: You want to silence the opposition? Be rude! (or engage in verbal massacre).

*

Thursday, January 15, 2004

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When Shahnour decided to be objective

in his judgment of fellow Armenian writers,

he was assaulted, beaten, and almost lost an eye.

This may well be one reason why

there is a natural tendency in some of our scholars and pundits to confuse literary criticism with literary philanthropy.

*

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.

*

Being positive or nice has nothing to do with writing. Literature is not a prelude to seduction and fornication.

*

To brag is to be satisfied with oneself or the status quo;

to be satisfied means a dead end;

and a dead end means all past and no future.

*

How many of our nationalist historians have dared to suggest that, instead of terrorizing an empire at the turn of the century, all our revolutionaries had to do was stand by and watch it disintegrate from within, very much like another evil empire in our own days.

*

Armenian saying: "With fish he turns into water, and with a mouse, into a hole in the ground." Which raises the question: In an environment where survival is a priority, where does adaptability end and opportunism begin?

*

Sometimes, reading an Armenian book feels as though I were visiting my grandfather's farm in a distant village where time has stood still.

*

If I am ever asked "What's your real aim as a writer, and please, no double-talk, no rhetoric, and no artsy-fartsy abstractions!" I would reply: "To make minimum wage." And this may well be the main difference between my critics and myself: they are interested in ideas, art, literature; and all I am interested in is money.

*

The secret of success in any field is to say "Xxxx you!" to anyone who calls you a failure.

*

You begin to acquire wisdom on the day you realize you have been a damn fool all your life.

*

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Friday, January 16, 2004

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Again and again I am reminded of Freud's memorable observation that, most people, regardless of who or what they profess to be, are no better than riffraff.

*

From a 1914 commentary by Gostan Zarian: "Take a good look around you and tell me, do we have a national ideal? What is it that we want? Where are we heading? What is the central concern of our youth? What gods to they worship? Take a good look around you and tell me what you see! Mediocrity, fear, intellectually beggary, spiritual void - this indeed is the dismal panorama that unfolds before us. And whenever anyone dares to raise a whisper of protest against this scandal, our cunning wheeler-dealers react by making fun of him."

To which I can only add: So what else is new?

Zarian goes on: "May I therefore say, Gentlemen, you have no right to treat literature as if it were a source of amusement or flattery, to exploit it, to abuse it, to lower it to your own level of Asiatic vulgarity. Enough, I say. Enough!"

*

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Saturday, January 17, 2004

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Before they open their mouth, some people should wash it thoroughly with soap.

*

Armenian saying: "Some sorrows pierce, others glance by."

*

If you rewrite history you can even prove black is white and two plus two makes twenty-two.

*

The only smart career move for an Armenian writer is a premature death.

*

Another observation by Zarian: "So far our people have failed to understand that the physical survival of a writer is as important to the nation as that of an orphan."

*

And to those who enjoy reminding me

that my arguments have so far fallen on deaf ears, I say:

"It has never been my intention

to reform the lunatic fringe.

Remember, my friends, far better men than myself tried and failed.

Why should I let that bother me?"

*

To those who accuse me of not liking Armenians, I say:

"Let's you and I have a talk on that subject after we survive them."

*

The difference between a civilized Armenian and an Ottomanized hoodlum is that, the first says "I disagree with you," and the second calls you a jerk.

*

It was Kant who said that very often

ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 18, 2004

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Raffi tells us "treason and betrayal are in our blood."

In one of his posthumously published books, Zarian explains: "No matter how criminal and bloodthirsty a regime, it will invariably find brown-nosers among us."

And I add: And long after the regime collapses and all its unspeakable crimes exposed, these brown-nosers will find their apologists. After all, neo- and crypto-Stalinists continue to exist in both the Homeland and the Diaspora and you can recognize them by the ease with which they will accuse you of McCarthyism the moment you dare to say anything remotely critical of the Soviet era.

*

Zarian: "Subtract the received ideas from a man and the chances are you will end up with a corpse."

*

We teach our children all about the Battle of Avarair Dikran the Great, the first nation to accept Christianity, the first nation to suffer a genocide in the 20th century and many other things except civics, so that they may not know when their fundamental human rights are being violated by our undemocratic power structures. This may explain why we have today a new generation of activists and partisans who violate the human rights of their fellow Armenians with a clear conscience.

*

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Monday, January 19, 2004

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Sometimes easy solutions can create difficult problems.

*

I have been wrong so often and on so many issues that I no longer trust my own judgment. But I trust even less the judgment of those who assert infallibility. And when I say I have been wrong many times, I don't mean twenty or ten years ago but yesterday and today, even at this very moment…because by admitting my unreliability I warn my readers to take nothing I say at face value. But then, why should anyone? -- when he has the evidence of his own eyes - speaking of which: For millions of years millions of very intelligent men took the evidence of their own eyes seriously and believed the earth was flat. The flat-earth theory continues to have its adherents today. And what about religions and ideologies? Can you name one that does not legitimize and promote theories that are as plausible as the flat-earth theory?

*

Zarian: "We are drowning in a sea of lies."

*

Zarian: "Among us, a literary critic is a fraud whose aim is to lay the mantle of his own wretchedness on our shoulders."

*

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

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

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

Zarian: "It is interesting to note that at no time does Shakespeare mention Armenians. The truth is, all travellers to the East were fully aware of our existence but saw us in a negative life."

Zarian goes on to quote one such traveller, Thomas Coryat (1616), who spent ten months in the Middle East and, according to his own testimony, was cheated only by "crooked Armenian Christians."

*

I repeat myself because I am told again and again that the earth is flat.

*

In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: "Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century - that's my passionate belief."

There you have it: one of the greatest writers of recent times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course. Zarian too made similar claims on Armenian thought - claims which he later came to realize were empty illusions. So much for nationalism, prophecy and mystical insight. Hitler too entertained similar megalomanical delusions. The Greeks had a name for this deadly affliction, hubris, which was punished by the Gods (Nemesis).

*

To confuse ideology with theology: that's another feature of all racist cultures. Theology legitimizes and promotes intolerance and hatred in the name of God or Truth. Odium theologicum is a well-known Latin expression that means: "The bitter hatred of rival theologians. There are no wars so sanguinary as holy wars, no persecution so relentless as religious persecution, no hatred so bitter as theological hatred." (BREWER'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE & FABLE, 16th edition, revised by Adrian Room, London: Cassell, 1999, page 841.)

*

Jean Rostand: "There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well."

*

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

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

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

Successful crooks preach honesty.

A traitor's favorite mask is that of a patriot.

To a homosexual, a seminary will be as inviting a place as a bordello to a lecher.

Wisdom will attract philosophers as well as philomorons, and sometimes philosophers will recycle the verbal trash of morons: Sartre supported Stalin and Heidegger Hitler.

The old cliché stands: Don't read everything you read in the papers, or, for that matter, in books. As for the verbiage of speechifiers and sermonizers: you may now draw your own conclusions.

*

At all times and everywhere we must make sense of the senseless knowing full well that, at any moment and without warning, reality may erupt like a volcano beneath our feet and reduce our most cherished convictions to dust and ashes, and make nonsense of our sense.

*

Zarian: "There are days when I feel as though I were living among ghosts. At such times I hasten my steps, I almost break into a run casting fearful glances around me."

*

Zarian on style: "A crook will always find a good reason to justify his dishonesty. Only that which is deeply moral can be reborn as a song."

*

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 22, 2004

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

Sometimes a single experience can teach us more than a thousand books.

*

Very often, what is obvious in one culture is unthinkable in another.

*

There is nothing wrong in making yourself ridiculous, provided you have the last laugh.

*

The insults of an anonymous coward have as much effect on me as the venom of a cobra in India.

*

A conservative pundit will never agree with a liberal pundit, and he who reads the same pundit all the time will be convinced he is always right and his counterpart (unread and ignored) consistently and stubbornly wrong.

*

We are brought up to believe that a better education means a better job and a better job means a higher salary. Where money becomes an index, morality will be devalued. Such an environment will breed priests who are child molesters and chief executive officers who are no better than common thieves?

*

Sometimes a fraction of the truth can be worse than a big lie.

*

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

Friday, January 23, 2004

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

NEL PAESE DELLE PIETRE URLANTI: ARMENIA (In the Land of Roaring Stones: Armenia) is a diary kept during a stay in Armenia shortly after the earthquake. Its author, Pietro Kuciukian, is a dental surgeon from Milan, who went there with a delegation of Italian doctors. I have translated below some typical passages that allow us close-up glimpses of the Tragedy that tend to be overlooked and lost in newspaper headlines:

*

"A mother with two babies in her arms advanced through the waiting crowd that opens a path for her. One of the babies is amputated, the other paralyzed. I ask my routine question: 'Ov eh hivante?' [Who is the sick one?] It turns out not to have been a superfluous question. With a smile, the mother identifies herself as the one in need of care - she has varicose veins in her legs."

*

"We are suddenly assailed by an overpowering stench. Everyone is overcome with nausea. A woman has entered the clinic. After surveying her surroundings in complete silence, she takes off her shirt. Instead of a breast she exposes an ulcerated, dark-reddish wound. Immediately I direct her to the operating room. Later I am informed that she has been treated, disinfected, medicated, and on her way to full recovery."

*

A curious incident: When, at one point, Dr. Kuciukian runs out of little toys which he has been handing out to an unruly mob of kids, his vehicle is surrounded and he is insulted and threatened by the others. On the way back to his station he reflects that "democracy for them now means the right to receive everything free of charge."

*

Mother Teresa arrives and instead of toys she distributes "little aluminum medals which she kisses and says they are miraculous. When told by a rude old man that he does not believe in miracles, she promptly replies: 'The fact that someone like you is here today to see me is already a miracle.'"

*

"Anna is a girl of fifteen driven insane after spending twelve hours beneath the ruins of her dwelling in Spitak. Following a stay of several months in another city, she appeared to have recovered. But terrorized by an aftershock in the middle of the night, she had dug a hole in the ground and taken refuge there. She is now in the Italian hospital. She screams nonstop. She is sedated and the psychiatrist says she may recover."

*

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

Saturday, January 24, 2004

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

There is something perverse in a society where the old are liberal and the young conservative.

*

Good guys are amateurs who work part time; bad guys are pros who work overtime.

*

Sometimes old enemies call to apologize. Their generosity of spirit reminds me of the cornered mouse who says to the cat: "I forgive your past transgressions against my species and I offer my hand in friendship."

*

Nothing can be as misleading as the telephone voice of a woman. I once knew a woman with the voice of a canary and the body of someone who could have been the offspring of a wrestler and an anaconda.

*

Talleyrand was so smart that when he died it was rumored that he had had an ulterior motive.

*

One reason I can't take our pundits seriously is that during World War II in Greece we used newspapers as toilet paper.

*

To those eager to inform me that there is nothing new in what I have been saying, may I explain that I am not here to instruct but to remind, and nothing can be harder than reminding those who pretend not to remember.

*

And I am reminded of my algebra teacher in Venice whose favorite saying was by Socrates: "To know is to remember."

*

In a group photo the center of attention will be neither Plato nor Napoleon but a pair of nice legs in nylons.

*

Many years ago I became infatuated with a mini-skirted church organist. About a year later when we met in the street and she said hello I didn't recognize her. But i remembered her legs….

*

Hungarian proverb: "The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."

*

Greek proverb: "An open enemy is better than a false friend."

*

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.

*

[Guest fackit]

Thursday, January 22, 2004

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

Sometimes a single experience can teach us more than a thousand books.

*

Very often, what is obvious in one culture is unthinkable in another.

*

There is nothing wrong in making yourself ridiculous, provided you have the last laugh.

*

The insults of an anonymous coward have as much effect on me as the venom of a cobra in India.

*

A conservative pundit will never agree with a liberal pundit, and he who reads the same pundit all the time will be convinced he is always right and his counterpart (unread and ignored) consistently and stubbornly wrong.

*

We are brought up to believe that a better education means a better job and a better job means a higher salary. Where money becomes an index, morality will be devalued. Such an environment will breed priests who are child molesters and chief executive officers who are no better than common thieves?

*

Sometimes a fraction of the truth can be worse than a big lie.

*

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

Friday, January 23, 2004

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

NEL PAESE DELLE PIETRE URLANTI: ARMENIA (In the Land of Roaring Stones: Armenia) is a diary kept during a stay in Armenia shortly after the earthquake. Its author, Pietro Kuciukian, is a dental surgeon from Milan, who went there with a delegation of Italian doctors. I have translated below some typical passages that allow us  close-up glimpses of  the Tragedy that tend to be overlooked and lost in newspaper headlines:

*

"A mother with two babies in her arms advanced through the waiting crowd that opens a path for her. One of the babies is amputated, the other paralyzed. I ask my routine question: 'Ov eh hivante?' [Who is the sick one?] It turns out not to have been a superfluous question. With a smile, the mother identifies herself as the one in need of care - she has varicose veins in her legs."

*

"We are suddenly assailed by an overpowering stench. Everyone is overcome with nausea. A woman has entered the clinic. After surveying her surroundings in complete silence, she takes off her shirt. Instead of a breast she exposes an ulcerated, dark-reddish wound. Immediately I direct her to the operating room. Later I am informed that she has been treated, disinfected, medicated, and on her way to full recovery."

*

A curious incident: When, at one point, Dr. Kuciukian runs out of little toys which he has been handing out to an unruly mob of kids, his vehicle is surrounded and he is insulted and threatened by the others. On the way back to his station he reflects that "democracy for them now means the right  to receive everything free of charge."

*

Mother Teresa arrives and instead of toys she distributes "little aluminum medals which she kisses and says they are miraculous. When told by a rude old man that he does not believe in miracles, she promptly replies: 'The fact that someone like you is here today to see me is already a miracle.'"

*

"Anna is a girl of fifteen driven insane after spending twelve hours beneath the ruins of her dwelling in Spitak. Following a stay of several months in another city, she appeared to have recovered. But terrorized by an aftershock in the middle of the night, she had dug a hole in the ground and taken refuge there. She is now in the Italian hospital. She screams nonstop. She is sedated and the psychiatrist says she may recover."

*

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

Saturday, January 24, 2004

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

There is something perverse in a society where the old are liberal and the young conservative.

*

Good guys are amateurs who work part time; bad guys are pros who work overtime.

*

Sometimes old enemies call to apologize. Their generosity of spirit reminds me of the cornered mouse who says to the cat: "I forgive your past transgressions against my species  and I offer my hand in friendship."

*

Nothing can be as misleading as the telephone voice of a woman. I once knew a woman with the voice of a canary and the body of someone who could have been the offspring of a wrestler and an anaconda.

*

Talleyrand was so smart that when he died it was rumored that he had had an ulterior motive.

*

One reason I can't take our pundits seriously is that during World War II in Greece we used newspapers as toilet paper.

*

To those eager to inform me that there is nothing new in what I have been saying, may I explain that I am not here to instruct but to remind, and nothing can be harder than reminding those who pretend not to remember.

*

And I am reminded of my algebra teacher in Venice whose favorite saying was by Socrates: "To know is to remember."

*

In a group photo the center of attention will be neither Plato nor Napoleon but a pair of nice legs in nylons.

*

Many years ago I became infatuated with a mini-skirted church organist. About a year later when we met in the street and she said hello I didn't recognize her. But i remembered her legs….

*

Hungarian proverb: "The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."

*

Greek proverb: "An open enemy is better than a false friend."

*

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.

*

No doubt you are a great writer, but everything is based on Armenian negativity.

Trying to educate an ignorant moronic Armenian is the same as trying to change an Ignorant Italian,Greek,Jew, etc.

 

Trying to change a human is the same as taming a wild animal, you can change its ways but not its habits. Trying to change an ignorant Armenian is the same as trying to convince a Pro American to give has daughter to a black guy.

 

This whole planet is corrupt, I think the main reason is cultists of all types.

 

There are good people and there are bad people, I've ran across them.

 

I don't think the problem is Armenian stupidity, the problem is human stupidity.

And thats life!

Edited January 26, 2004 by fackit

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 25, 2004

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

Conflicting interests produce conflicting lies, and eventually, by a process of contradiction and elimination if not the truth than a non-lie may emerge.

*

The prospect of being unpopular with the mob and its rulers is not something to be avoided. On the contrary!….

*

I have noticed that whenever a movie uses Bach's music as background, immediately I go into a state of semi-trance and can no longer concentrate on the dialogue, plot and action on the screen, perhaps because I find the dialogue, plot and action in Bach's more compelling.

*

There are two kinds of patriotism: that which divides and that which unites. Ours is of the dividing kind, and a patriotism that divides might as well be equivalent to treason. Because, by dividing us, our kind of patriotism makes us more vulnerable to the enemy - and isn't that what treason does too?

*

What I said above about conflicting interests applies to conflicting ideologies and religion as well, if only because they too create conflicting interests.

*

Nationalism teaches us to be proud even of those things that we should be ashamed of. Cases in point:

Greeks bragging about Socrates whom they treated as a common criminal guilty of a capital offense.

And consider our case and Arshile Gorky: I am told by people who knew him that none of his paintings was ever bought by an Armenian during his lifetimes. We should hang our heads in shame whenever his name is mentioned. But Greeks and Armenians are not the only ones guilty of this aberration. If, instead of bragging, people were taught to count their sins, they may even be forced to conclude that they are not the salt but the scum of the earth.

*

We are all replaceable, including those who are fond of this slogan because they are in a position to hire and fire. These gentlemen should be reminded once in a while that they too, like the rest of us, happen to be on death row.

*

Every critic defends something deep within him. I defend the child in me against those who tried and succeeded in manipulating, deceiving, exploiting and abusing me at a time when I was vulnerable, ignorant and helpless. And those who criticize me do so because they defend the child in themselves that has not yet acquired the distance and objectivity to understand what has been done to them, and they see in me an enemy because they prefer the bliss of unawareness and ignorance.

*

Hungarian proverb: "A flatterer is a secret enemy."

*

A biologist once said that homo sapiens is coded for error. History bears him out. Suspect any man or institution that asserts infallibility. Suspect them even more when they admit minor peccadilloes in order to cover up catastrophic blunders.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money creates lesser monsters than greed for power.

*

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

Monday, January 26, 2004

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

Rude people are masters of ephemeral persuasion. One is willing to agree with them, but only for the duration.

*

If people believed everything I said, I would stop writing. A silent warning should follow each sentence I write: "I could be wrong."

*

I could be wrong does not mean I am wrong. I could be wrong may also mean I could be right but I don't see that as sufficient reason to victimize or kill anyone.

*

A bishop and an imam may be free to believe what they want but when they get actively involved in brainwashing millions, creating political unrest, and legitimizing war, they should be treated like any other war criminal, arrested, tried, and fried.

*

To believe in a political party's assessment of its own performance is to be a dupe to its propaganda.

*

A man has public as well as private failings and the two are seldom the same.

*

A typical Armenian fallacy: to confuse Turkish venom with Armenian voki.

*

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 and any man who dares to speak in His name must be a charlatan.

*

A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma

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

*

Anyone can say, "I speak in the name of God.

Therefore, I am authorized to tell you that if you disagree with me it's because you speak in the name of the Devil."

*

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

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

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

The subject of our genocide does not bring the best in us and anyone who dares to be remotely objective about it is immediately accused of pro-Ottomanism. As a result the only lesson to be learned from that nightmare experience is not a lesson but an old cliché, namely, Turks are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, and anyone who goes along with them (the U.S. and Israel being two cases in point) are no better. It follows, we are morally superior to the Chosen People and more tolerant and democratic than the U.S. - and if you believe that, you will believe anything!

*

"You are my friend only if you agree with everything I say!" There you have it: the surest expression of the fascist mindset.

*

A bureaucrat is a bureaucrat regardless of ideology. Two bureaucrats serving two contradictory ideologies may be closer in outlook than Siamese twins. The same applies to partisans, soldiers, yes-men and brown-nosers in general.

*

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

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

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

In a confrontation, instead of both sides asserting they are right, they should ask the question: "What course of action will benefit both of us?" Where there is a disagreement, religion, ideology and all forms of dogmatism can be of no help; they may even escalate a minor difference into a major conflict that may claim many innocent lives.

*

Propaganda has been defined as part of the truth. Let me illustrate the tricks propaganda plays without resorting to lies:

Propaganda: "I was regularly."

Truth: "I wash regularly - once a year."

*

If so far we have failed to understand reality or to expose "the hidden mystery behind things" (Einstein) it's because our language is designed to deal only with appearances and not that which lies beyond them; and the only reason we have such words as God, gods, angels and devils is that once upon a time some individuals had visions or mystical experiences and thought they had seen things that were not there. Hence the many contradictions, confusions and disagreements between theologians and proponents of metaphysical systems.

*

[Guest fackit]

Good stuff! I agree with everything.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 29, 2004

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

In his book JUDGMENTS CONCERNING OUR ONE-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD REVOLUTION (translated by Aris Sevag, 101 pages, Yerevan: Amaras, 2002) Sarkis Izmirlian gives several reasons why our political parties continue to enjoy some degree of popularity in the Diaspora, two of which are: “the Armenian people’s absolute ignorance of politics,” and “the deceitful propaganda of our leadership.” In two brief sentences this gentleman-scholar encapsulates that which I have been saying in several thousand essays and fifteen books. Elsewhere, an angry General Antranik is quoted as having said: “I’d rather live as a human being away from you than as God among you.” This indeed is the authentic voice of Antranik who once declared: “I am not a nationalist. I am on the side of the underdog regardless of nationality.”

*

A reader writes: “Our transgressions are human transgressions and you cannot change human nature.” Rape and murder too are human transgressions, it doesn’t follow we should adopt a passive stance and accept them as inevitable facts of life like death and taxes. On the contrary: at all times and everywhere we should raise our voices against all transgressions, including charlatanism, knowing full well that we may never succeed in eradicating them.

*

Again and again I am accused of negativism by readers who view propaganda as positive and a refusal to recycle it as negative.

*

Why do I write?

My reason tells me miracles don’t happen,

but something else tells me

the universe, the world in which we live,

existence itself is a miracle,

and the act of writing itself

has something of the miraculous in it.

Perhaps the word I am looking for is hope –

the hope of making a difference…

but as always, I have my doubts….

*

[ara baliozian]

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

Friday, January 30, 2004

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

He who admonished us not to cast the first stone, did not add "except when your target is the devil," perhaps because the devil too, like the Kingdom of God, is within us.

*

I'd rather be a failure who writes an honest line once or twice a year than a success whose every book is a best-seller.

*

To our partisans, literature is a branch of their propaganda. Everything else is verbal trash.

*

With executioners and mobs, Barabbas will always be more popular than Christ.

*

As victims of Ottoman massacres, we have become masters of verbal massacre.

*

Doctors and quacks,

statesmen and wheeler-dealers,

saints and theologians:

every line of work begets its own racket.

*

To those who speak of forgiving the Turks, I say:

"Let us begin by forgiving our fellow Armenians."

*

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

Saturday, January 31, 2004

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

All brainwashed people assume everyone else to be brainwashable and he who refuses to be brainwashed is either an enemy or a pervert. This indeed is the impression I get whenever I disagree with one of our partisans.

Another feature of the brainwashed: they are convinced they have a monopoly on patriotism.

*

Marriage: an institution designed to make all other women more desirable.

*

We survived the Turks and the Bolsheviks: we now confront a far more formidable adversary: us!

*

Advice to a young Armenian writer:

Don't write; but if you write, don't publish; but if you publish, be prepared to perish.

*

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.

*

Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus.

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

*

Hungarian proverb: "A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener."

*

Greek proverb: "All things good to know are difficult to learn."

*

Self-esteem is not a reliable index of worth, in the same way that dogmatism is not an index of certainty.

*

When our partisan editors stopped publishing me, a non-partisan editor said to me: "I always assumed they published you because they didn't understand you. I guess they do now…."

*

There is an idiot in all of us, including the most wise. Likewise, there is a killer in all of us, compliments of our reptilian ancestors. This may explain why sometimes intelligent men are deceived by fools, and decent men are misled by criminal psychopaths; and here, I could make a long list of illustrious names who supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

*

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 01, 2004

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

THE POWER OF FOUR: A VISION FOR THE MIDDLE EAST by Onnig Kardash and others (unpaginated, $15.00, order from thepoweroffour@hotmail.com) is a book in cartoons (no words). The one-page preface in seven languages (Armenian, English, Arabic, Kurdish, Hebrew, Turkish, and Farsi) informs the reader that the mythical and timeless story that follows is about a David-like hero who slays a Goliath-like ogre. Its aim, we are further told, is to promote peace and harmony; but the subtext seems to be saying: Peace will reign only if the enemy is slain.

Perhaps what we need today is a new myth in which the hero travels to the four corners of the world in search of his enemy, does not find him, and returns home only to discover that the enemy is himself.

*

What is more Armenian? --

our feuds or the struggle to end them?

*

To join a party and to view the opposition as the source of all evil must be an irresistible temptation to all simple-minded dupes.

*

On the day we stop learning,

there should be an obituary in the papers

announcing the death of a brain.

*

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

Monday, February 02, 2004

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

The trouble with prejudice is that by raising walls between the world and us, it narrows our horizons, damages our powers of perception, and reduces a complex reality to a black-and-white, or Cain-and-Abel, or David-and-Goliath, or Turk-and-Armenian, or ARF-and-ADL caricature.

*

Contradictory views are useful only when they move towards a synthesis. Contradictory views that remain frozen, are driven not by reason but by prejudice. To put it bluntly: we are in deep doodoo because the collective IQ of our partisans is mighty low.

*

Among us, it is not at all unusual to run into a Judas with messianic ambitions.

*

I am not getting old; it's the world that's getting younger and more gullible.

*

Ignorance and arrogance, wisdom and humility: they might as well be twins.

*

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

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

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

Speaking of -isms: nationalism, communism, capitalism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Ottomanism…: history tells us all movements sooner or later end the in the gutter.

*

In his memoirs titled MY TEACHERS, Moushegh Ishkhan discusses Oshagan, Zarian, Shant, and Adonts, among others. At one point he quotes Adonts to the effect that Siamanto was a far greater poet than Varoujan: "There will come a time," Adonts is quoted as having predicted, "when Varoujan may be forgotten but Siamanto's worth will be enhanced."

Poor Adonts and poor Ishkhan. It probably never even dawned on them that there may come a time when such controversies will be abandoned, forgotten, ignored and buried never to rise again.

*

If one is willing to learn, one can learn even from one's enemies.

*

I love this quote by John Milton and if I could I would place it at the beginning of everything I write and on the walls of all our editors and managers of book distribution centers:

"Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself."

*

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

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

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

In a biography of Churchill I read today that

one of his favorite mottoes when in trouble was:

KBO = Keep Buggering On.

Perhaps that's what I have been doing all along too

but didn't know what to call it.

*

Christ and Marx: no one questions their good intentions, wisdom and honesty. And yet, consider the abuses of the Papacy and Stalinism.

*

I don't write to achieve literary immortality or, for that matter, popularity. My aim is much more modest. I write to be a pain in the perforation, and judging by the kind of feedback I get, I am a brilliant success.

*

Hungarian proverb: "A puff of wind and popular praise weigh alike."

*

To beg for favors is not to pray.

If you believe in God and if you have a friend in Him,

what else could you possibly want?

*

A short list of unemployable misfits:

An amputated ballet dancer,

a deaf music critic,

a blind taxi driver,

an honest politician,

an Armenian writer….

*

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 05, 2004

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

An eleventh commandment for Armenians:

"Thou shalt not confuse the dunghill on which you perch with Mount Ararat."

*

When two men speak in the name of God and contradict each other, it is safe to assume that at least one of them speaks in the name of the Devil.

*

Some of my editors have been good enough to show me letters written by several of our gray-eminence wheeler-dealers denouncing me as an enemy who should be silenced.

Until I read those letters I thought of myself as a voice in the wilderness and a stranger in a strange land, ignored by all, and not taken seriously by anyone, including myself.

I now have second thoughts. What I say may indeed matter -- but only in so far as it contains particles of truth, in which case it is not I that matters but the lies that my words expose.

*

Vahram Papazian: "To be indifferent to crime is to conspire with criminals."

*

Avedik Issahakian: "The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn."

*

Between an unjust democracy and a just despotism I will always be on the side of democracy because I can rely on its checks and balances and on its free play of conflicting interests to restore some semblance of justice. Whereas justice under despotism is bound to be an ephemeral and unpredictable luxury that may vanish without warning at the caprice of a single individual accountable to none.

*

Goethe: "The world goes forward only because of those who oppose it."

*

Friday, February 06, 2004

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

"We don't have literary critics," Zarian has said. "What we have instead are meddlers with derivative criteria gathered from here and there - amateurs who have made of literary criticism an arid field of dismal mediocrity."

Oshagan Sr., our foremost literary critic and a contemporary of Zarian, retaliated by saying Zarian didn't have a single original idea in his head.

Oshagan Jr. echoed his father's words when he wrote in ARARAT Quarterly (Autumn 1994): "Zarian's ideas have grown old prematurely. Of course, Zarian's thought is vulnerable and his ideas and his intuitive truths cannot resist five minutes of serious examination."

There you have it, deconstruction Armenian style: demolition!

*

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 or Country?"

*

A reader accuses me of being an enemy agent and a hireling of the Canadian government, thus implying Canada harbors hostile or even imperialist ambitions against our beloved homeland.

And now, imagine the following scenario: this reader and I live in Stalin's USSR. What would happen next? I would be shot and he would be promoted…until he too is accused of being a foreign agent by a disgruntled neighbor or acquaintance. There are no happy endings under fascism.

*

C.G. Jung: "It is a weakness of the method of explanation that it succeeds only with sensitive persons who can draw

independent moral conclusions from their understanding of themselves."

*

Vahram Papazian: "The greater your worth the greater the pleasure of the worthless to tear you down."

*

I will never understand people who feel the need to support one side against the other. If I can loathe both sides, I don't feel compelled to choose; and when asked to choose, I quote Dr. Johnson's celebrated dictum: "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."

*

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

Saturday, February 07, 2004

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

On Canadian radio this morning, an Afghan chef bragging about his shish-kebab: "Our civilization is 2500 years old…." At the end of the interview, when asked if he is satisfied with his present life in Canada, he replies: "Yes, very. At least we are not killing anyone here."

What kind of civilization is it that makes good shish kebab but promotes murder? Is it "our civilization" or "our brand of barbarism"?

*

If you disagree with me, it may be because you are right and I am wrong.

If you disagree with me consistently,

it may be because I am always wrong and you are always right.

If you agree with me so far, it may be because I too may be capable of being right and your sense of infallibility may be an assessment made not by your reason but by your ego.

*

As solitary creatures, Armenian writers have been perennial victims of political parties and their satellite institutions, all of which have a tendency to divide their fellow Armenians into friends and enemies or yes-men and dissidents. As for dialogue: who has ever heard of such a thing in an Ottoman or Soviet environment, or, for that matter, in a crypto-Ottoman or neo-Stalinist context?

*

All power structures - from the most advanced democracies to the most ruthless fascist states - generate a lunatic fringe, with one significant difference: under fascist power structures, the lunatic fringe rises to the top.

*

Antonina Vallentin: "Like so many people who are troubled by their own origin, he was a nationalist, ill at ease in an international atmosphere."

*

A pervert is also someone who perverts the meaning of what he reads.

*

After I told him I don't like to travel, a fellow Armenian sent me a ticket for a round trip to Washington, DC. And after publishing several essays in which I expressed my loathing of all partisan politics, a Ramgavar boss commissioned me to write biographical sketches of Ramgavar leaders; and when I told him I didn't even know the names of these leaders, he went around saying: "We offered to support him but he insulted us!"

*

I began my career as a shameless chauvinist until I met a poet I had praised. I have committed many major blunders in my life but these two (praising him and going out of my way to meet him) I rank among the top ten. Since then I have discovered Armenian poets to be the least poetic of creatures. I now see more poetry in a spider's web and a dung-beetle's ball of dung.

*

Man: an evolutionary success story but a moral disaster area.

*

When a fool convinces another fool,

he assumes the majority is on his side.

When an Armenian convinces himself,

he thinks the world should be on his side.

*

Among us, politics (the art of the possible) is confused with ideology (the art of the impossible), and inevitably, ideology is confused with theology (the art of the incomprehensible), and theology is confused with pathology.

Some day, in a future progressive and enlightened Armenian democracy, if our partisans are arrested and put on trial, they will be absolutely right in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

[Anonymouse]

We survived the Turks and the Bolsheviks: we now confront a far more formidable adversary: us!

 

Very true indeed.

[ara baliozian]

QUOTATIONS FROM KAREKIN NEJDEH (1886-1957)

 

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

 

Selected and translated by Ara Baliozian

 

 

 

The morally depraved can also voice noble principles.

 

 

 

Life is constant and endless renewal. Only the morally irresponsible refuse to understand this.

 

 

 

Without renewal, a nation dies every hour, every minute. Our political parties either don't understand this or they have no

desire to understand it.

 

 

 

A nation that fails to do what it can and must do has no right to expect foreign assistance.

 

 

 

Nations that are unwilling to defend their own interests condemn themselves to death.

 

 

 

When dealing with foreign powers and issues, our press adopts a permissive, forgiving, and subservient tone. With our own internal problems, however, it becomes arrogant, vindictive, vicious.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 08, 2004

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

Speaking of events that preceded the Genocide, Sarkis Izmirlian writes: “What occurred was not revolution but suicide.” (JUDGMENTS CONCERNING OUR HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD REVOLUITION, page 5.)

He goes on to cite and document a series of blunders committed by our revolutionaries with the warning that these in no way justify or mitigate Turkish guilt.

*

By calling the Genocide a civil war, the Turks treat history as the propaganda of the victor. It is to Izmirlian’s credit that, unlike most of our historians (especially those who enjoy the imprimatur of our revolutionaries), he refuses to treat history as the consolation of the loser.

*

“We had revolutionaries,” writes Izmirlian, “but we didn’t have a revolution.”

*

We are imperfect beings living in a less than perfect world. If you keep that in mind, life becomes less incomprehensible.

*

Nothing comes easier to an Armenian than to assume

Armenians are smart except the fools

who refuse to be taken in by his brand of recycled verbal crap.

*

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

Monday, February 09, 2004

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

When I was young, my knowledge exceeded my ignorance. It’s the other way around now. Every passing day, every new experience raises more questions and doubts, as opposed to providing answers and certainties.

*

Confronted with the choice

between changing the world and changing themselves,

members of the lunatic fringe will invariably choose

to re-create the world in their own image.

*

If familiarity breeds contempt,

how does one explain the popularity of slogans?

*

Some of my critics remind me of the fact

that in medieval times Armenian mercenaries were the most ferocious fighters money could buy.

*

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

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

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

What if human as well as all other forms and degrees of consciousness are God’s way of experiencing reality and its myriad manifestations?

*

Our partisans would rather see not only the nation but also their own party go down the drain rather than admit error; perhaps because their errors are so unforgivable that admitting them would amount to political suicide.

*

Don’t talk to me about dedicated partisans with ethics.

Power does not corrupt; rather, it is the corrupt who lust for power. Trying to reason with them

is like trying to cross a Brazilian river

teeming with ravenous piranhas.

If you reach the other shore weighing half as much,

you should thank God and count your blessings.

*

Where religious love enters,

political hatred follows.

*

Why would anyone in his right mind

would want to read a writer

who echoes his sentiments and thoughts?

Why would anyone in his right mind

take a human parrot seriously?

*

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

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

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

Anonymous: “There are men with a heart of stone, and there are stones with a heart.”

*

A typical Armenian paradox: We don’t take one another seriously but we expect the world to take us seriously.

*

Don’t think of me as a writer, a critic, or dissident. Think of me as a witness who is doing his utmost not to perjure himself.

*

Even if you disagree with everything I say,

you must agree that I speak in defense of something

that is infinitely more important than you and me:

namely, free speech.

*

Some day organized religions and ideologies

will be exposed for what they are:

nests of bigots, homicidal maniacs, and child molesters.

*

Arthur Koestler, one of the most intensely political writers of our time, gave up writing on politics in the second half of his life and concentrated on psychology and biology.

His aim: to investigate what is it exactly

that transforms a decent, law-abiding citizen

into a homicidal maniac.

His tentative conclusion:

the evolution of man is incomplete.

Objective thinking is not the norm but the exception.

In his own words:

“Detached, rational thought is a new and fragile acquisition; it is affected by the slightest irritation of the old brain which, once aroused, tends to dominate the scene.”

By “old brain” Koestler means our primitive, crocodilian instincts, of which we remain unaware because,

in the words of a biologist (MacLean):

“The visceral brain is not at all unconscious

but rather eludes the grasp of the intellect

because its animalistic and primitive structure

makes it impossible to communicate in verbal terms.”

#

To explain why fanatics, homicidal maniacs,

and the lunatic fringe in general

lack a sense of humor, Koestler writes:

“Laughter makes a man equally unable to kill or to copulate.”

*

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 12, 2004

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

"Almost all controversy would cease," Descartes tells us, "if there was agreement between philosophers as to the meaning of terms." If philosophers have so far failed to develop a consensus, what chance do we have?

*

More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda or double-talk less than nothing.

*

Perhaps the secret of producing a good line is to write a thousand of them, reject all but two, and end with one.

*

"That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger."

If true, we should speak not of the death of a thousand cuts but of strength through 999 cuts.

*

Shmavon Hovsepian: "A jury of tigers, crocodiles, wolves, and hyenas is not qualified to condemn to death a cat guilty of killing a mouse."

*

Martyros Saryan: "Ignorance tends to be more assertive than learning."

*

An Armenian's most highly developed faculty is his spirit of contradiction: he cherishes it, he nourishes it, and he gets drunk with it; he seduces himself with it, but above all, he makes a nuisance of himself with it and expects to be admired for it.

*

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

Friday, February 13, 2004

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

Anonymous: "The drowning man has no fear of rain."

*

Puzant Granian: "We have many national benefactors but not a single national writer."

*

Gostan Zarian: "A man is rich to the degree that he has enriched life. A man is creative to the degree that he has made a contribution to the re-creation of the universe."

*

What if existence, life, death, space and time are only a handful of concepts among countless others which our mind is not equipped to grasp?

*

Had our heroes survived, they would have discovered that dying for one's countrymen is easier than living with them.

*

A man gets lucky to the degree that he refuses to rely on luck.

*

A nation that has produced some of the smartest businessmen in the world is in no position to plead not guilty by reason of political naïveté. Likewise, a nation with a millennial history cannot plead innocent by reason of inexperience.

*

Overheard: "Why do your own barking if you have a dog?"

*

Armenians who think the world will be a better place without Jews have no business accusing Israel of denying the Genocide.

*

To know better is not the same as to know. To know better may also mean not to know.

*

If you have not yet met the Armenian who has made you curse the day you were born an Armenian, consider yourself the luckiest white man alive.

*

It is the ambition of every fanatic Muslim today to do to the West and every giaour in it what the Turks did to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire. And if you say, the Muslims today have a very good reason, may I remind you that to this day the Turks too think they had a very good reason.

*

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

Saturday, February 14, 2004

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

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.

*

Baruir Sevak: "It is better to be a good reader than a bad writer."

*

Karekin Nejdeh: "When a man falls down and doesn't have the will to stand up, no amount of help will be of any use to him. It is the same with a nation that does nothing but complain, lament, and beg."

*

The less a man knows, the more easily he can convince himself to be right.

*

Why are most Armenian patriots phonies?

Because if you contradict them they turn into Turks.

*

Since I have never felt threatened by an idea, I find it difficult to understand censorship, or fear of ideas, or cowardice in the face of verbal formulas or abstractions.

*

Hazlitt: "If a person has no delicacy,

he has you in his power."

*

Understanding is not a purely intellectual act but a disposition of the heart and mind working in harmony.

*

I don't write for fools and fanatics but for reasons of their own they keep reading me.

*

If you are honest, all you may succeed in doing is uniting all the charlatans, fanatics, and crooks against you.

*

Because all systems of thought attempt to elevate a suspicion or a hunch to the level of certainty, they are wide open to criticism and even rejection.

*

Homo sapiens? Obviously not sapiens enough if you think of the millions who have died in the name of a Big Lie.

*

A good Armenian is one who loves his country but is not taken in by the distortions of nationalist historians, the propaganda of partisans, and the double talk of commissars.

*

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 15, 2004

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

I only put into words that which is felt and thought by many. If you say, that's a lie, I suggest a more receptive frame of mind. People hesitate to express their innermost thoughts and feelings to self-righteous imbeciles on the warpath.

*

Some of my critics operate on the assumption that if they accuse me of Ottomanism, stupidity, ignorance, racism and all kinds of other transgressions, they will be immune to the same charge. This is less criticism and more cretinism; less logic and more mumbo jumbo, abracadabra and hocus pocus.

*

And if you were to ask: "What's the difference between you and your critics on the one hand, and on the other, you and those you criticize (bosses, bishops, benefactors)?"

My answer is: I reply to my critics; they silence theirs. They shape our collective existence; I only expose contradictions.

*

Some of my critics who go down into the gutter are not aware of the descent perhaps because that's where they feel more at home.

*

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.

*

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.

*

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

Monday, February 16, 2004

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

Gostan Zarian: "If a thought cannot be expressed in a few words it cannot be worth expressing."

*

I like to repeat famous Armenian quotations because I want them to become familiar Armenian quotations.

*

Gostan Zarian: "Sharper than a Turk's yataghan is an Armenian's tongue."

*

Two of my greatest disappointments: the severity of Canadian winters and the hooliganism of my Armenian critics.

*

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

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

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

I have only one line of defense against those who insult me and that's making fun of them.

*

I am willing to listen to anyone with an honest disagreement, but I don't think a brainwashed partisan or a loud-mouth chauvinist is inherently capable of honesty.

*

Turks and Armenians share in common a reluctance to admit error. Consider the conduct of our political parties: after silencing, starving, even killing fellow Armenians, they have so far failed to admit error. Will they ever apologize? If we adopt past conduct as our sole index for future conduct, I don't think so.

*

Raffi: "A man willing to admit his mistakes is thought of as eccentric. People feel more comfortable in the presence of those who lie and cover up. They hate a man who speaks the truth."

*

In the Bible we read:

"If God be for us, who can be against us?" (ROMANS, 8:31) A Jew would reply: "The whole world";

and an Armenian: "Turks and Armenians."

*

In a dictionary of philosophy:

"Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure.

The megalomaniac represents himself as he would like to be but as he is not. Megalomania may also be a symptom of the decline of one's critical faculties."

*

On dogmatism:

"It stands in direct contradiction to criticism, skepticism, empiricism, and realism. It fosters intolerance and fanaticism."

*

Do not grasp a knife by the blade.

Do not call an Armenian a friend.

*

To be read by friendly readers: nothing unusual in that.

To be read by hostiles: That's where the money is,

because it means being allowed the opportunity

to introduce thoughts where none exists.

*

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

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

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

Philostratos: "Gods perceive the future, mortals perceive the present, and the wise perceive the imminent."

Problems proliferate when fools pretend to be wise and the semi-wise or self-assessed wise pretend to be gods.

*

Armenians are smart, good, nice, lovable, I am reminded once in a while by our chauvinists who do not hesitate to make themselves nasty, ugly and hateful and are too stupid to perceive the contradiction.

*

A wise man has twice as many doubts as a fool has certainties.

*

Arabic proverb: "Silence is golden and the word silver."

*

Sometimes I cannot help thinking that what divides us has nothing to do with ideas and ideologies but with etiquette and common courtesy.

*

"Write more like Saroyan!" I am told again and again.

Poor Saroyan, who began his literary career by loving all of mankind (and feeling sorry for the Turks) and ended it by

hating his own children.

And poor, poor Zarian! He began his literary career

by declaring Armenians to be the real Chosen People and ended it by calling them cannibals.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 19, 2004

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

Church unity and Genocide recognition: two issues that so far have succeeded only in reinforcing our image as perennial losers.

*

Who would benefit if I were silenced?

The people or those in power?

*

German proverb: "A bad cause requires many words."

*

Goethe: "When ideas fail, words come in very handy."

*

An enemy who stimulates or inspires is a friend.

*

Can we learn from our past blunders without admitting them first?

*

Where the ego enters, lies are sure to follow.

*

If a bigot is not yet a killer, it may be because history has not yet given him a chance to act out his convictions.

*

I criticize with words. The people are much tougher - they criticize with their feet. I can be contradicted - and I am, every day. But can anyone contradict the people?

*

War, according to Leonardo da Vinci, is "pazzia bestialissima" (the most brutal insanity).

It follows, war-makers belong to the lunatic fringe of mankind.

*

Every Armenian should carry a sign with the warning: "Contradict me and make an enemy for life!"

*

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

Friday, February 20, 2004

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

As a child I was taught obedience. What I was not taught is the difference between obedience and subservience.

*

Jules Renard: "All violent arguments should end with the words: 'Someday we will all be dead.'"

*

You say you are free but all I see when I look at you

is the invisible ring in your nose and the harness on your back.

*

If you are going to act, common sense and decency demand that you be aware of the consequences of your actions, especially if others may suffer as a result of them. In politics ignorance has never been a valid excuse perhaps because wrong policies are invariably implemented by the wrong people who prevail by silencing or ignoring the right people. Which is why all nations, political parties, and power structures re-write history: to cover up or justify their blunders by putting the blame on others, thus preparing the ground for repeating them.

*

Ignorance is a luxury only the very lucky can afford.

*

The more logical the brain the more irrational the heart.

*

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 say Armenians are smart.

*

Our partisans behave as though they had the mandate of heaven, thus implying the opposition has the mandate of hell.

*

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.

*

"Vengeance is mine, said the Lord."

By that it is not meant that God

keeps an account of every transgression down below,

but that in His infinite wisdom

He has inserted a punishment in every transgression.

So that, when a fool makes an ass of himself in public,

his punishment is exactly that:

making an ass of himself in public.

No use trying to reason him out of his foolishness,

which would amount to being an instrument of his salvation.

*

One of the worst things that could be said about a man

is that his most highly developed organ is his ego.

*

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

Saturday, February 21, 2004

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

When wolves and jackals rise to the top,

herbivores have no choice but to avoid them.

Hence, our high rate of assimilation.

*

There is an old saying:

"What bread really is, only the hungry knows."

The same could be said of freedom

("What freedom really is, only the oppressed knows")

but not of knowledge.

That's because more often than not,

the ignorant not only appear to be

satisfied with their own ignorance

but also resent those who try to enlighten them.

World literature provides many instances of this:

from Socrates to Solzhenitsyn;

and in our own case, from Abovian to Zarian.

*

Oshagan said:

"Our revolutionaries didn't have a chance because they formed only tiny islands in an Ottoman sea."

My question is:

Did we have to suffer a genocide to make that earth-shaking discovery?

*

Zarian said:

"Our political parties have been of no political use to us."

We have been blabbering about Hai Tahd and historic Armenia for the last hundred years without annexing a single inch of soil.

What are our chances that in the next hundred years

the world will see the light and say:

"Historic Armenia belongs to Armenia!" and the Turks will agree?

*

If I know my Armenians, they will never come to terms with their enemies: too much blood. Hell, they will never even come to terms with their fellow Armenians: too much bad blood!

*

I wish I were a good actor so that I could drive my enemies nuts by pretending to love them.

*

So many phonies have spoken in the name of God and Country that one must be slightly unbalanced to take sermonizers and speechifiers seriously.

*

Karekin Nejdeh: "Instead of criticizing one another and the enemy, our political partisans should get busy educating themselves."

*

Arnold Toynbee: "But, of course, the value of one's work is a question on which one's own judgment is worth little more than zero." (RECONSIDERATIONS, page 599.)

If only our partisans thought so too.

*

Because I am anti-humbug,

I am described as anti-Armenian

by Armenians engaged in humbuggery.

*

If you insult with lies

you will be mortally wounded by the truth.

Morality and justice are not human inventions.

Rather, they are extensions of reality

and its inflexible laws.

*

Karekin Nejdeh: "It is the height of ignorance for a political party to think that it can deny the value of morality in its own conduct and maintain moral integrity within its ranks."

*

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 22, 2004

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

Nothing comes easier to a man with more money than to assume he knows better. But the truth is, the only thing he knows better is what's good for number one, which amounts to saying, he knows less about everything else.

*

On the subject of false assumptions, mine consists in thinking that common sense and decency plus enlightened self-interest and objective judgment present a more convincing argument than that provided by ignorance, prejudice, ideology or ego.

*

Alexander Dumas fils: "I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest."

*

If "education is the cheap defense of nations" (Edmund Burke), brainwashing must be the surest symptom of moral bankruptcy.

*

To contradict not out of conviction but for the pleasure of contradicting: I call this a quintessential Armenian aberration.

*

Totalitarian regimes silence dissidents not because they are afraid of them (imagine a Stalin or Hitler commanding vast armies and a ruthless secret police being afraid of defenseless scribblers!) but because they are afraid of the truth, and more precisely, because they don't want to be exposed for what they really are: criminal gangs. And when these regimes collapse it's not because of what the dissidents wrote or said but because sooner or later reality is bound to assert its inflexible laws, two of them being: you can't fool even fools all the time, and you can't intimidate even cowards forever.

Now then, ask yourself this question: Why is it that our own political parties find it necessary to silence dissent?

*

You cannot speak of dialogue, compromise, and consensus with a skinhead who threatens to silence you whenever you refuse to accept his prejudices and share his bigotry.

*

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

Monday, February 23, 2004

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

Derenik Demirjian: "Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy."

*

Anonymous: "Trust a new friend as much as you would trust an old enemy."

*

Voicing morally superior sentiments is not the same as being morally superior. If it were, every sermonizer would be a saint.

*

Let the Turks deny our genocide all they want, but let us not deny the humanity of our fellow men (including Turks) because that would be genocide by other means.

*

The smaller the brain, the bigger the mouth.

*

This being a free country, you may subscribe to the lie of your choice.

*

To the man who tries to achieve excellence, nothing should be more alarming than the approval of the mediocre.

*

It's in the nature of mediocrity to want to drag the rest of mankind down to its own level.

*

The validity of an idea my also be gauged by the number of fools who conspire to reject it.

*

We are brainwashed against our will but we remain brainwashed by consent.

*

To those who accuse me of misleading the naïve and the uninformed, I say: Armenians are smarter than that.

They can spot a phony when they see one.

Don't worry about them.

Worry instead about yourself and your false sense of superiority in thinking you are invulnerable to the lies of propaganda.

*

In many traditional tales, legends and myths,

he who looks back turns into stone or a pillar of salt.

Perhaps we are too obsessed with the past

to focus on our present problems.

In some perverse way the Turks continue to be in charge of our destiny. We have not yet emancipated from our Ottoman phase.

*

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

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

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

In a court of law you may get a unanimous verdict in your favor, but in life, never! Even if you are perfectly innocent, some people will find you guilty as hell.

*

Jorge Luis Borges: "The best way to be free of an error is to have professed it."

*

To say "I am better," to believe in it, and to be the only one who believes in it must be just about the surest symptom of inferiority.

*

Nothing I say is original.

When I promote solidarity , all I am doing is recycling the biblical dictum "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Or rather, I am reminding those who make a comfortable living by delivering sermons on self-sacrifice and speeches on dedication to principles that the very least they can do is make an effort to practice a tiny fraction of what they preach - if, that is, they don't want to be exposed as grave-digging charlatans.

*

At least once a day, we should remind ourselves that we may not be as smart or as good as we think we are and that we may even be as bad as the rest of mankind.

*

To understand the enemy

it is necessary to be objective about ourselves.

*

A 17th-century American writer once observed that,

just because a man is not bought and sold

it doesn't follow that he is not a slave.

Likewise, just because we silence critics

it doesn't follow that we are not vulnerable to criticism.

*

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

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

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

Again and again I am accused of having a low opinion of my fellow Armenians. Nonsense! I have a low - make it, very low - opinion of charlatans, brown-nosers and parasites (regardless of nationality). I loathe all lies, half-truths and propaganda.

As for being a proud Armenian: In a world of proud Gypsies, Kurds and Turks, I have no use for pride.

I should like to see a world inhabited by humble men.

I should like to see my fellow Armenians reflect and meditate on our collective failures as opposed to bragging about our individual successes (Mikoyan, Saroyan, Gulbenkian, Mamoulian…), or at least to refrain from using our celebrities to cover up our shortcomings, and if that's too much to ask, may Mt. Ararat forgive me.

*

Patriotism may well be abolished on the day an enlightened mankind catalogues all the crimes that have been committed in its name.

*

Our version of Ottoman history is as important or relevant in the eyes of the world as the Afro-American or American- Indian version of American history.

*

The fool is happy in his ignorance

and the wise is tormented by his wisdom.

*

Mankind has always been at the mercy of better organized fools.

*

It was Kant who said that very often

ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.

*

Something to remember and repeat:

Self-criticism is not unpatriotic. Silencing criticism is.

*

"Armenianism is what I say it is!"

There you have it, the source of all our disagreements, controversies, and divisions.

*

"The starving Armenian" has become a cliché in the West.

We reinforce that cliché when we stress the Genocide

or when we reduce Armenianism to anti-Turkism.

*

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 26, 2004

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

The latest edition of LE PETIT LAROUSSE 2003, the most widely read French-language reference work, defines GENOCIDE as: "(from the Greek, genos=race, and Latin caedere=to kill). A crime against humanity that attempts to destroy all or part of an ethnic, national, racial or religious group. The term genocide was coined in 1944 to describe the extermination of Jews and Gypsies perpetrated during World War II by the Nazis. It was retroactively applied to the massacres of Armenians in Turkey in 1915."

In the entry on Armenia we read: "1,500,000 Armenians were victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Young Turk government."

A number of Armenians are discussed in separate entries but not all of them are identified as Armenian. Aram Khatchatourian is identified as Soviet, Charles Aznavour as French, Arthur Adamov, Nina Berberova and Gary Kasparov as Russian, and Saroyan as American.

Among those identified as Armenian are Calouste Gulbenkian, Arshile Gorkey, Manouk Mekhitar (founder of the Mekhitarist order in Venice), Victor Ampartsoumian, and Sergey Paerajanov.

It is interesting to note the closing sentences on Talaat ("He was assassinated by an Armenian"), Jemal ("he was assassinated") and Enver ("he died in battle in Central Asia").

*

Vassilis Vassilikos: "Think not only about what you have known in the past and what you know today, but also what will come after you but which you will never know."

*

Logic may apply to math and philosophy but not to human affairs. You cannot say: "If you admit this, you must also admit that," or "If you believe this, you must also believe that." Life is a puzzle and men are bundles of contradictions. Hence the sayings: "Politics makes strange bedfellows"; "It takes all kinds"; "S/he is beyond me";

"Wo/men are unpredictable"; "Love is blind" (and hate isn't?); and "The Armenian is an enigma that refuses to be solved" (Neshan Beshigtashlian).

*

Race, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, DNA, and the rest are things of no interest to me.

Character and moral integrity are universal concepts and they cannot be seen under a microscope. There are good men and bad men, and given the right combination of circumstances even good men will sometimes behave like swine.

That's all there is to be said on the subject and that's all that needs to be said. Anything else beyond that is speculation at best, racist nonsense at worst.

*

The astonishing ease with which people believe lies that are to their advantage and reject truths that are against them.

*

In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans: the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans. On the political stage, whenever God is summoned, the Devil is sure to enter.

*

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

Friday, February 27, 2004

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

"Our problems are human problems," I am reminded again and again: "You will find divisions, corruption and intolerance everywhere. I dare you to name a single nation that is immune to these aberrations."

My answer: "And I dare you to name a single newspaper in any language that says, since incompetence and corruption are universal and as old as mankind, we will no longer publish editorials, commentaries and letters to the editor dealing with these subjects."

And now, imagine a police force that says: "Since rape and murder are as old as mankind and every nation has its share of rapists and murderers, we shall no longer arrest anyone guilty of these crimes!"

*

The very same people who raise the same phony questions again and again also accuse me of repeating myself whenever I take the trouble to answer them.

*

To Armenians who demand solutions from me and choose to ignore the solutions advanced by our historians and writers from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe in the 5th century AD to our own days, I can only say: As long as there are Armenians like you, our problems will remain insoluble.

*

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!"

*

Victims and victimizers; deceivers and dupes: that's how I see the world; and I write as a victim in defense of other victims; and I write against deceivers because as a child I was taken in by their lies.

I was told writing was a noble profession.

It is not.

It is more like an obstacle course that stretches to infinity.

The average reader wants to be flattered; the partisan who believes in his party's propaganda line as if it were holy writ demands subservience; bishops and benefactors consider themselves as representatives of two of the most powerful entities known to man: God and capital (make it, Capital and god).

In such an environment literature (or for that matter, truth and honesty) have as much chance to survive as a sardine in a pool of hungry sharks.

*

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

Saturday, February 28, 2004

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

There are people out there - and I mean highly trained professionals - whose main job consists in introducing complexities where none exists. One could say that they are trained to take a simple straight line and to make of it a maze so intricate that even a mouse of genius could not extricate himself from it even if he tried for a thousand years. Which is where we come in. We might as well be that mouse at the mercy of professional charlatans who have created such a complex and serpentine maze around us that we have failed again and again to emerge from our tribal stage and establish our place in the sun as a nation.

The enigma of our destiny?

What nonsense! Understand this and consider the enigma (which was never there to begin with) solved.

*

Those of my critics who attack my words but ignore catastrophic policies remind me of the hunter who ignored the charging rhino and concentrated all his efforts on killing a mosquito.

*

To some of us, it seems, literature is only a means to an end, the end being fame and fortune. The ideas of a celebrity (no matter how trashy) may be worth considering, but the ideas of an obscure scribbler (no matter how valid) might as well be trash. Which is why I am told again and again: "You want to serve your country? Be another Saroyan!" The implication being, writers from Abovian to Zarian might as well be trash because none of them achieved success in an odar environment.

*

There is nothing new under the sun. I belong to the critical tradition in the same way that those who support the status quo belong to the "yes-man" tradition.

Even in the Golden Age of our literature (1500 years ago) we had critics and fat-assed princes whose number one concern was taking care of number one; and these princes had their share of fat-assed lackeys, hangers-on, and brown-nosers whose line is recycled today by their successors, who outnumber the dissidents because self-interest is a more universally shared motivation than self-sacrifice.

*

All power is suspect, and power without moral authority is criminal.

*

Why is it that recycling propaganda is patriotic and exposing lies is "cheap talk"?

*

Propaganda is produced by a minority that is against thinking and consumed by a majority that cannot think.

*

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 29, 2004

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

To those who accuse me of pessimism, I say: To write is to hope, and to hope is an expression of optimism.

*

It is a serious blunder to confuse cunning

(which is motivated by greed) with intelligence (which is rooted in objective judgment).

*

Rumor has it that writers, and artists in general, are unreliable and solitary eccentrics - unlike political and military leaders who deceive, oppress, exploit, declare wars and commit massacres. In an abnormal world the normal is seen as an aberration.

*

To those who recycle Vahan Tekeyan's familiar line, "We need self-esteem as we need air and water," I say: Self-esteem can be an asset only when it is an extension of real ability; when it is based on illusions, lies, and propaganda, it can be a dangerous liability.

*

Faith and dialogue are incompatible concepts. Men of faith are not so much unwilling as unable to engage in dialogue: they prefer to preach, propagandize and proselytize.

*

Once in a while I am told I am too tough on those who disagree with me. That may be because an Armenian who has made up his mind about something, anything, including things about which he knows little or next to nothing, turns into an immovable object that not even an irresistible force may budge. Perhaps my toughness or impatience or irritation is not with these immovable objects but with my own sense of total inadequacy.

*

As for the accusation that I corrupt the young: I have yet to meet a fellow Armenian who said to me: "After reading one of your books or essays ten or fifteen years ago I decided to assimilate."

Long before I was born, entire Armenian communities in Eastern Europe assimilated and, as far as I know, none of them put the blame on the critical writings of Khorenatsi or Raffi or Baronian.

Those in power will never say critics should be silenced because "they undermine our legitimacy," or "they expose our charlatanism," but because "they corrupt the young."

*

Anyone with the minimum of common sense and decency will be his own toughest critic and judge.

*

Some leaders behave like shepherds: first they fleece, then they butcher. I have at no time thought of our leaders as my friends, let alone as my servants, but as my enemies.

*

The ego is our Achilles' heel. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we are heels in search of an Achilles.

*

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

Monday, March 01, 2004

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

Identity is revealed not only in what we say, but also in what we choose not to say. But to the discerning ear, silence can speak louder than a thousand speeches delivered by a thousand stentorian speechifiers.

*

A good idea never dies, but a bad idea has a longer lifespan.

*

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 garbage-mouth bullies.

*

Nothing can obstruct one's vision as effectively as a bloated ego.

*

On several occasions readers have pointed out to me that Armenians have many reasons to distrust Jews, one of them being that the Young Turks were Jews from Salonica. According to T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, author of THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM: "The shallow and half-polished committee of the Young Turks were descendants of Greeks, Albanians, Circassians, Bulgars, Armenians, Jews - anything but Seljuks or Ottomans." I suppose this may also explain why Armenians have more than one reason to distrust their fellow Armenians in view of the fact that Sultan Abdulhamid II was half-Armenian on his mother's side.

To my anti-Semitic friends I say: Lust for power is thicker than blood. If you want to distrust a category or group, distrust, even loathe and hate, politicians or partisans who are motivated not by the need to serve their fellow men but to satisfy their lust for power.

*

Between fame and indifference to fame, I consider the second as the greater and more valuable possession.

*

If we cannot change reality, the least we can do is try to understand it. To try to change it without understanding it is an enterprise that is bound to backfire. Case in point: our revolutionaries at the turn of the century.

*

Zarian thought a writer could be truly creative only in his own homeland; and yet, his most productive years were spent in Istanbul, Paris, Venice, Milan, New York and Beirut, and his most unhappy and arid years in Yerevan.

*

Anonymous: "A friend in need is history."

*

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

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

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

Why is it that some Armenians, after assessing

themselves as good Armenians, take this assessment at

face value but totally ignore someone else's

assessment of himself as a good Armenian?

Why is it that, with this type of Armenian,

self-assessment is valid only when administered by

himself and no one else?

*

Why is it that we are so eager to prove to the world

an established fact (Turkish responsibility for the

Genocide) but totally unwilling to assume any degree

of responsibility for contributing to its two white

variants? - assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in

the Homeland.

Can the Genocide Recognition Bill bring back to life

a single victim?

How many thousand Armenian lives may be saved if we slow down or arrest the rate of assimilation and

exodus?

*

No one has ever said to me "After reading Odian I realized I was a Panchoonie," or "After reading Baronian I realized I was an honorable beggar," or "After reading Charents I realized our dividers are our gravediggers."

Speaking for myself: after publishing thirty books and more than three thousand commentaries, I have succeeded in only one endeavor: making enemies who hate me unto death.

What have we learned from our literature?

Nothing!

What have we learned from our former lords and masters?

Everything! -- and above all how to hate.

Which may suggest that, those among us who preach Armenianism prefer to practice Ottomanism.

*

Yiddish proverb: "A fool is his own informer."

*

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

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

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

The brain may compromise but the gut, never!

*

To be a success in literature you must be a source of income to your publisher. In its millennial history, Armenian literature has not been a source of income to anyone. A reliable and unfailing source of disappointment, disease, and early death, yes!

*

When I was a little boy growing up in a crowded ghetto, I loved reading about distant exotic places. Later, when I discovered literature, I enjoyed most of all reading writers with whom I shared nothing in common. To this day, I love reading about experiences and ideas outside my narrow orbit.

Which is why I cannot understand those of my readers who wish to re-create me in their own image, and I have every reason to suspect, on the day they succeed, they will give up reading me. Because, if you think about it, who wants to talk to his own shadow or eat regurgitated food?

*

Only writers who consider themselves immortal can afford to write for posterity. I feel privileged if what I write today is read tomorrow, even if it is forgotten the day after.

*

A couple of weeks ago my next-door neighbor was arrested for growing marijuana in his basement. A day later another neighbor (a devout Catholic) was arrested for sexually molesting twenty minors (among them two of his own daughters). To those who pretend to be experts on Armenia simply because they were born and raised there, I ask: How much did you really know about your next-door neighbors?

*

Before you attain greatness you must achieve honesty,

and of the two, achieving honesty

may well be the more demanding enterprise.

[koko]

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

Why is it that some Armenians, after assessing

themselves as good Armenians, take this assessment at

face value but totally ignore someone else's

assessment of himself as a good Armenian?

Why is it that, with this type of Armenian,

self-assessment is valid only when administered by

himself and no one else?

*

 

 

 

 

Why is it that we are so eager to prove to the world

an established fact (Turkish responsibility for the

Genocide) but totally unwilling to assume any degree

of responsibility for contributing to its two white

variants? - assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in

the Homeland.

Can the Genocide Recognition Bill bring back to life

a single victim?

How many thousand Armenian lives may be saved if we slow down or arrest the rate of assimilation and

exodus?

 

You must be the only armenian then, who is not assimilated

or am I wrong here?

I believe that a recognition of the genocide will make it easier to remain and stay armenian!!

You think not?

Most of us are sad not because the deaths of so many armenians , but because of the injustice that is put upon our shoulders, with turkey, as well as other countries like USA, not aknowleading the genocide. With the reocognization of the genocide it would be like a weight lifted from our shoulders.. that is one of many postitive results it will bring if Turkey would recognize the genocide.

Edited March 5, 2004 by koko

[ara baliozian]

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

We are all born with a bias inherited from our parents, teachers, early experiences, religion, culture, community and so on. To be objective in our judgment means to conduct an endless struggle against this bias whose depth we may never be able to fathom.

And what is the source of this collective bias?

Doubt, fear, anxiety, and above all, an inability to face reality on its own terms.

*

Leonardo da Vinci called war "pazzia bestialissima" (the most beastly madness). Did he make an effort to investigate its source? I am not sure.

*

What's so bad about a little bias? you may well ask. If the purpose of bias is to legitimize intolerance, hatred, war and massacre, it is pazzia bestialissima.

*

Do I repeat myself? If anything is not worth rereading, it can't be worth reading.

*

"Be more moderate in your criticism," I am told once in a while. Yes, yes, I know all about the vinegar versus the honey school of criticism and Armenian literature has produced both kinds of critics, all of whom have been consistently ignored. I have at no time heard a boss, bishop or benefactor say: "As a result of this or that critic's moderate criticism, I have decided to introduce the following reforms." The only reforms these gentlemen introduce is more efficient ways of silencing their critics. Consider the fates of writers from Abovian to Zarian. Speaking for myself: I have no idea what moderate criticism is. A critic is either honest or he is not. If a leader is corrupt or incompetent, an honest critic has no choice but to state the facts as he sees them.

What if he is wrong?

So what if he is?

Only God is infallible. And if we were to make a rule that says: "A critic may express his views only after he establishes his infallibility," I would say: Apply this rule to our leaders and none of them would escape the hangman's rope.

*

The Armenian character or our collective unconscious has been shaped more by sultans than by Armenian literature. That's because, in Machiavelli's words, "fear never relaxes," whereas love of literature may well be an absent factor. In the ghetto I grew up I don't remember anyone quoting a single line by an Armenian poet.

*

I don't make an effort to be a good Armenian.

I don't even know what that means;

and I doubt if there are two Armenians

who agree on what constitutes Armenianism.

Trying to be an honest human being keeps me so busy

that I have no time for any other enterprise.

*

It is the easiest thing in the world

to establish moral superiority by one's own code of ethics.

*

One of the functions of criticism is to remind us

that some of our most fundamental assumptions

may be based not on fact but on fiction.

*

Turks seems to be the central concern of our partisan papers. If you don't believe me try the following experiment: next time you get hold of a partisan paper, separate the headlines that refer to Turks and Azeris from those that refer to Armenians and don't be surprised if the first outnumber the second.

*

I grew up in a ghetto populated by

survivors and refugees from the Ottoman Empire.

There was less talk of massacres then

than there is now, perhaps because

these survivors knew better than anyone else

what it means to trust their destiny

into the hands of ambitious meddlers.

*

Our conscious memory is different from our subconscious memory. Which means that when we do things that we don't quite understand, we may be reacting to events that our conscious mind buried in our subconscious.

*

Some of my friends think I am wasting my time writing against charlatans, and that if I were to translate more works of Armenian literature into English I would be enhancing our prestige in the eyes of the English-speaking world. But I have every reason to suspect that even a thousand Armenian literary masterpieces translated into English will enhance nothing so long as our charlatans remain in charge of our destiny.

*

Semantics rule the world.

We say "genocide," they say "dispersion."

I say "the enemy is us," and I am told,

"the enemy is you."

*

A disgruntled reader in the Ottoman Empire or the USSR could easily silence a writer by denouncing him to the police. All those who miss the good old days, please raise your right hand!

*

When asked to encourage Catholicism in Russia by way of conciliating the Pope, Stalin is quoted as having said: "The Pope! How many divisions has he got?"

On hearing of Stalin's death in 1953, Pope Pius XII is reported to have said: "He is now counting my divisions."

I read this in Julien Green's diary: VERS L'INVISIBLE: JOURNAL 1958-1967 (Paris: Plon, 1967). Green is an American who lives in Paris and writes in French. He is also a devout Catholic and mentions God on almost every page of his diary.

He quotes a musicologist friends of his who once said to him: "Mozart is sometimes absent from his music, but Bach is always present in his."

He quotes a phrase from the German to the effect that man is dust but he is also light.

"When man tries to make a paradise for himself," he observes, "the result is a dismal failure. He is much better at making a hell for those who will follow him?"

I also learn that Cortot didn't have a good memory. Once in the middle of a Beethoven recital, he stopped, couldn't go on, turned to the audience and asked if anyone had the score with him, and on being handed the score he went back and continued with the recital.

The only Armenian Julien Green has mentioned so far (page 119) in his diary is Basil II Bulgaroktonus ("Bulgar-slayer" in Greek), the Byzantine Emperor who blinded 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners of war. Green does not identify him as an Armenian however. He also fails to mention the fact that on seeing his blinded army, the Bulgarian Czar Samuel is said to have had a stroke and died on the spot (hangarzamah yeghav, in Armenian). Another curious fact that Green doesn't mention is the fact that Czar Samuel was himself an Armenian-- his mother's name was Ripsima or Hripsime, which happens to be an exclusively Armenian name.