as i see it - Pt. III

[ara baliozian]

Monday, April 19, 2004

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

From my diary:

Very early this morning, when I was "unwashed, unshat and unshaved," the telephone rang. It was an old lady from the States somewhere bragging about the fact that her grandfather had been a friend of Khrimian Hairik's.

*

In the middle of the night, around 3 o'clock, the phone rang. In panic I jumped out of bed and answered it. It was an old man in his 80s who informed me he had just finished writing a long poem that fully deserved to be translated into English.

*

One of our elder statesmen calls me. "I am sending you a copy of my memoirs and I want you to read and tell me what you think. Be honest. Critical comments will be welcome - though I can't imagine why you would want to criticize it."

*

People who make no effort to understand the world should not complain that the world does not understand them.

*

An ant cannot imagine the horizons of an eagle.

*

There should be a silent rule for all e-mail communications that says, if you insult someone, have the decency to do so under your real name, otherwise your target may be justified in dismissing your words as those of a cowardly liar: because anyone who lies about his identity will lie about anything.

*

What I find intriguing to the point of fascination is the astonishing ease with which people end up believing in their own lies.

*

After giving themselves fat salaries, our fund-raisers tell us they can solve all our problems with money.

#

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

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

Sometimes it takes an honest person or a fearless man of genius to say the obvious. Example: "Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech." (Gostan Zarian)

*

Every day our local paper publishes articles, opinions and commentaries critical of Canadian political parties, institutions, prominent individuals, statesmen, even letters to the editor denouncing the editorial judgment of the paper itself; and life goes on because if the criticism is unfair, it will invariably find those who will expose it as such.

Once when I wrote a letter to the editor of an Armenian weekly questioning the facts in an editorial, I was told: "We don't as a rule publish letters critical of our editorial policy." Please note that I am now talking not about the editor of a Soviet-Armenian but an Armenian-American paper whose editor was born and raised in the United States and sported a Ph.D. from a prestigious American university.

*

You may take an Armenian out of the Ottoman Empire but you can't take fear of the Sultan out of him.

*

Fear of the Sultan I understand. Fear of Stalin I understand also. But fear of honesty is where I draw the line.

*

What is fear of honesty if not an open admission of dishonesty?

*

We are told again and again that we are human, we make mistakes, none of us is infallible, and we are told these things by our betters who operate on the assumption that the only way to gain the respect and loyalty of the people is by pretending to be superior beings who never make mistakes.

*

If you are honest in a dishonest environment they will call you a cynic.

*

We don't suffer from a scarcity of famous or wealthy or gifted men; we suffer from a scarcity of honest men. Time can be a merciless critic. I'd rather have time on my side than a thousand yes-men, brown-nosers, flunkies, philistines, crackpots, and baloney artists.

#

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

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

In one of our partisan papers I once read the following comment: "Our party has been criticized again and again from the day of its inception but it has successfully survived all its critics."

A stupid boast!

Turks could say the same about Turkey. So what? Longevity is a questionable criterion. Murder, rape, and war have a millennial history: does that make them worthy of our respect?

The Ottoman Empire lasted six hundred years: does that make it a better system than French or American democracy? A criticism should be judged on its merits and nothing else.

*

When first exposed as a crook, a prominent Armenian-American working for the United Nations allowed himself to be interviewed on TV in order to dismiss the rumors as a lot of baseless "blah, blah, blah!" - on the assumption that there was no evidence of his wrongdoing. But when a secret memo surfaced documenting his profiteering, he ran as far away as he could. Tracked down and caught by an investigative reporter, he replied to his questions with a curt "No comment!" and turned his back on the camera.

I can understand why this type of prominent Armenian would find all talk of honesty as idiotic, unpatriotic, and unArmenian.

*

Some of my readers read only to contradict and thus assert their intellectual superiority.

I have no use for them.

Others read me only to remind me that I have become a predictable fool.

They should have no use for me.

There are also readers who know who and what they are but they think no one else does, and they read me to find out how much I know in order to improve their strategies of deception.

[Armat]

Hi Ara

I would like to invite you to become a member of Hye forum book club.It would be great to have you as a member and your suggestions of books will be helpful since with your experiance the selective process will become richer.

[koko]

The armenians May have strongly belived in communism(thought they were far from the only ones in the soviet union) and yes they did a lot for soviet, they even sacrifyied their lives. But what good did stalin ever do to the armenians, why do you say Stalin was allah for them?( This may be true when it comes to the georgians)!

 

Who do you have as Allah ? Yourself?

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, April 22, 2004

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

Ever since the Romans crucified an innocent Jew with the connivance of the Jewish authorities, the Middle East has become a vipers' nest of unsettled scores and tribal conflicts. No matter what one does or doesn't do there, one is bound to make more enemies than friends.

*

Where there is ignorance, there will be those eager to exploit it to their advantage. In such an environment, knowledge will be perceived as undesirable and even unpatriotic.

*

If ignorance is open to exploitation and knowledge is not, there will always be those willing to promote ignorance and call it education.

*

Please note that my critical remarks are not aimed at those who are beyond criticism but at ordinary mortals like myself with their share of blind spots; and when I speak of individuals who are beyond criticism I have in mind our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted flunkies, hangers-on, brown-nosers, dupes, and anyone else who speaks in the name of God and Capital.

*

Some of my readers think I say strange, unorthodox, unpatriotic things because they have not read our writers. It is almost as if they were equating Armenianism with total ignorance of Armenian literature. They remind me of Catholics who are not encouraged to read the Bible lest they misunderstand it.

#

Friday, April 23, 2004

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

I don't write for readers who know better - that is to say, every other Armenian; I write for readers who are as confused and angry as I am but for reasons of their own prefer to keep silent probably because they don't have as much time to put into words what they feel and think. I write in the hope that by comparing notes we may be in a better position to understand what's being done to us in the name of this or that noble cause. Because, as everyone knows by now, one should not believe everything one reads in the papers; not all politicians are honest; and a great many sermonizers are no better than serial child molesters.

*

Some readers can't take criticism not because they disagree with it but because they cannot endure it from an inferior, and who would be more inferior in their eyes than a fellow Armenian?

*

When I was young I was told many things that I did not know and most of them were lies.

*

The hardest people to convince are those who pretend to know better; but they are also the most vulnerable because they, more than anyone else, are aware of the discrepancy that exists between shadow and substance, and between appearance and reality.

*

One of the functions of criticism is to remind us

that no matter how you slice it, propaganda is recycled crap, and just because two million, or for that matter,

twenty or two hundred million people believe in

it and are willing to die or kill for it,

that doesn't make it true - think of organized

religions and the crimes that have been committed in their

name. The reason why critics are not popular

is that no one likes to be told what he believes in is crap.

#

Saturday, April 24, 2004

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

According to our Prime Minister, what the Turks did to us was a Tragedy and not Genocide. One must therefore conclude that as far as our Prime Minister goes, the credibility of the Turks is not to be questioned - unlike the credibility of the Armenians and his own Members of Parliament, not to mention the testimony of a cloud of foreign eyewitnesses, diplomats, scholars, and historians.

*

There are those who edit, revise and rewrite history to suit their narrow aims; there are also those who recreate it. Leave it to lawyers and politicians to see things that aren't there and to ignore things that are in full view.

*

Such a pity no politician or lawyer was around to inform the victims that they were living a Tragedy rather than experiencing a Genocide. Who knows, maybe that would have made them feel better.

*

Moral I: The civilized West was not civilized enough then and is not civilized enough now to recognize an injustice when it sees one.

*

Moral II: There is no such thing as moral progress. Technological progress, yes! But even technological progress come with a heavy price, the price being computerized weapons of mass destruction.

*

Moral III: It never pays to rely on the common sense and decency of others, because self-interest will invariably be their number one concern. So it has been in the past and so shall it be in the future. And if some day the civilized West and Turkey itself recognize the obvious fact that what happened to us in 1915 was a Tragedy as well as a Genocide, it will not be in the name of justice, objective judgment, common sense and decency, but in the name of self-interest.

[ara baliozian]

The armenians May have strongly belived in communism(thought they were far from the only ones in the soviet union) and yes they did a lot for soviet, they even sacrifyied their lives. But what good did stalin ever do to the armenians, why do you say Stalin was allah for them?( This may be true when it comes to the georgians)!

 

Who do you have as Allah ? Yourself?

under stalin, armenians were divided into two: those who believed in him (sylva Kaputikian, Nairi Zarian) and those who did not (Bakounts, Kostan Zarian).

Those who were believers, betrayed the dissidents.

And the dissidents were either killed, exiled, or lived in poverty and disgrace (like Zabel Yessayan, among mano others).

 

as for georgians: like the Armenians, they also had their share of dissenters...as did the Russians and all other soviet republics. That's the way it has always been with fascists (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco): they had followers as well as critics. Nothing new in that.

 

as for my own allah: I am happy to report: I HAVE NONE.

[ara baliozian]

Hi Ara

I would like to invite you to become a member of Hye forum book club.It would be great to have you as a member and your suggestions of books will be helpful since with your experiance the selective process will become richer.

i will be happy to be part of the club -- if i find it....

[Armat]

i will be happy to be part of the club -- if i find it....

Dear Ara ,there are three polls(allowed five choices maximum in each poll) you can vote and if you would like to suggest a book as well, you are very welcome.

The idea is one book per month and discussion session upon completion.

The polls are here in green envelopes

 

http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showforum=1

[koko]

as for my own allah: I am happy to report: I HAVE NONE.

Thats good!

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, April 25, 2004

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

In good writing the suspense is not in the plot or the dialogue but in the style. One reads it not to know what will happen next but what's happening now.

*

When someone else makes the rules, you can never be sure if you are right or wrong. We have always lived by someone else's rules.

*

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize it. The second step is to apply the solution if there is one. In our case, we know the problem (divisiveness or tribalism) and we know the solution (solidarity or nationalism). If so far we have failed to solve our problem it's because our tribal leaders refuse to give up a fraction of their power. In other words, they care more about their ego than the welfare of the nation. As for the nation: it has lived under despotic rulers for so many centuries that subservience has become second nature.

*

Until I read Lesley Blanch's SABERS OF PARADISE, I had an Armenocentric view of the Caucasus. Lesley Blanch brought home the painful realization that Armenia was only one tribe among many others with their own rich history and traditions; and Armenia as seen by others was not the same as Armenia as seen by Armenians.

*

Once when I reviewed a book by someone called Cazamian thinking he was an Armenian, immediately I was corrected by an academic in a letter to the editor. But when one of our tribal leaders makes a mistakes, lives a mistakes or is a mistake, he can always rely on a chorus of lawyers, academics, and loyal partisans to prove that there is no mistake and the mistake is with those who want to correct it.

*

Monday, April 26, 2004

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

History can teach us many things but not everything. When Ford said "history is bunk!" he was probably reacting to so-called experts who used history to obstruct his path.

*

"The only thing we learn from history is that man learns nothing from history." There is some truth in that.

*

We are all familiar with Marx's dictum: "History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as comedy." Sometimes the genres are reversed. First time as farce….

*

History can teach us a great deal about human nature and the workings of reality, but history cannot provide us all the answers. If it did, historians would be prophets.

*

Sometimes what we need to solve a problem is neither history nor psychology but common sense. One does not have to have a Ph.D. to know that a leader with an oversized ego cannot be an effective public servant.

*

I remember once, after reading Solzhenitsyn's observation that tyrants don't support major writers, only minor ones, I published a commentary in which I said that none of our national benefactors had ever supported any one of our major writers, and I made a list of major writers in which I included Shahnour's name. Immediately, the secretary of one of our national benefactors wrote me an angry letter saying I was dead wrong and that his boss had indeed supported Shahnour. In my reply I said that Shahnour's life was an open book and everyone knew that he had lived a solitary, miserable existence far below the poverty line. Years later, when I met Shahnour's biographer I asked him about this and he said, the benefactor in question was an ignoramus who didn't even know who Shahnour was; his secretary was a wheeler-dealer who didn't know what he was talking about; and that the so-called financial support of the multimillionaire benefactor consisted of such an insignificant amount that Shahnour had returned the check.

*

A chapter in Joe Eszterhas's memoirs, HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL, is subtitled "Me and Anastas Mikoyan," where Mikoyan is identified as a nasty-tempered Armenian and "the Butcher of Budapest." We are further told that when Mikoyan visited the U.S., the author, then a boy, joined a Hungarian demonstration and threw a rotten egg and "hit Anastas Mikoyan on the side of his butchering dirty Commie-rat face."

#

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

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

There is misguided patriotism as surely as there is misguided love. Under Hitler, Germans loved not German culture (they rejected and drove into exile some of their best intellectuals and artists) but German might. Something very similar happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin. One could therefore say that fascist patriotism is more akin to treason.

*

A patriotism that does not recognize or respect such fundamental human rights as free speech and the right to dissent is not and cannot be love of country but hatred of one's fellow men.

*

Nothing could be more naïve than to say there are good men and bad men everywhere except among Armenians; or, all politicians are liars and crooks except Armenian politicians; or, a great many priests are no better than fornicators and serial child molesters but Armenian priests, very much like Caesar's wife, are above suspicion.

*

To say, everyone who agrees with me is good and everyone who disagrees with me is bad amounts to saying, we have no use for dialogue because we are fascists who believe "Mussolini ha sempre ragione!" (Mussolini is always right!)

*

There are two kinds of disagreement: honest (that leads to dialogue) and fascist (a dead end).

#

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

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

Some tear their words from their guts; others gather them like pebbles from the beach and use them to pelt the opposition. They engage in an act of vandalism and call it writing.

*

To our vandals parading as patriotic Armenians, I say: Your apathy would be your greatest act of vandalism. Which is why I prefer your insults to your silence.

*

We are not as incomprehensible to others as we would like to be. We may even be more transparent to them than we are to ourselves. Perhaps because our body language speaks louder than our words.

*

Perhaps the greatest crime of the Turks is not the Genocide but their recreation of us in their own image. This fact may well be as difficult for us to accept as the Genocide is for the Turks.

*

Sartre tells us, the function of literature is to "unveil to readers their own situation in order that they themselves may assume its responsibility." It is not to lull them into thinking they live in the best of all possible worlds

and they are in good hands. In that sense, the purpose of literature is not "the enjoyment of the reader but his torment."

*

Where the blame game is played, responsibility is shifted.

The Turks behaved like bloodthirsty barbarians, granted. The so-called civilized West engaged in double-talk, also granted. But what about us? If we are as smart as we pretend to be, why did we behave like ignorant dupes?Wednesday, April 28, 2004

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

Some tear their words from their guts; others gather them like pebbles from the beach and use them to pelt the opposition. They engage in an act of vandalism and call it writing.

*

To our vandals parading as patriotic Armenians, I say: Your apathy would be your greatest act of vandalism. Which is why I prefer your insults to your silence.

*

We are not as incomprehensible to others as we would like to be. We may even be more transparent to them than we are to ourselves. Perhaps because our body language speaks louder than our words.

*

Perhaps the greatest crime of the Turks is not the Genocide but their recreation of us in their own image. This fact may well be as difficult for us to accept as the Genocide is for the Turks.

*

Sartre tells us, the function of literature is to "unveil to readers their own situation in order that they themselves may assume its responsibility." It is not to lull them into thinking they live in the best of all possible worlds

and they are in good hands. In that sense, the purpose of literature is not "the enjoyment of the reader but his torment."

*

Where the blame game is played, responsibility is shifted.

The Turks behaved like bloodthirsty barbarians, granted. The so-called civilized West engaged in double-talk, also granted. But what about us? If we are as smart as we pretend to be, why did we behave like ignorant dupes?

*

[Vigil]

Is it me or does Ara sound like a broken record? I am not trying to insult you but whats the whole point that you are trying to make?

 

The majority of your posts either imply that Armenians are "a failure as a race" or that Turks "got the best of us"?

 

What is it that you are trying to prove? Can you at least stop writing "philisophically" and actualy get to a conclusion because to me you just sound like another one of the many that state much more than they actually do.

 

You just sit there behind a computer like a sloth writing these 2 liners every couple days or so, but yet do not go into detail as to what your underlying point is.

 

Are you trying to state like the many others that Armenians are inevitably going to go extinct? That its ok for us to genetically commit suicide? That Turks have "won"? That once the genocide is accepted we are going to magically disappear? That we are backed into corner? That our leadership has flaws? That Armenia is lost cause? That staying Armenian is a "difficult and impossible" task?

 

Because incidently if you are the answer to your questions are staring at you in the face, just like many Armenians you do not look hard enough. Quit hiding behind your thread and come post about more important discussions.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[TheArmenianPirate]

Is it me or does Ara sound like a broken record? I am not trying to insult you but whats the whole point that you are trying to make?

 

The majority of your posts either imply that Armenians are "a failure as a race" or that Turks "got the best of us"?

 

What is it that you are trying to prove? Can you at least stop writing "philisophically" and actualy get to a conclusion because to me you just sound like another one of the many that state much more than they actually do.

 

You just sit there behind a computer like a sloth writing these 2 liners every couple days or so, but yet do not go into detail as to what your underlying point is.

 

Are you trying to state like the many others that Armenians are inevitably going to go extinct? That its ok for us to genetically commit suicide? That Turks have "won"? That once the genocide is accepted we are going to magically disappear? That we are backed into corner? That our leadership has flaws? That Armenia is lost cause? That staying Armenian is a "difficult and impossible" task?

 

Because incidently if you are the answer to your questions are staring at you in the face, just like many Armenians you do not look hard enough. Quit hiding behind your thread and come post about more important discussions.

 

Agreed. To take your analogy one step further though Vigil, it's not that Ara is merely a "broken record", but rather, he is a record player trying to play 8000 different songs simultaneously. As a reader, one cannot focus on JUST one tune (quote in his case) alone. The moment you even begin to buy into one of his one-liners, a few lines down you see another one-liner that contradict some of those above it. After reading page after page of his banter, it seems he really has no stance on anything that can reach a conclusive end nor project a definite message to anyone except for depicting his own indecisiveness. Stance changing is as frequent and numerous as his bulleted one-line quotes. IF he decided to even take some form of action to implement even HALF of the ideas within his bulleted list of one sentence retorts, he'd need numerous lifetimes if not immortality to accomplish them all when one considers how many convoluted ideas he spews out or ends up contradicting with one another. Since he will only have one lifetime and is definitely not immortal, with so many ideas, intellectuals of his caliber will opt to continue putting up bulleted lists of eloquent one sentence chatter, ultimately accomplishing very little beyond creating a "quote" database for college sophmores to use in term papers.

 

In conclusion, this thread is vastly misrepresented with the title "as I see it", we're talking VASTLY here folks. Ara my friend, I hate to clue you in here, but you don't see much bud. At best, your "vision" of things is a mosaic of convoluted imagery that momentarily lapse in and out of your mind as you compile them in the form of single sentences. You've melted down a 64 color kit of Crayola crayons, dropped a tab of acid, and have attempted to paint a "picture" for us "as you see it". All these one liners are your effort to reach some sort of conclusive grandiose ideaology or thesis, but after 34 pages you have accomplished no such conclusive end by any stretch of anyone's imagination. But since we are on the topic of quick one line quotes, here is one more for the multitude of contradictory quotes by Ara. . .

 

"Choose a few ideas, believe in them, put action behind them, then see them realized. Choose too many ideas beyond your own capacity to keep track of, become overwhelmed, contradict yourself over and over again with convolution, then see none of them realized."

 

That's all TAP will mention of Ara and his quote/one-liner database.

 

-The Armenian Pirate

TheArmenianPirateBroadcast@hotmail.com

Edited April 29, 2004 by TheArmenianPirate

[Armat]

There is a lot of truth what Ara says but it does not mean I agree with everything.You guys have disagreements be spicific and non insulting and perhaps Ara and you will have a dialague.

[Vigil]

T here is a lot of truth what Ara says but it does not mean I agree with everything.You guys have disagreements be spicific and non insulting and perhaps Ara and you will have a dialague.

 

I just want Ara to be more direct in his writings and to discuss topics one at a time because then his ideas actually can be better understood by everyone. He certainly does have good ideas, which is why I do not want them to get lost in the rest of his work.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, April 29, 2004

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

The so-called Canadian recognition of the Armenian Genocide boils down to this scenario: I go to court and claim that my house was burned down and my parents brutally murdered by a gang of bloodthirsty savages. The jury agrees with me but the judge rejects the verdict on the grounds that what happened to me, my family and our property was an act of God and that the perpetrators were not a gang of criminals but a legitimate army going about their business of protecting and defending the territorial integrity of the State. In short: the Turks did to us what the white men did to the natives in Canada. If the Turks are guilty of genocide, who are we (Canadians) to cast the first stone?

Now then, should we celebrate a moral victory or lament a legal defeat?

*

I once met a professor from Yerevan who bragged about the fact that he was incorruptible and that unlike all other professors he never took bribes from his students. Later, I was informed that he was the hungriest man-eating shark on the campus.

Never trust an Armenian who brags because he brags to cover up.

*

Whenever after reading me an Armenian feels less comfortable with himself, he blames it on me rather than himself. In other words, whenever I fail to harmonize reality to suit his image, he thinks I am a bad Armenian who doesn't deserve to live.

*

We like to believe we live in a forest. But history tells us it is a jungle.

*

The more skilled the charlatan the more honest the mask. The greater the power or wealth the more impenetrable the skull. The deeper the Ottomanization the more strident the patriotism.

#

Friday, April 30, 2004

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

The pen may be mightier than the sword but, whenever presented with a choice, we have allied ourselves with the sword and ignored the pen.

In the 19th century we adopted nationalism because it was promoted by the Great Powers of the so-called civilized West. Result? A series of massacres, genocide, dispersion, exile, and assimilation (white massacre).

In the 20th century we adopted Communism. Result? Civil war, occupation, oppression, purges, corruption and degeneration in all facets of our collective existence.

Whenever our writers gazed inwards and attempted to analyze our failings, they were ignored, sometimes even silenced and persecuted. This is true even today.

Whenever I quote a critical remark by Raffi or Zarian, I am invariably reminded by some readers that I don't know what I am talking about, I hate Armenians, and that, unlike me, both Raffi and Zarian loved Armenians and have said many positive things about us, and by emphasizing the negative, I misrepresent their work and distort their central message, which is, I assume, we are the chosen and even when wrong we are right. It follows: we have no use for critics and we prefer the kind of mumbo jumbo that says we never had it so good and we are in good hands. Result? The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde!

*

I reply to all my critics except when the criticism is unreadable, incomprehensible, or it is the kind that I have already replied ten times. I wouldn't mind replying for the eleventh time were it not for the fact that I would then be open to the charge of repeating myself.

*

Writing for Armenians is a thankless task and writing on Armenian issues is a labyrinth without an exit. But I keep on writing. Don't ask me why because I have no answer. When I decided to be a writer I wanted to write short novels, hundreds of them in the manner of Simenon. But unlike Simenon I also wanted to write brief accessible introductions on such influential and fascinating figures as Bach and Hegel, if only because everything I had read about them had been academic and impenetrable to the average layman.

*

Give me a critic whose criticism is not ego-driven and I shall be eternally grateful to him.

#

Saturday, May 01, 2004

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

"In this country, a man is innocent until proven guilty," one of my Armenian-American readers reminds me after reading a comment in which I accuse our leadership of incompetence and corruption. This reader would be right if this forum were a court of law and I the prosecution.

*

History is full of criminals who were never proven guilty in an American or any other court of law - from Cain and Judas to Jack the Ripper and Saddam. What about the Sultan and Talaat? Or for that matter, Hitler and Stalin? Are we to assume they were all innocent?

*

If our leaders have not yet been proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt it may be because our justice system (assuming we have one) is not designed to catch crooks but to legitimize criminal conduct. Likewise, our press is not designed to expose injustice but to cover it up.

*

"Four of my investigative reporters were beaten to a pulp and my office was trashed," an editor from Yerevan once told me. This happened under Levon Der Bedrossian's administration. Have things improved since then?

*

Has anyone ever calculated how many million dollars we spend every year on our churches and clergy? Why is it that when it comes to investigative reporters, we say we can't afford them?

*

An insider once told me: "Did you know that the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin sits on a throne of gold?" He was not accusing, he was bragging.

*

If those who rise to the defense of our leaders are deeply concerned about the welfare of the nation, I would like to know what else have they done to express their concern? - in addition to criticizing critics.

[ara baliozian]

just like many Armenians you do not look hard enough.

there you have it: my message in a nutshell.

you must be mind reader! / ara

[ara baliozian]

After reading page after page of his banter,

to you i will only say: thank you for reading me.

if you mean what you say, you would have stopped reading me after page 2....

i would have, anyway.

thanks again for not giving up on me. / ara

[Vigil]

No updates? Ara quit slacking and get to it!

 

Oh please post in different topics also, your opinion is valued.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 02, 2004

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

In his monumental new book ART: A NEW HISTORY (777 pages, Illustrated, Notes. Index. Bibliography. New York: Harper Collins. 2003), Paul Johnson writes that Armenian churches “have proved difficult to destroy completely or even to reduce to ruin. They were built by a sturdy race, one of the great survivors of history, and most still stand today erect and proud in their conical caps.” And: “No ancient race, except the Egyptians, paid more attention to stone quality than the Armenians.” Further down: “The Armenians have been persecuted as often, if not quite so long, as the Jews.”

Though he discusses many modern painters, Johnson ignores Sarian and mentions Arshile Gorky’s name only once in passing. He calls Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) “Russia’s finest marine painter…[who] next to storms at sea, loved moonlight, because it produced a fresh set of dramatic circumstances which could be carried to the limits of credibility.”

*

About the Russian painter Levitan, Johnson tells us, though he was a close friend of Chekhov’s, he did not paint a portrait of the writer. That’s because, he explains, Levitan was infatuated with the Russian landscape and painted nothing else.

It is to be noted, Aivazosky too was acquainted with Chekhov but he too left no portrait of the writer.

I suspect both Aivazovsky and Levitan were criticized for repeating themselves.

*

Whenever I am accused of repeating myself I remember the Saroyan story about the cellist who played the same note over and over again on his cello. When asked why, he is said to have replied: “All cellists search for the right note and they never find it. I have found it."

*

When criticized of repeating himself, Sartre replied: “We should not be afraid of repetition.” I suppose, to some degree all writers and artists in general have their favorite theme or monomania.

*

The question that I ask myself again and again is: Why do people who consider themselves smart allow relative morons to rule them?

One possible answer: They may not be as smart as they think they are.

Another answer: They may be smart in business but certified single-digit morons in politics.

*

Are Armenians unique in that respect? Not at all. The average German or Russian may be as smart if not smarter than the average Englishman or American, but their history suggests that they have been a disaster in politics. As for the Arab tribes in the Middle East: the less said about them the better….

#

Monday, May 03, 2004

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

Unlike physics, chemistry and mathematics, history is not an exact science. There is no such thing as English chemistry, French physics, or German mathematics. Mathematics, unlike history, is one.

*

The past is one too but historians differ in their interpretations of it because

a)they are products of specific experiences, traditions, values, and interests, all of which may be summed up with a single word, namely, bias; and

none of them can claim to know everything there is to know.

*

The power structure within which a historian functions will support and promote only those historians whose bias is in agreement with its interests. An objective historian who ignores the interests of the state will be labeled a dissident and treated like an outcast, a renegade, and an enemy of the people.

*

Patriotic history has as much validity as patriotic chemistry, physics, or mathematics.

*

All patriotic historians who are convinced their version of history is the only right one should be reminded that their patriotism makes them prime targets of nationalist propaganda and manipulation.

*

A patriotic historian who is convinced there is one and only one version of the past will have no difficulty in convincing his compatriots because preaching to the converted is easy. What’s hard is convincing the opposition.

*

If so far Turkish historians have failed to convince Armenians, and vice versa, it is because both Turks and Armenians are brought up to be slaves to their own bias and limitations.

*

If some day Turkish and Armenian historians reach a consensus it will be because the dissidents on both sides will be classified not as enemies of the people but as friends of the truth.

#

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

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

If I were to choose the most dangerous sentence ever devised by men, it would be: “I believe in one God” – the implication being that He is the only true God and all believers in other gods are heretics or infidels, that is to say, misguided inferior dupes who are destined to burn in hell.

*

If mankind ever ushers in a universal Golden Age, the 20th Century will be known as the Dark Ages of Nationalism and all national historians will be classified as enemies of mankind because they infected the minds of people with the deadly virus of racist propaganda.

*

The purpose of nationalist historians is to cover up moral failures, to misrepresent defeats as moral victories, and to declare the nation to be God’s chosen.

*

The only way to promote universal brotherhood and peace is to eliminate all traces of propaganda and lies from history textbooks.

*

Whenever I read one of my youthful critics, I cannot help reflecting that as a boy I too would have reacted the same way had I read someone like me.

*

As a boy I too viewed the world through patriotic eyes. But was I really a patriot or did I pretend to be one for purely one-upmanship reasons? I was brainwashed. What does a brainwashed person really know about anything since his awareness is that of a parrot who speaks but does not know what he says.

#

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

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

Speaking of textbooks on history: I should like to read one in which one man’s terrorist is not another’s freedom fighter, and a military defeat is what it says it is, a defeat rather than a moral victory. I just find it difficult to believe that anyone has a right to draw an invisible semantic line in his imagination and to assert that if a word crosses that line it is defined as its own contradiction.

*

I cannot trust a historian who asks me to respect his judgment by suspending mine. Objectivity and honesty are extremely rare commodities. I am willing to accept the objectivity and honesty of an Armenian historian only if he is also respected by honest and objective non-Armenian historians.

*

No historian has ever asserted that he is infallible and he knows everything there is to know in his field, and the fact that he enjoys the support of a regime or political party with its own ideology that is in direct conflict with other ideologies should be seen as a liability rather than an asset by anyone who values objectivity and honesty above self-interest and patriotism, if only because some of the most horrible blunders and crimes in the history of mankind have been committed in the name of ideology, patriotism and self-interest.

#

Thursday, May 06, 2004

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

Name the greatest living Armenian playwright! You don’t know? Well, no need to feel bad about it because neither do I. How about the greatest living Armenian novelist? Or the greatest short story writer, poet, essaying, literary critic or philosopher?

*

There is a World War II American joke that goes something like this: “What is the title of the shortest book in the world? A list of Italian heroes.” I suspect a list of great contemporary Armenian writers, or for that matter, painters, composers, actors and directors, would make an even shorter book with a single blank page.

*

Lucky for us no one cares much about Armenians to make a joke of our literature, not even Armenians. We escape ridicule through ignorance (odar) and apathy (Armenian).

*

Now then, if I were to ask the name of the richest Armenian alive, I would have better luck in getting the right answer if only because our national benefactors make regular headlines in our press, perhaps because in our environment or culture, money is in, ideas out. The first words of our bible have been amended to: “At the beginning was the $….”

*

More questions: Who is the greatest political thinker or leader, or the greatest historian (the massacres don’t count because they cover only two decades of our millennial history), or the greatest scientist?

*

Perhaps one reason we are drowning in a sea of mediocrity is that we are so obsessed with what the Turks did to us that we don’t give a damn about anything else. As Zarian would say: “Danger, danger, danger!”

[Armen]

Thursday, May 06, 2004

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

 

Lucky for us no one cares much about Armenians to make a joke of our literature, not even Armenians. We escape ridicule through ignorance (odar) and apathy (Armenian).

*

Now then, if I were to ask the name of the richest Armenian alive, I would have better luck in getting the right answer if only because our national benefactors make regular headlines in our press, perhaps because in our environment or culture, money is in, ideas out. The first words of our bible have been amended to: “At the beginning was the $….”

*

More questions: Who is the greatest political thinker or leader, or the greatest historian (the massacres don’t count because they cover only two decades of our millennial history), or the greatest scientist?

Ara, I am sure I'm getting something wrong here, but...

Why would someone make a joke of Narekatsi? Or, isn't Victor Hambardzumian a great scientist?

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, May 06, 2004

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

Name the greatest living Armenian playwright! You don't know? Well, no need to feel bad about it because neither do I. How about the greatest living Armenian novelist? Or the greatest short story writer, poet, essaying, literary critic or philosopher?

*

There is a World War II American joke that goes something like this: "What is the title of the shortest book in the world? A list of Italian heroes." I suspect a list of great contemporary Armenian writers, or for that matter, painters, composers, actors and directors, would make an even shorter book with a single blank page.

*

Lucky for us no one cares much about Armenians to make a joke of our literature, not even Armenians. We escape ridicule through ignorance (odar) and apathy (Armenian).

*

Now then, if I were to ask the name of the richest Armenian alive, I would have better luck in getting the right answer if only because our national benefactors make regular headlines in our press, perhaps because in our environment or culture, money is in, ideas out. The first words of our bible have been amended to: "At the beginning was the $…."

*

More questions: Who is the greatest political thinker or leader, or the greatest historian (the massacres don't count because they cover only two decades of our millennial history), or the greatest scientist?

*

Perhaps one reason we are drowning in a sea of mediocrity is that we are so obsessed with what the Turks did to us that we don't give a damn about anything else. As Zarian would say: "Danger, danger, danger!"

#

Friday, May 07, 2004

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

"There is a Turk in all of us," Puzant Granian once told me. The thought suddenly occurs to me: What if it's the other way around? What if what's buried within us is not a Turk but an Armenian - and buried in a grave that's not just six feet under but 600 years deep? What if our loud and coarse assertion of patriotism is nothing but an effort to cover up this fact? And when I speak of the buried Armenian, I have in mind an authentic Christian who doesn't just brag about his Christianity but practices it: an Armenian who turns the other cheek and an Armenian who forgives as well as loves his enemy. Granted that a good Christian is hard to find among odars too, but unlike us, they don't brag about their Christianity as insistently as we do.

Speaking for myself, the Armenians I have met and dealt with are the kind who insult you whenever you refuse to share their lies and illusions and, given the chance, will kick you when you are down. And the more patriotic the Armenian, the more ruthlessly Ottoman his assertions of Armenianism. It is as if he were using his patriotism as a license to verbally massacre anyone whom he identifies as an enemy.

#

Saturday, May 08, 2004

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

The older I grow, the less I know, and the more doubts I have about everything, including myself.

*

There may be two sides to every story but we are destined to know only one. The rest will be guesswork. But there will be guesswork even for our side of the story because none of us can claim to be fully aware of all the unconscious drives that motivated us to act as we did.

*

Michel Tournier on death: "To die for me means to return to the state that preceded my birth. I couldn't have been nothing since I became something. In dying I will probably trace the road in the opposite direction."

On Proust: "He bores me. His social environment bores me. Closed worlds fascinate as well as repel me. The Thomas Mann of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN fascinates me. So does Saint-Simon's Versailles. But Proust's Saint-Germain I find oppressive."

*

Jean-Francois Revel: "Terrorism has become a means of ruling foreign nations, especially democracies, from a distance. Dictatorships are better equipped to neutralize terrorists….A war against terrorism is a war in which the enemy is everywhere and invisible - he doesn't wear a uniform and he doesn't kill other soldiers but random civilians. The democracies of Europe have not yet devised a strategy to deal with this kind of enemy."

On Western anti-Americanism: "A triumph of Islam."

*

Bernard Henri-Levy on terrorism: "This is undoubtedly a strange war. A war without battlefields. A war without a front line, a war in which each one of us is suddenly thrust on some kind of front line….Al-Qaeda's enemy is not America but democracy."

[ara baliozian]

Ara, I am sure I'm getting something wrong here, but...

Why would someone make a joke of Narekatsi? Or, isn't Victor Hambardzumian a great scientist?

i am referring to living/contemporary figures. you are mentioning dead ones -- which may suggest you cannot think of living ones and which also hooks up with what i am saying. / ara

[Armen]

i am referring to living/contemporary figures. you are mentioning dead ones -- which may suggest you cannot think of living ones and which also hooks up with what i am saying. / ara

Got it. Thanks. I agree and I have thought about that.

Don't you think this is a result of increased scepticism among Armenians?

If a Saakashvili would emerge in Armenia tommorow, he couldn't possibly rally the people against the government. I think that our people don't believe honesty anymore. Moreover, most Armenians think that honesty is childish.

So, whatever politicians raise in Armenia they are expected by the people to behave experienced (meaning: a little bit of corruption, a small drop of crime, a group of tough friends).

[ED]

Armen, first I think we need to restore faith among people and government, and that’s a humongous task to achieve.

 

You see, far more dangerous pattern has emerged, at list this the way I see it, and I’m not alone. People have lost faith. Most of all reestablishing or achieving faith among people towards government, being independent, self govern, and to Armenia as whole, is a key ingredient, a necessity that needs to be healthy and present, in the absence of such, which is the case now! Then even a “Shakashvili” wouldn’t be able to bring back dead nation.

[Armen]

Edward, how are you going to convince a nation, which saw almost all of its living Karabagh war heroes getting corrupt? Scepticism among Armenians is at its highest possible point at present.

[ara baliozian]

Got it. Thanks. I agree and I have thought about that.

Don't you think this is a result of increased scepticism among Armenians?

If a Saakashvili would emerge in Armenia tommorow, he couldn't possibly rally the people against the government. I think that our people don't believe honesty anymore. Moreover, most Armenians think that honesty is childish.

So, whatever politicians raise in Armenia they are expected by the people to behave experienced (meaning: a little bit of corruption, a small drop of crime, a group of tough friends).

i am too busy trying to understand the present to predict the future.