as i see it (cont.) - Pt. II

[Twilight Bark]

I love exchanging ideas anywhere, including in other peoples' threads'.

When we start a thread (and "as i see it" is one) it is implicitly an invitation for comments. Viewing a thread or topic as personal space is a recipe for disappointment in a public forum. Ara has the right to remain silent when confronted, and he also has the right to write a monologue. That does not make it inappropriate to comment on his posts. In any case, I don't intend to address his posts any longer unless there is some special reason.

I enjoyed our exchange of ideas on many other topics, and I hope that we continue doing so.

Regards,
TB

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

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

1.

The fool is happy in his ignorance

and the wise is tormented by his wisdom.

2.

The wise have more questions than answers,

more doubts than certainties.

By contrast, fools have no trouble in convincing themselves

and one another that they have all the answers.

3.

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

4.

Wars are declared by fools and fought by the ignorant.

5.

There are no single-minded wise men

but many single-minded fools.

6.

Call me a single-minded fool

who thinks he can reason with his fellow Armenians.

7.

I have several friends who could have been far better writers than I,

but after being insulted a few times they saw the light

and gave up in disgust.

Every time I am (or my mother or grandmother is) insulted,

my resolve to persevere is renewed.

Call me a single-minded perverse fool.

8.

To understand the enemy

it is necessary to be objective about ourselves.

9.

In the eyes of those who have been brought up

on a steady diet of chauvinist crap,

objectivity is anathema because it may reveal the fact that

we are not as smart or as wise as we have assessed ourselves to be.

10.

An Armenian fool will never agree with his Turkish counterpart.

On the day fools cease to represent us,

we may have a better chance to come to terms with our enemies.

[ara baliozian]

LATER [26 February, 2002]

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

Kurds are proud of being Kurds

Gypsies are proud of being Gypsies.

Turks are proud too.

The English brag about the fact that

"An Englishman cannot be a slave!"

(How does an Englishman view us?

Probably as a nation that allowed itself to be enslaved

by the Turks for 600 years;

and we retaliate by saying

at a time when the English lived like barbarians

we were enjoying a Golden Age!)

And we brag about the fact that

we were the first nation to accept Christianity

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

As some of our own intellectuals have pointed out:

we may have a cause and effect here:

conversion to Christianity (cause)

and being massacred (effect).

Hegel tells us Christianity replaced the human master

(the king or feudal lord) with the divine master.

Marx said Christianity became the opium of the slaves of capital.

Napoleon – no Marxist he – agreed.

If it were not for Christianity, he once observed,

the poor (who outnumber the rich a thousand to one)

would butcher the rich.

"We are like sheep without a shepherd," our own Raffi said;

and "Where there is oppression

there is cowardice, ignorance, and sloth."

And even more to the point:

"Our clergymen preach patience to us

thus promoting subservience to the point of slavery."

I therefore suggest,

instead of celebrating the 1700th anniversary of our Christianity,

let’s go down on our knees,

sing Der Voghormia for the last time,

and rise as born again human beings:

"Because only the free man

is in a position to discover the benefits of freedom," (Raffi).

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

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

1.

When I was young I was unteachable.

Hence my allergy to all whippersnappers and phony pundits.

There is an old Spanish saying (could be Brazilian or Bedouin):

"Women and horses: let someone else tame them."

And I say: "Horse’s asses: let a shrew tame them, and vice versa."

2.

In the memoirs of an American writer (I forget his name)

I remember to have read (I will paraphrase):

"Never hesitate to look your accuser in the eye

and shake his hand even if he happens to be

the worst sonofabitch in the world."

And I remember my father (Ottoman background) saying:

"Next time a bully comes near you,

kick him in the balls as hard as you can.

Don't worry about permanent damages,

I will pay for them."

Speaking for myself:

I prefer the Chinese approach:

"Of the 36 (or is it 72?) ways, avoidance of confrontation is the best."

3.

"The true source of wisdom," Socrates tells us,

"is not knowledge but moderation."

[ara baliozian]

LATER [27 February, 2002]

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

1.

Take yourself seriously and provoke the ridicule of a thousand.

2.

I don't look for enemies; they find me.

3.

An Armenian who is about to lose an argument turns into a Turk.

4.

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.

5.

When a chauvinist who recycle craps says:

"Criticism must be constructive!"

what he really means is:

"If recycling crap is good enough for me,

how dare you think otherwise?"

6.

It was Kant who said that very often

ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.

7.

Something to remember and repeat:

Self-criticism is not unpatriotic. Silencing criticism is.

[ara baliozian]

FROM A MANUAL OF ARMENIAN CHAUVINISM

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

1.

Always proceed from the assumption that

Armenians are morally and intellectual superior.

No need to say we are the Chosen People

but make it abundantly clear that it is such a self-evident truth

that it doesn't need to be stated.

2.

When accused of racism point out the fact that

as victims of racism we can't be racists.

3.

Every idea is open to contradiction.

Contradict even when it makes little or no sense.

The less sense you make the sooner your antagonist will quit.

4.

A really smart person does not argue with a fool.

Do not hesitate to make a fool of yourself

or, for that matter, to go down into the gutter.

A fool in the gutter can be a formidable force

that can drive even the most knowledgeable antagonist

to despair and ultimately silence.

5.

If you can't contradict the idea, insult the man.

6.

The purpose of an argument is not to engage in dialogue

but to silence the enemy,

and whenever possible, to destroy him.

7.

Dialogue is a non-Armenian concept

and anything that is non-Armenian must be considered anti-Armenian.

8.

Blame all our problems on others,

beginning with the Turks, the Great Powers, the Soviets (KGB),

the Americans (CIA) and the Jews (Mossad).

Since these are secret agencies,

anything can be imputed to them without fear of contradiction.

9.

On the subject of Armenian criminals:

attack the justice system because there is no such thing

as a perfect institution or law enforcement agency,

and everything that is human is fallible

and therefore vulnerable to criticism.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 28, 2002

 

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

 

1.

Where there is censorship there will be fear:

fear of knowledge;

fear of objective judgment;

fear of honesty;

fear of excellence and originality.

Where there is fear you will also find cowardice.

 

2.

When I think of all those writers and thinkers who were silenced and the strident voices of fools who are everywhere in our media and discussion forums, I want to hand in my resignation as a member of the human race.

 

3.

How different things would be if,

instead of speaking of a Golden Age buried in the past, we were to live as if it were in the near future.

 

4.

Men speak as if they valued freedom above everything else but live as though nothing gives them more pleasure than to surrender it to sex, money, power, prestige, a closed system of thought, to the lies of priests and mullahs….

 

5.

It has been said that the sensitive person

is always at the mercy of the rude.

Something similar could be said of the wise

and the loud-mouth ignoramus.

[ara baliozian]

CANNIBAL PATRIOTISM

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

Whenever I come across a vitriolic message

by one of our phony superpatriots

(not necessarily the ones that are addressed to me)

I think of Zarian’s words:

"Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another,"

and "An Armenian’s tongue can be sharper than a Turk’s yataghan."

I sometimes wonder,

what happened to these sharp-tongued Armenians

who cannibalized Zarian?

I assume they are dead and buried by now,

but their children and grandchildren carry on the family tradition,

all the while bragging about their superior brand of Armenianism

which they inherited from their fathers and grandfathers,

sometimes even from their mothers and grandmothers.

[ara baliozian]

CONTRADICTIONS

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

1.

When we say we are victims of Turks,

Turks say they are victims of Armenians.

When we say Turks are liars,

they say Armenians are liars.

When we say they are killers,

they say we are terrorists.

Now I know where some of my readers got their spirit of contradiction.

2.

The difference between a civilized Armenian and a Neanderthal is that,

the first says "I disagree with you," and the second calls you an idiot.

3.

Among us killer commissars are not a political phenomenon

peculiar to the defunct USSR but a species

that can adapt to all climates and continents,

including the United States of America.

4.

An Armenian who has failed to change the mind of a single Armenian

thinks he can change the mind of a state like Turkey and the United

States.

Figure that one out if you can.

[Hyeflyer]

[sen_Vahan]

Talkng to my friends at Moscow Universities I get to know that they did not go home (to Armenia) for a long time. Why? Because they will be forced to join the Army Forces right after the arrival in the Airpot Zvartnoz. One way to overcome this problem is to pay money(illegaly).

What's that a corrupted patriotism or a manifestation of the "equal rights of all the citizens"?

 

Another person working in Petersburg told me after a vacation in Armenia that he will never go to Armenia again. Why? "There is a corruption beggining the Airport Zvartnoz. After the arrival you feel yourself an enemy of your own country. It is good for foreign people to go to Armenia but not for us." That what can one hear constantly from those who visit our country.

 

On the other hand, Armenians that go to Turkey never will tell you something like that. They like everything in that country!

 

When I go to Russia or US i see a lot of Armenians that TRY to speak Russian and English and ignore their fellow Armenians."Mard hayeri het piti gorts chunena":they say.

What the hell is going on? And we talk about the christianity and our old culture? Maybe we like the "idea of Armenia and Armenians" but not the people?

Vahan

[ara baliozian]

GENTLE READERS

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

1.

If you itch to judge a writer,

it’s safer to choose a dead one.

You never know how a living one may react.

"How dare you madam! -- how dare you criticize my books?"

an English writer is quoted as having said:

"My books are my children.

How would you feel if I were to criticize your children?"

2,

Some readers assume writers to be timid creatures

afraid to alienate or lose even a single reader.

Speaking for myself:

there is a type of reader I go out of my way to lose –

a type I call "carcinogenic agents."

3.

There is another type of reader who

after criticizing or insulting you once,

spends the rest of his life proving that

he was right to insult you.

With such a reader I can truly say that

I have achieved immortality

even if the immortality is of the negative variant.

4.

To readers you complain that I am

consistently negative, predictable and repetitive, I ask:

"Do you go to church every Sunday

in the hope that you will hear the preacher speak in favor of sin?"

[ara baliozian]

ON AN -ISM

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

1.

Militarism is a belief system that says, in effect:

If you can't change the mind, change the map.

2.

History tells us, sometimes it is easier changing the map

than changing the mind.

3.

I leave it to the Napoleons of the world to change the map.

All I want to do is understand myself and my fellow men.

You may now call me a megalomaniac.

4.

For every Napoleon there are thousands

with Napoleonic complexes

and millions with Napoleonic ambitions.

5.

Every child in America is brought up to believe

the Presidency is open to him;

and the President is referred to as the most powerful man on earth.

But the truth is, he is as much a prisoner of the system

as the rest of us. Perhaps even more so.

Almost every other married man misbehaves with a Monica

without making headlines in the media for months

and without running the risk of losing his job….

6.

There are stories that walk

and stories that refuse to budge.

Monica’s blow job and Condit’s affair --

the first, a victimless crime (or is it sin?),

the second, one probable victim --

are examples of stories that walk.

And now compare these two stories with our Genocide

(that claimed millions of victims).

You may now call me a cynic!

7.

And now, name an Armenian who was successful

in changing the mind of a single Armenian.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, March 03, 2002

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

Armenians are stubborn, we are told.

Are we?

I am not sure.

I have my doubts.

Observe the ease with which over a million Armenians

emigrated after independence,

not only because conditions deteriorated in the Homeland

but also, and above all,

because they realized they were at the mercy

of a regime that was beyond reform.

And observe the ease with which an Armenian of the Diaspora

is alienated and opts for assimilation.

Result: in troubled times,

the scum rises to the top.

On a more personal note:

After calling my mother a whore

and accusing my grandmother of giving blow jobs to Turks,

one of my gentle readers writes:

"The problem with you is that you lack diplomacy."

Now, I know many Armenians

who after being exposed to this type of verbal abuse

by a fellow Armenian would have quit in disgust

and placed a safe distance between himself and all things Armenian.

I didn't and I don't intend to

because it is one of my pet projects

to expose Armenian stupidity against which

even the dumbest Turks cannot compete.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, March 04, 2002

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

1.

"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.

2.

What could be easier and dumber

than assessing others negatively and ourselves positively?

And yet, we do it all the time,

and by "others" I don't just mean Turks but the world at large,

including Armenians who don't share our fallacies and fantasies.

3.

Have you noticed that those who speak of positive or constructive

criticism

will crap on you the first chance they get

or when they think you have stepped out of

an imaginary line drawn by their warped minds?

4.

When writing against barbarians

one should wield a civil pen.

May I confess that I have not always been successful

in that endeavor perhaps because

some barbarians tend to confuse civility with weakness.

5.

To speak of patriotism and to speak the truth are not always synonymous.

On the contrary.

One could even say that the greatest enemy of patriotism

is not treason but objectivity.

6.

If and when the multiplication table becomes a political issue,

we will disagree on it too!

7.

If Armenians are smart,

why is it that there are a great many Armenians out there

(85% according to some estimates)

who don't think it’s smart being Armenian?

[ara baliozian]

DOGS

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

1.

When a dog barks,

others dogs are sure to join him.

Likewise, when an idiot speaks,

other idiots are sure to echo his sentiments.

The same applies to partisans.

Knowing this, partisans now hide their membership

and pretend to be chezok (non-partisan).

And since they have a very low opinion of their fellow Armenians,

they think their ruse is foolproof.

P.S. I apologize to all dogs for comparing them to idiots.

I apologize to dog owners too.

2.

If reason cannot move an Armenian,

what is it that makes an Armenian think

(if you will forgive the overstatement)

that it can move the Turkish State or the U.S. Government?

I have said this before, but it bears repeating.

3.

"Armenianism is what I say it is!"

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

and divisions.

4.

Odars don't need to underestimate us.

We do it all the time.

5.

There is a type of Armenian

who keeps aiming at the Turks

(the focus of all his hatred and cannibal instincts)

but succeeds only in hitting Armenians.

6.

Recycled crap cannot be contradicted, only identified.

[sen_Vahan]

"For every Napoleon there are thousands with Napoleonic complexes and millions with Napoleonic ambitions."

 

You are so right! "The genius is doing what he must do, the talent is doing as much as he can, others just imitate."

 

You say that people in Armenia left the country after the independence mainly not because of hard situation in economy. I do not agree, as I remember the majority did it because of lack of job. Moreover, a lot of men went to Russia, US, Ukraine to work and left their families in homeland. Later they took their families to those countries after they found a good place to work.

 

Vahan

[sen_Vahan]

Dear Ara Baliozian,

In your "Unpopular Opinions" you write :".... After 600 years of brutal Ottoman tyranny, a literary renaissance in Istanbul; but after 60 years of freedom in America (and with millions spent on schools, churches, centers, libraries, museums, and university chairs) not a single Armenian-language writer or editor"

These are all facts that cannot be denied. But 600 is much larger that 60! And can I ask you what did Armenians give after the first 60 or even 160 years in the Ottoman Empire? Who knows what will happen after 300 years in the US. "Wait and see."

And why do think that years of freedom could give rise to the brilliant art? Many countries have the full freedom for many years already, do they give a great literature? Does Russia, for example, give excellent writers now? As people say there is only one writer now in Russia - Solgenizin(who was the product of 1930s) Is that possible that freedom makes things worse in that sense, make people relax? And is that possible that it is a more general problem but not only for Armenians?

Vahan

[Twilight Bark]

I offer you two possibilities:

1. He is an intellectual mouse that thinks he is a lion. In other words, he is simultaneously too simple and too arrogant to see the obvious.

2. He thinks his audience, being Armenian, is too primitive and crude to notice the silliness of his strategically inserted untruths.

 

Sorry I broke my pact to hold my silence. I am not sure I have a "specific reason". Vahan, it's all your fault.

[Twilight Bark]

Some of us plan to live a little shorter than that . Seriously though, in 300 years almost the entire Armenian diaspora in America will have disappeared. A sad but depressingly high probability. Unless there is a strong barrier (such as religious incompatibility with the host population) to assimilation, the Armenian-American diaspora will simply disappear as a distinct identity. Sure, the descendants of today's Armenians will be all these wonderful things, but not as "Armenians" but as "Americans". Part of the reason for it will be the shortcomings in the Armenian culture that our resident super-genius untiringly repeats. Anyway, in 300 years, the world culture may homogenize into one big blob already. My current belief is that Armenian culture deserves to remain distinct. But my belief won't tip it one way or the other .

[Hyeflyer]

T.B. In 100 years half the earths population will have lost its ethnic identity.In 200 years three quarter. In 300 we will be the united earth federation.The star wars star trek design.:)Globalization and as many seee it degeneration.But then there will be no ligitamit reason for predjudice.So then there has to be a new whipping boy.Who will it be? That could lead to a world of two legged pirhanas that are not ethnicly motivated.

[Twilight Bark]

It would be nice if it were a federation. It would imply that it had distinct parts of which it is a federation. Let's hope so.

 

I surely hope that humanity evolves to a stage where the absence of anyone significantly different from the "norm" is not required to keep the peace. A "peace" that is based on the elimination of cultural differences is fake and covers up the underlying ugliness that remains. Not much different from the age-old "peace by extermination". Only this time the exterminated are not individuals but their ancestral identity. If we arrive at a "world culture" that universally cherishes and celebrates differences, now that would be something.

[ara baliozian]

FRACTIONS

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

"I disagree with you" often means

"My set of experiences are different from yours."

I have at no time suggested that

I represent the alpha and omega of the Armenian experiences.

The best I can do,

and the best anyone of us can hope to do,

is speak of a tiny fraction of it.

Let me go further and say that

I think of the Armenian experience as a vast mosaic

of whose real size we have no conception.

Only by comparison, classification, and juxtaposition

may we be able to discern a pattern emerging.

By speaking of my own experiences

I am not in any way suggesting

they are more important, authentic or symptomatic of the whole.

None of us is qualified to make such an unwarranted assumption

and if I have ever done that in the past,

please feel free to reject my evidence as inadmissible.

On the other hand,

if I were to ignore my own experience

and accept yours as the last word on the subject,

the conclusions I reach would be more akin to fiction than reality.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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

1.

There is a type of Armenian who thinks

all it takes to qualify as a genius

is to identify himself as one,

and if he can do it with the support and blessing

of his mother or grandmother, so much the better.

Please be warned that

if you ever dare to doubt these credentials,

you must be prepared to acquire an enemy for life –

an enemy with the ego the size of an elephant

and a memory that goes with it.

2.

Differences of opinion will be found everywhere,

including the most civilized environments, as well as

the best of families and friends.

But there are differences and differences, of course.

Some of our tribal and personal differences

are more like those of crabs, scorpions,

tarantulas, and sea snakes confined in a basket.

3.

We place too much emphasis on mental or intellectual IQs

and completely ignore moral IQs.

And yet, if you think about it,

most of our problems are created by individuals

with higher than normal IQs

but with single-digit or non-existent moral IQs

[ara baliozian]

THE OTTOMAN FALLACY

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

The past is one but there are many versions of it.

To say that one version is 100% true blue

and all others phony is, what I call,

the Ottoman fallacy.

But the Ottoman fallacy is not restricted to Ottomans.

All nationalist or partisan versions of the past or,

for that matter, any version that pretends to be

objective, impartial, and not dictated by self-interest,

is bound to be more or less false.

It follows, to know only one version of the past

is not knowledge but a form of ignorance or negative knowledge.

Negative knowledge is worse than ignorance

because man does not kill or die

in the name of something he doesn't know

but is more than willing to do so in the name

of negative or false or biased knowledge.

Hence the old adage:

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

A man who thinks he is committing a heroic deed

or fulfilling his patriotic duty by killing a fellow man

is one who has been exposed to only one version of the story --

a version that he has been brought up to believe

is the whole truth and the only truth

but is nothing of the kind

because the truth is known only to God

and is destined to remain beyond our reach;

and those who say they are acquainted with the truth

because they sit at the right hand of God

are the source of all lies, and by extension,

wars and massacres.