as i see it

[arabaliozian]

more...

Thursday, February 12, 2009
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HORROR SH0W
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In his impressions of Siberia, an American traveler writes that whenever he wanted to say “good” in Russian, he would say, “horror show” (=horosho). Reminds me of Rosalind Russell in A MAJORITY OF ONE saying “You're welcome” in Japanese sounds like “Don't touch my mustache” (=Do-itashimasta”).
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From a televised interview with deputy prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a puppet of Putin:
“What do you like doing best?”
“Fighting. I'm a soldier.”
“And when there's no one left to fight?”
“I have bees, bulls, fighting dogs.”
“What else to you like?”
“Partying. I love women.”
“And your wife doesn't mind?”
“I do it secretly.”
From THE ANGEL OF GROZNY by Asne Seierstad (New York, 2008, page 100).
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A moderate pacifist doesn't have a chance against a warlike fanatic.
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When an Armenian realizes he cannot settle his score with Turks, he moves on to an easier target – his fellow Armenians, and the more defenseless the better.
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We learn from failure. Success has the opposite effect.
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It is good to be smart but not to appear to be smart – especially if one is an idiot.
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As a child I was brought up to believe all Turks go to hell. As an adult I know that not all Armenians go to heaven.
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Friday, February 13, 2009
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THE POWER AND THE GLORY
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Because they can't promise peace and prosperity, nationalists promise power and glory, and what mortal can resist two divine attributes? (“For thine is the power and the glory.”)
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There are many schools of criticism, the most common are envy-driven and revenge-driven.
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I have yet to meet an anti-Semite who wasn't a bully.
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Churchill on de Gaulle: “What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised when bathing?”
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Under the Soviets we experienced despotism, intolerance, censorship, corruption, abuses of power, and purges (a euphemism for the systematic slaughter of the best and the brightest). And yet, there are those who assert the Soviets ushered in a renaissance of arts and culture. Who says Armenians are smart? Only Armenian idiots who think they are thinking even as they recycle enemy propaganda.
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Nabokov's aristocratic contempt for lower-class writers like Dostoevsky, Mann, and Sartre reminds me of the king who, after the premiere of DON GIOVANNI, said to Mozart: “Too many notes.”
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Once, when I was the regular book-reviewer of several Armenian-American weeklies, I received a book of memoirs by a rug merchant with a note that said, the longer the review, the bigger the check in the mail.
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The universal and irresistible temptation to appear smarter or better than we are.
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Saturday, February 14, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Our faith in Athena, goddess of wisdom, has collapsed, but the Parthenon stands. We are made of stardust, and it is the dust that will survive.
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We are careful to admit only the failings we think we have overcome.
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Our Turcocentric ghazetajis think humor is pro-Ottoman.
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In his WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Saint-Exupery tells us to be aware of misguided pity. There are beggars, he explains, who love to cling to their stench and to expose their sores.
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A self-appointed commissar of culture may qualify as a potential murderer but not as a critic.
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"For a smart man, you can be very naïve!" a trial lawyer, who is also a good friend, tells me. I don’t know about smart but I am worse than naïve when I get emotionally involved. Emotion reduces a complex reality into a one-dimensional extension of ourselves. Emotion, writes Sartre somewhere, attempts to change the world by means of magic. What could be more primitive?
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Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”
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Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”
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Writers like Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian, among many others, prove that criticism and patriotism are not incompatible concepts; blind patriotism by contrast is almost always symptomatic of fascism.
#

[arabaliozian]

this and that

Sunday, February 15, 2009
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THE GREEKS AND US
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Whenever I am told to be more positive, I think of Homer who begins his story with a rape and ends with the destruction of Troy. And what do we learn from the ODYSSEY? Only this: even when one is engaged in as innocent an undertaking as going home, one will have to deal with obstructionists.
If you dismiss Homer's testimony as suspect on the grounds that he was an unbeliever, let's consider the Bible: Why did the Good Lord introduce a serpent in the Garden?
There are those who maintain it was not the Lord who did that but the CIA. But I for one don't believe everything I am told, and that's where my troubles begin. When I am told, for example, that we are better or smarter than the Greeks because we no longer believe in many gods some of whom fornicated with mortals, all I can say is that, that's true, we have made some progress in that department. We believe in only one God who is divided into three, and only one of the three, the Holy Ghost, engaged in the business of impregnating a mortal.
The Greeks condemned Socrates to death because he said “Of the gods we know nothing.” Christians, by contrast, persecuted and killed only those who did not share their dogmas, lies, and propaganda.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.”
#
Monday, February 16, 2009
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THE ANGEL OF GROZNY
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We are smart, no doubt about that. We are as smart as any nation you care to mention. We may even be smarter than some. But we have been systematically moronized by our leadership. We have been as systematically moronized as any nation under a corrupt and incompetent leadership that has collaborated with some of the most brutal, ruthless, and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of mankind -- and it has collaborated to the point of betraying and murdering its greatest intellects.
If you want to know more on the subject of systematic moronization, I urge you to read Asne Seierstad's THE ANGEL OF GROZNY (New York, 2008), a masterpiece of contemporary journalism that deals with recent developments in Chechnya and the evils of Russian and Chechen nationalism.
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The very same readers who tell me not to open old wounds, never give up blabbering endlessly about older wounds.
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I have never heard a loud-mouth charlatan or fanatic to admit error, which may suggest, the louder they are, the more infallible they consider themselves to be.
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Some of our most ardent nationalists live in self-imposed exile, and when war breaks out in the Homeland, they selflessly allow others to do their killing and dying for them.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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STANDARDS
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To agree in the name of an ideology or belief system is to conspire against the majority of mankind.
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Speech and honesty can be a lethal combination.
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The danger is not in worshiping false gods but in worshiping the devil in the name of god.
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When a loser's dreams come true, they turn into nightmares.
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The more successful you are in fooling men, the less successful you will be in fooling reality.
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Armenian etiquette: If you are wrong you will be corrected. If you are right you will be insulted.
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And now, from the general to the specific:
How to explain the decline of our cultural standards when compared with those of the turn-of-the-century Ottoman Empire and pre-Stalin Soviet Union? The answer must be: the philistinism of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors combined with the opportunism of our academics.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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All ideologies begin as belief systems and end as bureaucracies; and all bureaucracies might as well be interchangeable. What failed in the United States and the Soviet Union is neither capitalism nor communism but “the invisible hand” of faceless bureaucrats.
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If so far we have failed to learn from history it's because history and propaganda are mutually exclusive concepts, and our propaganda tells us we know all there is to know and there is nothing wrong with us – it's all the fault of the rotten world in which we live.
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It's unbelievable the number of things people will avoid saying in order to achieve popularity. I could never acquire that particular talent – or is it tactic?
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Smart Armenians are a dime a dozen. Honest Armenians – that's different.
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In our environment, the higher they rise, the more crooked they get.
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A fellow Armenian (a white-haired elderly no-nonsense type) knocks on my door, introduces himself, barges in, and demands to know if I am really an atheist. I tell him I don’t believe in the god of our priests. He is too puzzled by my answer to pursue the matter. What I fail to add is that, the true atheist is he who uses someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living.
#

[arabaliozian]

perverts

Thursday, February 19, 2009
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PERVERTS
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God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Truth resides not in places we have seen but in inaccessible dimensions about which we know nothing.
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After defining military defeat as moral victory, we feel justified in identifying ourselves as perennial winners. Ah! The magic power of words and the irresistible temptation of confusing propaganda with reality.
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One man's terrorist, we are told, is another's freedom fighter. One man's believer is another's infidel. One man's hero is another's bloodthirsty barbarian. I may pretend to understand these things but I am as confused as the rest of mankind -- except of course the heroic freedom fighter who believes he is following the Guidance. Or is it the brainwashed dupe who will believe anything that flatters his loathsome little ego?
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To speak in the name of God and do the Devil's work: it takes perverted logic to reach such abysmal depths of moral degradation.
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The greater the cultural achievements of a nation, the greater its depths of moral debasement. After Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler. After Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Stalin and Beria.
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So you think I stress the negative and ignore the positive? Suppose you are hungry. You walk into a restaurant and order a big bowl of your favorite soup; and as you are about to enjoy it, you notice a fly in it. When you point that out to the waiter, he tells you 99% of your soup is fly-free. Why concentrate on the negative and ignore the positive?
#
Friday, February 20, 2009
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AS I SEE IT
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To know better does not always mean to know the truth, and what's the use of knowing better if what you know is a lie?
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The lower they sink, the higher their opinion of themselves. Psychologists have a word for this abnormality: they call it compensation.
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Even people who hate doctors are glad to see them when they are in need of their help. The same does not apply to critics in an environment where everyone has somehow managed to convince himself that God is on his side, he is in good hands, and he never had it so good.
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There will always be a demand for our weeklies if only because Armenians love to see their names in print. Our editors know this and they cram in as many names in every issues as they can.
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One should never speak well of oneself – it smacks of boasting, and to boast is to confess a weakness, namely one's dependence on flattery, even if the flattery is self-administered.
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Some comedians specialize in insulting their audience, and these comedians become popular because most people would rather be insulted than ignored.
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In a letter from an Armenian poet: "After writing for Armenians all my life, I am beginning to hate Turks less."
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Most people are careful not to make the same big mistake twice. The same does not apply to small mistakes which are classified as habits.
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
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ON FORGIVENESS
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To forgive does not necessarily mean to forget. On the contrary. To forgive sometimes means to remember forever after and to wonder what the hell was it that cornered you into such an unArmenian act as forgiving a scumbag who doesn't deserve to live.
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To forgive in order to appear magnanimous or to assert moral superiority is closer to vengeance than to forgiveness.
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Forgiveness, real forgiveness, is rooted in the realization that you are not much different from your enemy and that you may even be worse.
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ON CONTROL FREAKS
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When control freaks speak of freedom, they mean their freedom, your subservience.
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SMILE
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In a convent:
“I will ask you two easy questions and a hard one. What's the name of the first man?”
“That's easy: Adam.”
“What's the name of the first woman?”
“That's easy too: Eve.”
“What did Eve say when she first saw Adam?”
“O my! That's a hard one!”
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I saw six men kicking and punching my mother-in-law. My wife said, “Aren't you going to help” I said, “No. Six should be enough.”
#

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Sunday, February 22, 2009
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MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER
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Always keep in mind that you will never be able to make a living by sharing your wisdom with readers who are much wiser than you.
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No matter how good you are, you will have your critics, some of whom would gladly stone you to death. Think of Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Schopenhauer on Hegel, Turgenev on Dostoevsky, Russell on Sartre, and Sartre on himself.
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When asked which church or community center you go to, say “I am with the good guys.”
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The three pillars of fascism are: nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism. I may have told you this before but some things bear repeating, maybe not as often as first nation this and first nation that, but at least once or twice a year.
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One of our skinheads, who had verbally abused me for several years on a daily basis, once called to apologize. We had a long conversation. Shortly thereafter it became clear that he had not called to apologize but to gather more ammunition against me.
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When it comes to enemy propaganda, we have 20/20 vision. When it comes to our own, we are blind.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
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READING
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Since I don't do much traveling, I enjoy going places by proxy. I just finished reading Farley Mowat's big book on Siberia – SIBIR: MY DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA (Toronto, 1970) – a fascinating place that has attracted many travelers, among them Chekhov.
Mowat writes that Russians love partying and their favorite drinks are Georgian wine and Armenian cognac. I suspect our cognac has done more damage to the Soviets – if only to their livers and longevity – than all their dissidents and ours combined.
I am now reading Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008), where he revisits places that he first wrote about thirty years ago – from London to Tokyo and all the way back via Siberia. Theroux is one of my favorite travel writers and his PILLARS OF HERCULES, about the countries on the Mediterranean coast, is a classic in the genre.
When told by a Romanian academic that Turkey cannot join the EU for another ten years because “they have problems with human rights of the Kurds and the Armenians,” Theroux dismisses Kurdish demands as unreasonable, “and the Armenian business was a hundred years ago.” He goes on to identify himself as “a mild Turkophile” and reflects that “the massacre of Armenians a century ago, the later expulsion of Greeks, and the Kurdish outrages and Turkish reprisals are lamentable facts of Turkish history; still, no city in Asia is so self-consciously reform-minded and it is lucky in its writers, who are public intellectuals in the European mode – Orhan Pamuk was one of the many who denounced the downplaying of the Armenian slaughter. He represented a public conscience.” I should like to see one of our own writers in that role.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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More on Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008).
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While in Istanbul, Paul Theroux has long conversations with several Turkish writers, among them Orhan Pamuk and the young, dynamic, outspoken, and stunningly attractive Elif Shafak.
Speaking of Pamuk's trial, he writes it was a case of “a lion being judged by donkeys.” “Pamuk's crime,” he explains, “ was his mentioning to a Swiss journalist that 'a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds were killed in this country and I'm the only one who dares to talk about it.'”
“Turkey has amnesia,” Elif Shafak tells him. “Turks are indifferent to the past, to old words, to old customs...We need to know about the Armenians.”
Another speaks “about the burden of being a Turkish writer abroad. Westerners whose knowledge of Turkey was limited to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and doner kebab would challenge them saying, What about the Armenians? What about the Kurds? How come you torture people?”
In Baku we learn that there are Armenocentric Azeris as surely as there Turcocentric Armenians.
“Azerbaijan is a police state,” Theroux is informed by a foreign diplomat. “TV is controlled. Print media is somewhat free, but an opposition editor was gunned down last year.”
An Azeri tells him America should declare war against Iran because Iranian are bad people, but “Armenians are worse...In the 1990s they had captured the Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabagh, killing 20,000 Azeris and displacing a million more.”
“In football, Armenia is our enemy. In life too,” another Azeri tells him.
And, “We are overwhelmed by emotions! Armenians don't make any distinction between Turks and Azeris. Hey, it's all about 1915. When I was at Harvard, I met Armenians from Yerevan and had no problems. But Armenians from Watertown were very belligerent.”
“...in March 1918 in an Armenian uprising, Armenians killed 30,000 Azeris.”
Paul Theroux may identify himself as a moderate Turkophile but what's uppermost in his mind is to be objective, to report rather than to editorialize. We could learn from him.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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On the radio: four answers to the question “Do you believe in the present economic crisis?” asked at random in a train station:
“No! I think that's something politicians talk about and I don't believe them.”
“Yes. Some people I know have lost their jobs, but I am not worried because I am a teacher.”
“(Laughing) I don't care because I have very little money.”
“Sorry, I can't answer, my train leaves in four minutes.”
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Julien Green: “Thoughts have wings, words only feet. That's a writer's greatest source of anguish.”
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“We are Armenians!” yes, I know. But what kind? Ottomanized, Levantinized, Sovietized, Americanized?... Because most of our disagreements are rooted not in our views but in our identities or cultural backgrounds.
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A French magazine calls Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il of North Korea “the living-dead.”
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If like me you prefer dialogue to long descriptive passages, Vladimir Sorokin's THE QUEUE (New York, 2007) is for you. Originally published in 1985, this is a Soviet-era work of fiction that consists in brief exchanges between people waiting in a long line hoping to buy whatever it is that's being sold at the other end.
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[arabaliozian]

more...

Thursday, February 26, 2009
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POLITICIANS AND INTELLECTUALS
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Arnold Toynbee: “Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them.”
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A politician will never say or do anything that may question his ability to lead and to do what must be done, even when he is catastrophically wrong, and even if it means violating the human rights of his fellow countrymen.
By contrast, the function of an intellectual is to say what must be said even if it means exposing the incompetence and criminality of politicians and in the process risking his own survival.
As for propagandists: as extensions of politicians, they specialize in exposing the crimes of the opposition and ignoring and covering up their own.
I am not implying here that politicians and propagandists are always wrong and intellectuals aways right. What I am suggesting is that it is not easy to reconcile the demands of self-interest with objectivity.
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PARALLELS
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There is a passage in Toynbee that explains even if indirectly what befell us a hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire. In what follows, all you need to do is replace the words Egyptiac and Hyksos with Ottoman and Armenian:
“At this moment the apparently defunct Egyptiac society was recalled to life and action by an overwhelming impulse to chastise the Hyksos trespassers who had ventured to desecrate a swept and garnished house by their unclean presence. The stimulus was so powerful, that it raised the Egyptiac society not just from the deathbed but actually from the bier on which it was being carried to the grave, and in this demonic xenophobia the society seemed to have discovered at the thirteenth hour, the long-sought elixir of immortality.”
The final lines of this quotation may also suggest that the glue in nationalism is provided more by fear and hatred of the enemy and less by love of one's fellow countrymen.
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Friday, February 27, 2009
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HEAVEN AND HELL
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If the system is good to you, you will be good to the system. Millions believed in Stalin because he promised heaven and earth, and he even delivered some of it in the guise of full employment, prosperity, power, and glory. And these believers, like all believers in organized religions, did not stop to question the validity of dogmas that legitimize intolerance, persecution, torture, murder, war and massacre. One could go as far as saying faith is the real source of all evil.
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A belief system should be judged not by its promises but by its victims. Consider militarism, a belief system that promotes honor, courage, self-sacrifice, glory, and heroism: what mortal could resist these noble attainments? What decent human being would dare to suggest that their opposites, among them cowardice and dishonor, to be superior virtues? And now, listen to Toynbee on these military virtues:
“It is flying in the face of all experience to jump to the conclusion that the only place where we can ever hope to find these precious things is the slaughterhouse where they have happened to make their first epiphany to human eyes.”
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Closer to home: who supports the present regime in our homeland? First and foremost, our fund-raisers who, according to insiders, make a very comfortable living beyond the wildest dreams of those they claim to help. Unmask these bloodsuckers and you will come face to face with wheeler-dealers whose role models are Wall Street chief executive officers.
Moral of the story: Don't be a fool. Don't believe everything your are told or read in the papers. Demand accountability and make sure the firm that does the accounting is not run by a brother-in-law or a co-conspirator. And last but not least, next time someone speaks of heaven, makes sure he doesn't mean your hell.
#
Saturday, February 28, 2009
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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When a doctor kills instead of curing, his license is revoked. This law governing the practice of medicine does not apply to Wall Street chief executive officers probably because law-makers and CEOs are co-conspirators.
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During World War II Armenians fought on both sides – on the Soviet side in the name of defeating fascism, on the German side in the name of liberating the Homeland. Both sides were convinced theirs was a noble cause. Neither had the initiative or intelligence to ask what's so noble fighting Hitlerism in the name of Stalinism and vice versa? It is simply astonishing the ease with which self-assessed intelligent people are moronized.
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You want to know what makes Armenians so mean? Six hundred years of kissing Ottoman ass.
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[arabaliozian]

stories

Sunday, March 1, 2009
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TRUE STORIES
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Once upon a time I had a friend who was nice to everyone, made no enemies, was invariably generous in his assessment of others, popular with both men and women. And yet, he died friendless. This is not a judgment on my part but a confession on his. He was an Armenian writer.
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Not to love but to pretend to love. Not to believe but to pretend to believe. Not to know but to pretend to know. The world is full of them.
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Should one be tolerant of intolerance?
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Communism has been defined as state capitalism, and capitalism as socialism for Wall Street CEOs.
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The search for reason leads to insanity.
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The most comfortable seating position will give you back pain.
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There is a slave in every conformist, a revolutionary in every dissenter, an atheist in every believer, a believer in every atheist, and a Turk in every Armenian.
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Your truth is bound to be someone else's lie.
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The worst nightmare for an exemplary man or a role model would be coming face to face with his double.
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No one can be as ignorant as the man with all the answers.
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All pro-establishment assertions boil down to the motto “I'm alright Jack!”
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Monday, March 2, 2009
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SOLVING PROBLEMS
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Solving problems is easy. What's hard is implementing the solutions. Consider the present global financial crisis that enriched a few at the expense of impoverishing many.
It seems to me the solution is as clear as daylight and as simple as getting a refund for a defective or unsatisfactory item. In legal parlance: either restitution of funds acquired by the few or a jail term. If this solution is rejected on legal grounds, then all I can say is there is something wrong with the law and it should be rectified and enforced retroactively.
When a doctor kills instead of curing, he cannot plead not guilty by reason of incompetence. Incompetence should not be rewarded but punished. Why should not the same principle apply to economists and financiers whose responsibility it is to take care of the welfare or economic health of the nation?
It goes without saying that law-makers will never agree to pass a law that may expose their own incompetence or corruption or status as co-conspirators with Wall Street CEOs.
But let the world solve its problems. Let's take care of our own first.
How to solve our own problems?
Easy! De-Ottomanize, de-Stalinize, and de-tribalize.
What could be easier?
What's hard is convincing our men at the top that, very much like their counterparts in Washington and Wall Street, they are not la crème de la crème but la crème de la scum.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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AN ALIEN CULTURE
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During the war in Vietnam Americans were accused of genocide by a number of learned observers, among them Jean-Paul Sartre (see his ON GENOCIDE).
In his GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR (New York, 2008), Paul Theroux writes that whenever he identified himself as an American in Vietnam, he met with smiles and friendliness -- “no moralizing, no frowns, no scolding. Almost all the Vietnamese I met were like this – not backward-looking and vindictive scolds muttering, 'Never forget!' but compassionate souls, getting on with their lives, hopeful and humane.”
Elsewhere: “Travel in Vietnam for an American was a lesson in humility. They had lost two million civilians and a million soldiers, and we had lost more than 58,000 men and women. They did not talk about it on a personal level, at least not in a blaming way. It was not you, they said, it was your government...Blaming and complaining and looking for pity are regarded as weak traits in Vietnamese culture, revenge is wasteful. They won the war against us because they were tenacious, united, and resourceful, and that was also how they were building their economy.”
While in Tokyo, a Japanese writer tells him: “We admired MacArthur – we still do. He's like a father figure.”
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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NOT ALL QUESTIONS HAVE ANSWERS
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Unlike most of my fellow countrymen, I was born a total ignoramus, and even after a lifetime of study and reflection, my area of ignorance is so vast that what I know might as well be a grain of sand on a beach that stretches from here to the horizon.
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I learn something every day, which may suggest I have spoken as an ignoramus so many times that you would be a fool to take me seriously.
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Who could be more ignorant that a man with all the answers? And who could be more prone to error that he who asserts infallibility?
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Einstein said the universe is comprehensible but after decades of hard thinking he failed to explain it.
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Heidegger said so far no philosopher has been successful in answering the question, why things exist?
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We like to say people have the government they deserve. But I suggest no one guilty of petty larceny deserves to fry.
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If the future of our nation is more important than the past, and if we have a better chance to resolve our differences as friends rather than as enemies, why should we not call Turks our brothers?
#

http://baliozian.blogspot.com

[arabaliozian]

question

Thursday, March 5, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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When I was a total ignoramus, I always assumed I knew more than the average Joe I happened to be dealing with. Now it's the other way around: I always assume to know less.
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You can tell how ignorant a man is by how hard he tries to make you think he knows better.
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The most ungodly people are those who speak in His name, and the most dangerous dupes are those who believe them.
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I reject the notion that to be a good Armenian means to be a bundle of prejudices and nurse an unsettled score. Which amounts to saying, to be a good Armenian means to be a bad human being.
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What's uppermost in the mind of a successful writer is to live up to his reputation. Which is why as a marginal scribbler and a total failure I find my status both liberating and stimulating.
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It is written: “No one can be as dangerous as the man who has nothing to lose.”
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The greatest challenge a country faces is not electing great leaders but leaders who are the least threat to its welfare. As for our unelected bosses, bishops, and benefactors: they might as well be our Bermuda Triangle.
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Our ghazetajis operate on the assumption that the average Armenian reader prefers to read about little successes (no matter how imaginary) than colossal failures (no matter how real). Never underestimate the cunning of idiots.
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Prejudice allows a man to tailor his questions to fit his answers.
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If you don't know, pretend to know. Few people will have the time and appetite to get into a useless argument with a worthless phony. At least, that has been my experience.
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Friday, March 6, 2009
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MOSAIC
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Truth as a mosaic of lies -- like a pleasing design made of worthless pieces of glass or stone.
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God as a point of reference or God as a means to expose our failings and imperfections, yes. But God as a license to do this, that, and the other – I say that's damn close to confusing God with the Devil.
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What could be more absurd than to say, what I believe is true, what you believe is a lie. And yet...
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Let us teach ourselves to question everything, beginning with our own judgment.
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To say that ideas acquire legitimacy only when they serve our interests is to undermine the legitimacy of all ideas.
*
What follows is a true story. It happened last year in a Greyhound bus in Canada. A passenger stabs another passenger – a totally unprovoked attack -- and beheads him. When arrested and tried, he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. God made him do it, he explains.
I suggest the following definition of man: a creature who cannot tell God from the Devil.
*
If repetition is a crime, who is the victim? If repetition is a transgression, where is the harm?
#
Saturday, March 7, 2009
***********************************************
QUESTION
***********************************************
Win an argument and lose a friend.
It has happened to me more than once.
Some of my worst enemies today are former friends; and they have become enemies because of a minor disagreement on an irrelevant topic.
But perhaps they were never friends, and what they lost was much more than an argument.
We are a confused bunch. No doubt about that.
We are confused because we have been shaped by alien, tyrannical, and unjust laws – laws that viewed dissent as a capital offense, and desire for self-determination (i.e. freedom), that most human of all desires, as a crime against humanity or the integrity of the empire.
When contradicted we feel threatened. There are even those among us (I call them skinheads) who see verbal abuse as a legitimate form of counter-argument.
We will be born again as human beings on the day we learn to have a friendly disagreement.
Remember my friends:
free speech is a fundamental human right,
dissent is not treason,
a political party that places its own agenda above the solidarity and welfare of the nation is not democratic but tyrannical,
and our political leaders are not bosses or representatives of god on earth but public servants.
Because I say these things, am I then your enemy?
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, March 8, 2009
***********************************************
IF
***********************************************
If I speak well of some Turks it's because I have heard about good Turks and even met and dealt with some of them. If I am critical of my fellow Armenians it's because, very much like the rest of mankind, we are far from perfect. If, on the other hand, you think Armenians are beyond criticism, I can only say, you must be just about the luckiest man on earth because obviously so far you have dealt only with good Armenians. Either that or you are a nationalist, that is to say, blind in one eye.
*
I was brought up to believe reality is not what I see but what I was told to see. I have wasted so much time seeings things that weren't there.
*
Reading teaches us that our blunders, defeats, and humiliations are not unique to us and that countless others have been through the very same experiences.
*
It’s not easy civilizing barbarians. But what is infinitely harder is civilizing barbarians who brag about their past civilization.
#
Monday, March 9, 2009
***********************************************
KILLERS
***********************************************
“But he was such a kind man!” neighbors say of a serial killer. I am not implying kindness is suspect. What I am saying is that there is a killer in all of us.
*
Regardless of what you say, you will have your share of critics who belong to the Richelieu school of criticism that says, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”
*
I don't expect to be published in a newspaper or magazine where archbishops advertise the sale of Oriental rugs in their cathedral. Neither do I expect to be welcome in an Internet discussion forum whose moderator is the son of a bishop or the hireling of a benefactor.
*
To be an honest man means to make many enemies and very few friends.
*
When in a hurry, go slower than your normal speed.
*
“After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity.
#
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
***********************************************
ON JUSTICE
***********************************************
I gave up publishing books on the day I realized we had more writers than readers. That may well be another first for us -- first nation to produce more writers than readers, and first nation to massacre more trees per capita than any other nation on earth. One thousand academics in the United States alone – and academics, as everyone knows, must either publish or perish. And then we have, what a friend of mine calls, “a massacre mafia” -- academics whose field is the Genocide and who review and promote books written only by members, they ignore all others.
Once when I wrote something to the effect that massacre books may promote a victim mentality, several reader wrote in protest to say that they don't feel like victims. But suppose a member of your family has been traumatized by a criminal, say, like a rapist. Would you remind her of the rape every chance you get? You may deceive yourself into thinking you are not a victim on the conscious level, but what about your subconscious where the real action is?
Writing books may well be another way of establishing our immortality and as such a legitimate reaction to genocide, granted. But writing books that no one reads?
Like the offspring of all oppressed and victimized people we are first and foremost bundles of unsettled scores for whom verbal abuse is the only safe way to get even. Instead of constantly reminding us of our victimhood, we should be taught the value of such mantras as “Let the dead bury their dead,” and “What's done is done and cannot be undone.” I am not promoting amnesia. What I am doing is reacting against our masochists.
Speaking about verbal abuse: once when I took it upon myself to remind a garbage mouth reader that insulting me simply because he disagrees with me is wrong, he said, “Sue me!” thus expressing an awareness of the fact that the rule of law is mightier than bitching, and one competently written legal brief is worth a thousand lamentations and as many insults.
You want justice? Get a lawyer.
#
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
***********************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
***********************************************
The real conflict is not between ideologies or belief systems but between those who cling to what they have (even when obtained by piracy or exploitation) and those who have nothing to lose.
*
Sometimes the only way to disarm your accusers is by pleading guilty to crimes that didn't even cross your imagination to commit. It is not easy to satisfy someone who has tasted blood.
*
The ideal citizen is a fool who allows himself to be brainwashed and manipulated. All others are classified as trouble-makers and malcontents. That's the way it is with gravediggers – they prefer to deal with corpses.
*
I don't write to have anyone's agreement. I write the kind of things I would have liked to have read in my formative years when I was programmed not to think for myself.
*
We live as though our problems were insoluble; but we argue as if we had a minimum of two solutions for every one of our problems.
*
Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don’t have to be corrected. Sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense and decency.
#

[arabaliozian]

literature

Thursday, March 12, 2009
***********************************************
ON OPTIMISM
***********************************************
If all our writers, from Khorenatsi to Zarian, have so far failed to penetrate the thick walls raised by our political and religious leaders, whatever possesses me into thinking I have a better chance? And what kind of arrogance bordering on pathological megalomania is it that makes our Turcocentric ghazetajis entertain the illusion they will have better luck with the Turks? Perhaps there is a Don Quixote in all of us – a Don with the IQ of Rosinante, or is it Sancho Panza's jackass?
*
“Please, don't tell my mother I am a CEO on Wall Street. She thinks I am a pimp.”
*
When millionaires declare bankruptcy, they do so to protect their millions. Some laws, it seems, are made by crooks, for crooks.
*
In his autobiography,Theodore Reik, a Freudian psychoanalyst, writes that for many years he was deeply in love with a very attractive woman. But when he finally married her, the wedding night was a disaster. He seems to be saying, a penetrating awareness of the other is achieved only by penetration.
*
Both pessimism and optimism are more or less legitimate ways of forecasting the future. Sometimes pessimists are right, and sometimes optimists. But optimists are never right if their optimism is motivated by wishful thinking. Reality advances on a different plane from our wishes. That’s why, even when our dreams come true they have a tendency to turn into nightmares.
#
Friday, March 13, 2009
***********************************************
REFLECTIONS ON OUR HISTORY
***********************************************
“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
Our history in a nutshell.
*
There are two kinds of nations: those who divide and conquer, and those who divide themselves and are conquered.
*
The function of a belief system or ideology is to raise a wall between us and our perception of reality. The function of our nationalist historians, leadership, and educational system is to cover up this fact. And the function of our writers is to remind us of it. There are many references to this fact in our literature. (See below.)
*
To those who say, how could little Armenia resist the overwhelming might of ruthless empire builders like Genghis Khan (13th century), Timurlang (14th century), and Suleiman the Magnificent (16th century), my answer is: our predisposition for dividing ourselves was in full swing long before these gentlemen went on the warpath. Listen to our 5th-century historian, Yeghishé:
“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil onces.”
Elsewhere: “We may not be allowed to question the integrity of princes, but neither should we praise men who pit themselves against the Will of God” (that is, the Reality Principle).
And more to the point:
“In the same way that a man cannot serve two masters, a nation cannot have two kings. If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish.”
*
Am I rubbing salt in our wound? Why not? -- if the wound is self-inflicted.
*
Raffi: “An Armenian's worst enemies are not odars but Armenians.”
*
Gostan Zarian: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
Charents: “O Armenian people, your salvation lies only in your collective powers.”
*
For more on this subject, see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS.
#
Saturday, March 14, 2009
***********************************************
LITERATURE
***********************************************
The only time I am referred to as a writer by our commissars is when they tell me it is my duty as a patriotic Armenians to echo their sentiments and thoughts. You say I have said this before? How flattering! Not only you read me but you also remember what I say.
*
Money goes to money, they say. Something very similar happens to culture too. Consider the situation of 20th-century French literature, one of the most highly developed and influential in the world: the three playwrights who revolutionized the French theater (Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco) were an Irishman, an Armenian, and a Romanian respectively). And now consider the situation of Armenian literature at the other end of the spectrum: not only we don’t encourage or welcome outside contribution, but we also alienate and silence our own (from Abovian to Zarian). Figure that one out if you can.
#

[arabaliozian]

reflections

Sunday, March 15, 2009
***********************************************
BOOKS IN MY LIFE
***********************************************
I grew up in time of war – two wars, as a matter of fact: World War II and the Greek Civil War. I grew up in a house without books. It was only at the age of fourteen that I read my first book – WITH FIRE AND SWORD by the Polish Nobelist Henrik Sienkiewicz: a historical novel of WAR-AND-PEACE dimensions, but less Tolstoy and more Dumas pére and Errol Flynn. The only thing I remember about it today is the name of the central character, Pan Mikael Volodiovsky. I read it in an Armenian translation done by a Mekhitarist monk. At one time the Mekhitarists were formidable translators and the most prolific of them all was Arsen Ghazikian, who single-handed translated all the epic poems of the Western canon from Homer to THE SONG OF ROLAND, among many other Greek and Latin classics. Two of his students, Padre Elia (Yeghia) Pachikian and Mesrob Janashian, were my teachers. Janashian was also the author of a highly detailed and competent HISTORY OF MODERN WEST-ARMENIAN LITERATURE.
After FIRE AND SWORD I chanced on a thin paperback, Dostoevsky's THE GAMBLER, and was hooked on the Russians. What fascinated me about Dostoevsky was the fact that his characters spoke their mind, held nothing back, refused to stand on ceremony or consider what others may think of them. In that sense, they were more authentic human beings than anyone I had ever met. Chekhov was different. His characters impressed me as people I had known or could have known. There was nothing bizarre or incomprehensible about them.
The Russians, and I include Tolstoy and Turgenev, made me realize that I wasn't alone, and whenever I try to reread them now I also realize that you can't go home again.
#
Monday, March 16, 2009
***********************************************
THOMAS MANN
***********************************************
On a visit to Venice, a middle-aged German writer falls for a beautiful Polish boy on the beach, postpones his return home, and dies of cholera. (As a youth, Mann idolized Wagner, who also died in Venice.) I first read DEATH IN VENICE in Venice, at the age of fifteen, in an Italian translation. It left me cold. Much ado about nothing, I thought. Ten years later I read it again, this time in an English translation, with the same result. But I refused to give up on Mann and with CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN I got religion. Immediately after I read and reread THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, and DOKTOR FAUSTUS the way a born-again reads and rereads the Bible.
Two things fascinated me about Mann: his subtle humor and his expertise on a wide range of subjects. When he expanded the Biblical story of Joseph into a four- volume, 2000-page long novel, for instance, he acquired an entire library on both the Bible and ancient Egypt. To write about the life of a modern composer, he befriended and pumped several famous musicologists, composers, and conductors, among them Adorno, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter (who happened to be a next-door neighbor as well his daughter's secret lover). In politics and philosophy, he could argue both sides of any issue – an advantage over Shaw, Sartre, and Nabokov who took sides with disastrous results -- Shaw and Sartre in their support of totalitarian regimes, and Nabokov in his defense of the war in Vietnam.
Mann has had his share of critics: Shaw ignored him, Sartre and Nabokov dismissed him as a bourgeois, Brecht called him “a short-story writer," Stefan Zweig thought he was long-winded, Furtwaengler accused him of changing nationalities as if they were shirts, and Hitler wanted him assassinated -- some said because THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN outsold MEIN KAMPF.
*
Mann on Hitler:
“Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”
*
“The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible, inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.”
*
Mann on what it takes:
“The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made.”
*
“The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”
#
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
***********************************************
ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
***********************************************
When asked by a journalist what had motivated him to dedicate most of his adult life to writing his monumental multi-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee replied with a single word: “Curiosity.”
Of the twelve volumes, my favorite is the 12th, subtitled RECONSIDERATIONS. Here Toynbee replies to his critics – an astonishingly large number of them from all over the world. Sometimes he is willing to admit error, at others he reaffirms his position and goes further. Case in point: “Spate's failure to keep his knowledge of the Jordan valley's history up to date would have been venial if the tone of his criticism had not been supercilious. However, my concern with Spate is not to return his fire but to follow out the second thoughts into which I have been stung by the stimulating shot with which he has peppered me.”
One reason I enjoy reading and rereading RECONSIDERATIONS is its quintessentially unArmenian tone of tolerance and acceptance of dissent as worthy of consideration.
Toynbee's general theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires goes something like this: civilizations grow by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities, and decline when the leaders fail to react creatively.” In his own words: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, artistic, and scientific] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these elements have fallen into discord.”
All general theories are vulnerable to contradiction and criticism. Plato's were criticized by his student, Aristotle, Marx's by Keynes, Spengler's by Jacques Maritain and Teilhard de Chardin, and Toynbee's by a wide range of specialists who saw in him an interloper who had dared to exploit their findings to serve his own alien agenda.
In my view, Toynbee's greatest merit is not his general theory but the many brilliant observations on the human condition. Random samples follows:
*
On racial superiority:
“The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis...all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.”
*
On critics:
“Whenever a reviewer is tempted to treat an author as a dart-board he should remember that the missile which his hand is itching to lance is not a dart but a boomerang.”
*
On chauvinism:
“Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as a self-adjudicated reward for success, but as a self-exculpating compensation for failure.” (I think of these lines whenever I hear one of our charlatans bragging about our celebrities and achievements.)
*
“The egocentric illusion has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.”
*
On pessimism and optimism:
“The truth is that Valéry's pessimism and Gibbon's optimism are, both alike, rationalizing of feelings that are irrationally subjective.”
#
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
***********************************************
REFLECTIONS
***********************************************
Whether God exists or not is not the problem. The problem, the real problem, the existential problem is placing as great a distance between us and the Devil as possible. Likewise, knowing the truth is not the problem. The problem is recognizing a deceiver when we see one.
*
Because I criticize Armenians I am accused of anti-Armenianism; and because some Turks quote me, I am accused of pro-Ottomanism. I may be wrong about everything but I have no doubt whatever in my mind that no one, not even the very best among us, are beyond criticism. And not to criticize in the name of patriotism is to support the corrupt and the incompetent, and when things go wrong, to blame the enemy who probably was also duped into supporting lying riffraff.
*
Among us, politics (or 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.
*
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?
#

[arabaliozian]

reading

Sunday, March 22, 2009
***********************************************
ON MYTHS
***********************************************
We either react against the ideas instilled in us during our formative years, or we treat them as infallible articles of faith and stick to them to the bitter end.
Deep inside somewhere Charents remained a nationalist even when he spoke against it; and Zarian remained an anti-nationalist even when he voiced nationalist nonsense. In a letter to a fellow Tashnak, the editor of HAIRENIK wrote: “If we treat him (Zarian) right, he may come to our side.” When he didn't, he was ignored and treated as an eccentric and a non-person. “I was told he was crazy and I stayed away from him,” a Tashnak neighbor of his once said to me, “and now you tell me he was a great writer?”
According to Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin said, “Don't touch Charents, he is on our side,” or words to that effect. But truth or God or the Reality Principle is on nobody's side.
Studied in a Christian context, Greek myths about gods who fornicate with mortals sound blasphemous as well as ridiculous. And yet, the Greek effort to explain Reality makes as much sense today as the myths invented by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theologians who have legitimized murder and massacre in the name of God.
Toynbee is right: after choosing themselves, the chosen assert moral superiority and expect everyone else to be subservient to them. You are either with us or against us, they say, and if you are against us, you don't deserve to live. Some day when mankind is finally civilized, this kind of mindset will be viewed as worthy of barbarians and serial killers.
#
Monday, March 23, 2009
***********************************************
CROOKS UNLIMIMTED
***********************************************
What's the use of writing if you end up alienating friends and making enemies of the very same people on whose goodwill you depend for your survival? On the other hand, what's the use of writing if you are not allowed to say what must be said? I may be more popular and have a better chance to survive by making at least minimum wage if I were to write cookbooks. I am not much of a cook, granted. My repertoire is limited to hard-boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches, pilaf, and spaghetti. But I am told you don't have to be a cook to write cookbooks. A best-selling author of cookbooks once told me, “I try at least once every one of my recipes before publishing them,” thus implying many other don't. If there are dishonest politicians, incompetent chief executive officers, and fornicating bishops, why not plagiarizing cookbook writers?
*
Speaking of crooks: why do you think Bernard Madoff wasn't exposed for twenty years? The answer is simple: Wall Street if full of them. Exposing him would have meant exposing themselves. And now that the bonus scandal has exploded, I am looking forward to the second act of the play – investigations, hearings, and indictments. As for the third act, I expect, very much like Watergate, it will end in the resignation, arrests, trials, and incarceration not only of CEOs but also of politicians and other fat cats. Unless of course there are so many of them that both Wall Street and Washington would be paralyzed.
#
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
***********************************************
THE PLACEBO EFFECT
***********************************************
All talk of Historic Armenia belongs to the realm of archeology. In a political context, it makes as much sense as Historic Macedonia, Mongolia, or, closer to home, America.
*
There are so many laws and lawyers that protect the interests of the wealthy that even God wouldn't dare to challenge them.
*
Whenever a fellow Armenian contradicts me, I cannot help suspecting that he is too smart to be in a position to plead ignorance, and that his disagreement is more like a game, a challenge, or a thoughtlessly adopted political agenda.
*
A movement that fails to evolve a leader is as doomed as one that evolves two of them.
*
To label ideas as pro- or anti-Armenian can be misleading because what may be in our interests today may be against the Reality Principle tomorrow, as our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire discovered. After all, not all wars of liberation end in liberation, and “freedom or death” makes sense only if it means freedom for the majority. To confuse the placebo effect of some ideas with objective reality may result in disaster.
#
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
***********************************************
READING
***********************************************
Books are my favorite companions. I don't care where I live as long as there is a good library in the neighborhood. Between a hell with books and a heaven without them, I would choose hell any day.
Once, a few years ago, after observing the monotony of my daily routine and drab surroundings, a childhood friend commented, in my place he would have committed suicide. He promised to share his home and wealth with me if I agreed to return to Athens. Shortly thereafter he went bankrupt and died of a heart attack. I was reminded of this episode while reading Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES (1048 pages). In almost every other entry he speaks of encounters and conversations with the likes of Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Krishnamurti. And yet, he suffers from fits of depression and requires the constant care of quacks, shrinks, and swamis. There are endless passages about dreams, nightmares, meditation techniques, yoga, and mystical nonsense – passages I now skip for the sake of entries like the following:
“After dinner, Aldous [Huxley] and I got in a corner. He was a little drunk, and started on a favorite topic: the poorness of all literature. Homer was terribly overrated, Dante was hopelessly limited, Shakespeare was such a stupid man, Goethe was such a bore, Tolstoy was silly, etc. etc.” (page 92).
#

[arabaliozian]

where...

Sunday, March 29, 2009
***********************************************
WHERE WE STAND
***********************************************
Russians gave communism a bad name and Americans did the same with capitalism. The next “fail-safe” or “best” system, whatever it may be, will also bite the dust by its dedicated supporters as surely as communism and capitalism. It is almost as if the destiny of the best were to be the worst.
*
Armenianism: the triumph of dogmatism over solidarity.
*
It is the most assertive among us that are the most insecure.
*
What we are is not a monolithic structure but fragments of what we could have been.
*
We are constantly bombarded by lies that encourage us to hate our fellow men. It is almost as if the function of our “betters” were to make us worse.
*
Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And it has no name.” After “All men are brothers,” the best argument against nationalism.
*
I see a clear parallel between what contemporary composers have done to music, what artists have done to art, what politicians have done to statesmanship, with what economists have done to the global economy.
#
Monday, March 30, 2009
***********************************************
SOCRATES
*******************
“We approach truth only in the proportion as we are farther from life.”
*
ON OBJECTIVITY
***************************
Objectivity and passionate involvement are mutually exclusive concepts – unless of course one develops the difficult art of thinking against oneself, which means assuming one is wrong even when – especially when – one is absolutely certain of one's moral superiority and infallible judgment.
*
ON UNDERSTANDING
*******************************
To understand and solve a problem, one must be objective, and one must be objective for purely selfish reasons – to improve one's chances of survival. Cultures that are not tolerant of objectivity or dissent (in this context, two words that might as well be synonymous) have a short lifespan. Think of the Soviets, the Nazis, the regime of the Young Turks, and more recently, the Nixon administration. Closer to home, think of all the dissenting voices in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century that were ignored by our revolutionaries who to this day emphasize their heroism instead of questioning their judgment.
*
DEFINING EVIL
******************************
To know what must be done and not do it.
To know that what one does is wrong but do it anyway.
To know that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and to divide it anyway.
*
WORTH REPEATING
******************************
The surest way of moronizing a nation is to brainwash the people into believing they are not just smart but smarter than any other nation, and anyone who dares to say otherwise is an enemy of the people. I speak from experience. The more moronized I was, the smarter I thought i was.
#
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
***********************************************
STRANGE BUT TRUE
************************************
What a strange world we live in!
Chief executive Rick Wagoner (the one who traveled to Washington by private jet to ask for a handout) is getting $23 million for bankrupting General Motors as the management is demanding more concessions from the workers.
*
The best argument against women's intuition and men's IQ (if such a thing exists) is the high rate of divorce.
*
In the struggle for justice there are no losers. Even if you lose you may inspire others to carry on the struggle, or you may wear down the opposition even if it is by an invisible fraction of an inch.
*
No one can be as ignorant, or rather, as infatuated with his own ignorance, as he who pretends to know and understand everything. I would even go as far as saying, the safest way of judging a man's knowledge and understanding is by the number of times he is willing to say “I don't know” and “I don't understand.”
*
One of the most difficult things in politics is separating friend from foe – especially the kind of foe who knows all the right words and can easily guess what it is exactly that you want to hear.
*
It is only after the obvious solution is rejected that a problem is declared insoluble.
#
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
***********************************************
DON'T BE A FOOL!
************************************
A wise man (it may have been Aldous Huxley) once said that our planet is the insane asylum of the universe.
It is said, “There are forty-three kinds of insanity.”
Or, to paraphrase Tolstoy, “Every insane person is insane in his own way.”
There is a school of psychology that says, since the social order in which we live in is insane, the function of psychiatry is to replace one form of insanity with another.
Consider the case of Christians who believe the Bible to be the source of all wisdom, including scientific knowledge.
Chief executive officers who believe they deserve million-dollar bonuses after bankrupting not only their business but also the global economy.
After reading one of my commentaries, a Mekhitarist monk is quoted as having said: “He is an intellectual and all intellectuals eventually go insane.” Which may suggest that we are better at diagnosing insanity in others than in ourselves. Either that or we assume to be the norm and any deviation we label as insane.
We may know how to survive, but do we know how to live?
We brag about our literature but we suppress free speech.
Don't be taken in by appearances.
Don't believe everything you read in the papers.
There are as many lies in the speeches of our speechifiers and the sermons of our sermonizers than there are forms of insanity.
#

[arabaliozian]

questions

Thursday, April 2, 2009
***********************************************
THE UNANSWERED QUESTION
************************************
It is said of the 18th-century French aristocracy that they knew how to live. Yes, that they did. They knew how to live alright! What they didn't know – which is infinitely more important than what they knew – was how to survive.
With us it's the other way around: we know how to survive, or so we are brought up to believe, but not how to live.
If we use the word survival only in reference to the nation, and if by nation we mean the regime, yes, we may qualify as survivors. The questions to be asked at this point are:
What kind of survival is it that requires the death of millions of innocent civilians, including our best and brightest?
What kind of survival is it that places the survival of the regime above the survival of the people?
What kind of survival is it that allows the regime to brainwash the people into believing that it is our patriotic duty to serve the regime?
Serving the regime is a fascist concept. In a democracy, it is the state that serves the people (not the other way around), which is why politicians are referred to as public servants.
But that's not the end of the story, which in our case happens to be not so much a comedy of errors as a tragedy of fallacies, or again, as a perversion of priorities.
Now then, let us suppose for the sake of argument that your family perishes and you are the sole survivor. Do you then go around bragging about your own survival? I don't think so! And yet, this is what we are encouraged to do to perpetuate the lie that we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands.
A final question: We may indeed know how to survive, but do our leaders know how to govern?
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Thursday, April 3, 2009
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4 STORIES / 4 MORALS
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1.
The Pope holds shares in the Casino at Monte Carlo.
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2.
After bankrupting the global economy, chief executive officers collect million-dollar bonuses.
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3.
Priests make a comfortable living by exploiting someone else's crucifixion.
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4.
Turcocentric ghazetajis try to make a name for themselves by exploiting the martyrdom of innocent victims.
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Moral I: When you reach the top, the rules of the game no longer apply.
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Moral II: The rules governing underdogs do not apply to top dogs.
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Moral III: When it comes to taking care of number one, all rules are suspended.
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Moral IV: After declaring yourself to be on the side of the angels, you may forge an alliance with the devil.
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Saturday, April 4, 2009
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AS OTHERS SEE US
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Did Princess Diana (may she rest in peace) have one, or is it two, drops of Armenian blood in her veins? Was Guderian of blitzkrieg fame an Armenian? Why should anyone give a damn? It seems to me we are so hungry for celebrity that nothing would make us happier if someone were to prove that Hitler's or Stalin's great-great mother or father was half- or even one-quarter Armenian.
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We have a great many writers today who write as Armenians. I for one would like to write as a human being. We are all born as human beings but somewhere along the line we are carefully educated to identify ourselves with a specific group, after which we are told all kinds of lies about that group and it makes no difference which group it is.
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We are brainwashed to justify our regime's failings by saying we are a young democracy. We are also informed that Armenia is “the cradle of civilization.” Figure that one out if you can.
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If I were to meet an Azeri today and if I were to identify myself as an Armenian to him, my guess is he would see in me someone with a bloodthirsty disposition. I am told Azeris today identify Armenians as “the Israelis of the Caucasus,” and when a Muslim calls you an Israeli, take my word for it, that ain't no compliment.
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Hanging a label on a fellow human being is the beginning of all crimes against humanity. Azeri refugees today think of Armenians the way Armenians think of Turks. Have I said this before? Readers accustomed to hearing old lies expect me to come up with new truths. To them I say, the number of truths is limited and nothing that is true is ever new.
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[arabaliozian]

writers

Sunday, April 5, 2009
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THE CHARITY OF SWINE
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We are told the favorite reading matter of Roman emperors was epic poems glorifying their deeds. Which reminds me of a book I once wrote for an Armenian publisher subsidized by one of our national benefactors in which his (benefactor's) name wasn't mentioned. Though the book was a success (three printings in as many years) the publisher was fired.
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Roman emperors, Ottoman sultans, Soviet commissars, Armenian benefactors, Wall Street chief executive officers: they expect to be brown-nosed and rewarded even when they make a mess of things. They want smart people working for them but not smart enough to see their limitations. They support free speech provided it doesn't expose their failings.
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The wealthy think of the poor as lazy parasites. The poor return the compliment by viewing the wealthy as a bunch of bloodsuckers.
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Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by men who assumed to know better.
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In the world of high finance, the lower in the totem pall you are, the more checks and balances you have to deal with.
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I think of my schooldays in Venice when the Mekhitarist monks charged us for the toilet paper we used. Then motivated by greed they trusted the wrong investment firm and lost everything.
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Monday, April 6, 2009
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HUMAN NATURE EXPLAINED
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“In his place I would have done the same thing.” There is more truth in that sentence than in many treatises on understanding and human nature.
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“...tribalism has impeded African progress. What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”
Why is it that none of our pundits dares to say as much about us?
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Both Turks and Armenians are naïve dupes in so far as they believe in the lies of their own political leaders, the biggest lie being that as civilized people they are incapable of violating anyone's human rights, let alone committing crimes against humanity. Butter would not melt in their mouths -- or anywhere else for that matter.
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Reality is versatile in its production of facts and by carefully selecting some and ignoring or rejecting others one can justify anything. Theologians, ideologues, historians, and propagandists in general are fully aware of this phenomenon and like lawyers they go about their business with ruthless dishonesty.
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Somewhere Alain writes that we conceive of birth as something that happened in the past and of death as something that will happen in the future. But in reality, he tells us, they are both ongoing processes. Every moment that passes is a preview of death, and it is up to us to be reborn as human beings “today, now, immediately, it is our only chance.”
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009
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TWO FASCINATING WRITERS
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In his DIARIES, Christopher Isherwood speaks of several encounters with Lesley Blanch (then wife of Romain Gary) but at no time does he mention that she is the author of SABRES OF PARADISE, one of the most fascinating books ever written on the Caucasus, and one of the very few books that I have read three times -- the others being THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Mann), LOLITA (Nabokov), and Toynbee's RECONSIDERATIONS.
Simenon is mentioned only once to be dismissed as “a dreary little mind.”
In my twenties and for about ten years Simenon became an obsession. I read everything that I could locate in libraries and bookstores. He wrote under several pseudonyms and may have published as many as five hundred book, and slept with as many women, he never tired of boasting in interviews, and did so to enhance his understanding, he would explain. I think it was Gide who first compared him to Chekhov.
In a 1960 entry, Isherwood quotes Leon Surmelian as having said: “...among Armenians who come to America, it is always the third-rate who succeed,” and “Armenians are either businessmen or dreamers.”
I remember once when I wrote Surmelian a letter proposing an interview, he turned me down and said he had just published an essay in the weeklies and I was welcome to comment on it in a letter to the editor.
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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ISHERWOOD AND WHITMAN
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By skipping passages dealing with Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, assorted swamis and gurus, and mercenary Hollywood producers, I was able to finish Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES. May I confess that what I enjoyed most are his one-liners on his fellow men and women:
On Charles Laughton: “stupid, vain and pretentious...an arrogant old fool.”
On Laura Huxley (Aldous Huxley's third and last wife): “[a] mannish well-tailored bitch.”
On Claire Bloom (who was to become Philip Roth's wife): “demure but probably quite a bit of a bitch.”
On Shelley Winters: “a blundering Jewish leftwing ass.”
On Izak (OUT OF AFRICA) Dinesen (Baroness Blixen): “a withered monkey.”
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I am now reading Walt Whitman. Some of his lines are piercing in their precision, as when he speaks of animals:
“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago...”
We need more Whitman in our lives and less sermonizers and speechifiers who rub salt in our wounds and promise heaven which is even more inaccessible to them than it is to the rest of us.
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[arabaliozian]

p.s.

Thursday, April 9, 2009
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TO EACH HIS OWN
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To us, the Genocide is a tragedy.
To the Turks, it's an embarrassment.
To American politicians running for office, a cash cow.
To our own leadership, a distraction from present problems and their reluctance or inability to solve them.
To our Turcocentric ghazetajis, an endless source of venom and an opportunity to play the blame-game as well as a chance to assert moral superiority.
As for Turcophile historians who say it was the Armenians who massacred the Turks; I for one am not surprised. So what if after 600 years of subservience that gradually degenerated to brutal oppression, some Armenians took justice into their own hands? Would anyone dare to assert that, had the Ottoman Empire been an Armenian Empire and Turks an oppressed minority, they would have said, “Let bygones be bygones. Let us smoke the peace nargileh and forever after live like brothers?"
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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
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We are told when God created angels and He gave them a free will, half of them turned into devils. It is therefore safe to assume that if sometime in the future the Good Lord were to give His angels another crack at freedom, another 50% of them would make the wrong choice. Which is why so far God in His infinite wisdom has not made the same mistake. Which is also why, when God wants to destroy a man, He gives him more power, because more power means greater freedom.
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P.S.
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Yesterday I listed four books that I have read three times. I should have included another – Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.
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WORDS OF WISDOM
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Chinese saying: “Extreme cleverness is as bad as stupidity.”
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Friday, April 10, 2009
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A MENSCHE
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In his THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION, Robert Fisk dedicated an entire chapter to the Armenian genocide. He does the same with his latest book, THE AGE OF THE WARRIOR: SELECTED ESSAYS (New York, 2008). After tearing to shreds Turkish and “gutless” American denialists, among them President Bush, General Petraeus, ambassador Ryan Crocker, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he turns his outrage on Armenians themselves. When an interviewer in Yerevan makes a reference to Turkey's “lack of democratization,” Fisk demands to know: “What about Armenia's pliant press? And why was it that present-day Armenia seemed to protest much less about twentieth-century's first Holocaust than the millions of Armenians in the diaspora, in the U.S., Canada, France, Britain, even Turkish intellectuals in Turkey itself?...Long live the Soviet Union.”
A man after my own heart!
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Saturday, April 11, 2009
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THE USES AND ABUSES OF FAITH
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Whenever I replace the word “God” with “the Unknown and the Unknowable,” what I read makes either more sense or no sense at all – as in “God loves you.” If God loves us, His definition of love is more akin to hatred.
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Most of mankind's problems, including our own, stem from the fact that those who have God or capital (make it, Capital or god) on their side, consider themselves beyond criticism.
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When a man is devoid of honor, compassion, and understanding, he adopts race, color, and creed as criteria.
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Faith is an essential ingredient in one's life, we are told. Maybe so. But what if faith allows us to call anyone who does not share our belief system an infidel dog who doesn't deserve to live?
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What do I think of mysticism? Let me quote my favorite mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila: “It is the humblest among you who are the most perfect not those who are favored in prayer or with ecstasies.”
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