The review of Ara Baliozian. Canada

[Ara Baliozian]

June 10, 2010
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AN UNDIPLOMATIC EXCHANGE
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To emphasize his humble origins, Nixon once said to Khrushchev that his father had a grocery store in which he and his brothers had worked. Khrushchev's comment: “All shopkeepers are thieves.”
For more hilarious exchanges, see K BLOWS TOP: A COLD WAR COMIC INTERLUDE STARRING NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, AMERICA'S MOST UNLIKELY TOURIST by Peter Carlson (New York, 2009).
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ANOTHER FIRST
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Yesterday on the evening news on TV we were informed that a 5000-year old shoe had been discovered in Armenia. The leather shoe looked like a comfortable moccasin in excellent condition.
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FREUD ON SHAKESPEARE
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Freud thought Shakespeare was French and his real name was Jacques Pierre. And I think Cyrano de Bergerac was Armenian and his real name was Giragos. But that's only one proof of his Armenian identity, the other being the length of his nose.
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DEFINITION (I)
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I have read several definition of courage. To insult someone anonymously and from a safe distance is not one of them.
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DEFINITION (II)
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Cicero defined freedom as “participation in power.” As far as I know, no one has ever defined freedom as saying “Yes, sir!” to idiots.
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ON ISLAM
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John Selden (1650): “The Turks tell their People of a Heaven where there is a sensible Pleasure, but of a Hell where they shall suffer they don’t know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a Hell where we shall feel sensible Pain, but of a Heaven where we shall enjoy we can’t tell what.”
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DEFINITION (III)
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My definition of bliss: The awareness that one is no longer dependent on the charity of swine and on the approval of morons.
#
June 11, 2010
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KHRUSHCHEV AND THE KGB
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After he was ousted from office and acquired the status of a non-person, Khrushchev was ordered by the KGB not to write his memoir. “I refuse to obey you,” he told them. The order was unconstitutional, he said; so were the bugs placed in his home. “You stuck listening devices all over the dacha,” he told them, “even in the bathroom. You spend the people's money to eavesdrop on my farts.”
Eventually his memoir was smuggled to the West by his son. Translated and published in many countries, it became a best-seller. His son is now an American citizen.
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READING CHAMFORT
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Nicolas de Chamfort (1740-1794), French writer who was arrested under the Revolution and committed suicide. He is the author of THOUGHTS, MAXIMS, AND ANECDOTES, published posthumously.
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“One is happier when one is alone because in solitude one thinks of things, but in the company of others one is forced to think of men.”
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“Women are made to deal with our weaknesses and our foolishness, not with our reason. There exists between them and men epidermic sympathies but very few of intellect, soul, and character.”
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“There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.”
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“Nature never said 'Be thou not poor,' much less 'Be thou rich'; but she cries, 'Be thou independent!'”
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ON MY CRITICS
**********************************
When my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement) hurl insults at me (and anonymous insults at that) it means only one thing: they have run out of arguments, assuming of course they had them to begin with -- and that's assuming a great deal.
To insult is not to criticize. And to insult anonymously is to compound stupidity with cowardice. Why would anyone be afraid of a minor scribbler who writes today and will be forgotten tomorrow? And to think that these are the offspring of men who a hundred years ago challenged the might of an empire.
A far better man than myself once said: “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech."
I repeat: why would anyone be afraid of someone like me whose most formidable weapon is his common sense – which, it has been said, is the least common of all faculties.
#
June 12, 2010
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ON CERTAINTIES
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The closer I get to a certainty
the more I am haunted by its contradiction.
*
I have been wrong so often that
I never know when I am right – if I am ever right.
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I am here to assert not certainties
but to expose lies.
*
God may know
but those who speak in His name do not.
It would be more accurate to say,
it's because they don't know
that they feel the need to speak in His name.
*
There is a type of patriotism
that is reserved only for those who agree with us.
I suggest that's less patriotism and more dogmatism.
Whenever our enemies want to divide us
they rely on our dogmatism
and they are never disappointed.
*
Those who understand the past
have a better chance to predict the future.
A prophet is first and foremost a historian.
*
Both Ottomanism and Sovietism are based on the proposition
that the man at the top is always right
and to even suggest he may be wrong is treason.
*
At the root of all wars and massacres
there stands a man who says
“We are right and they are wrong.”
All crimes against humanity are consequences of that lie.
*
To adopt a propaganda line and to be wrong
might as well be synonymous.
*
I don't ask my readers to believe in what I say.
All I ask is that they learn to think for themselves – but perhaps
that's asking too much.
*
The Tree in the Garden was not of Knowledge but of Ignorance.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

June 13, 2010
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CONFESSIONS OF A MEGALOMANIAC
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My megalomania knows no bounds. I remember instances in my life when I thought my arguments were so irrefutable that they had a good chance to change the mind of an Armenian ignoramus. I keep forgetting that dupes of propaganda are never wrong.
*
Propaganda is like an old pair of shoes – after you put them, you forget about them. By contrast, a new idea is like a new pair of shoes that pinch.
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Self-interest is the most powerful argument. All Turks have to do to convince Americans is to say that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were like Indians on the American continent.
Victimizers speak the same language regardless of nationality.
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People can be as smart as dogs when it comes to smelling fear.
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I was brought up to respect authority. I now think there is hardly any difference between respect for authority and fear of authority. A man of authority knows that anyone who respects him is also intimidated by him.
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I have yet to meet a man of authority who was not a contemptible jerk. I assume there are exceptions. But then, I write about rules not exceptions.
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On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for I have been verbally abused) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.
*
Giambattista Vico: “Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”
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If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.
*
If you play it safe and write about birds serenading the moon or the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, be prepared to be called a vodanavorji and ignored.
If, on the other hand, you decide to live dangerously and analyze our present situation with some degree of objectivity, be prepared to be reviled by readers who cannot chew gum and fart at the same time.
#
June 14, 2010
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CONTEMPLATION VERSUS ACTION
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Christ and Renaissance popes,
Luther and televangelists,
Marx and Stalin:
men of contemplation and men of action are different
to the point of being contradictions.
What one builds the other destroys.
Where one enhances our understanding,
the other bullies and moronizes.
*
You have political ambitions?
Teach yourself how to lie and how to believe in your own lies.
Be a sincere hypocrite.
Speak honestly with a forked tongue.
*
Men of power are ruthless
because where there is power
there will be those who will want to take it away from you.
Men of power know this
because they suffer from the same disease – greed for power.
*
We call our major defeats tragedies
and our minor victories triumphs.
*
Intolerance of dissent is a confession of fear –
fear of ideas, fear of words,
and fear of being unmasked for what one really is:
a coward and a fool.
Only idiots cannot see this.
Authoritarianism is a conspiracy of fools and dupes.
*
What could be more self-defeating
than an abundance of money and a total absence of ideas?
An abundance of fund-raisers
and a scarcity of intellectuals
is the surest symptom of a morally bankrupt community.
*
There are no final answers.
Neither are there perfect answers.
An idea makes perfect sense
only when its contradiction or antithesis is suppressed,
that is to say, when progress is arrested.
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Mankind has always been at the mercy of better organized fools.
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Wars are declared by fools and fought by dupes.
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The only way to understand our enemies
is by being objective about ourselves.
#
June 15, 2010
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DEAD END
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When one side says one thing and the other the exact opposite for one hundred years, we have no choice but to conclude either one side or both are obstinate, dogmatic, self-righteous, and intolerant of dissent.
Has anyone ever said we are open-minded, tolerant, willing to engage in dialogue, and eager to develop a consensus by means of compromise?
Has anyone ever said diplomacy is our strong suit?
If Armenian cannot agree with Armenian, can he ever agree with the Turk?
I am not casting aspersions, just asking questions.
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ARMENIAN ETIQUETTE
*******************************
When you don't understand what you read, call the writer an idiot.
When you disagree with what he writes, call him a traitor.
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KHRUSHCHEV ON DE GAULLE
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“Was he smart or stupid? For a while he was considered an idiot and a fascist. But in fact he was a very smart fellow.”
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KHRUSHCHEV ON MALRAUX
*****************************************
“De Gaulle's Minister of Culture was a well-known writer. I think he had the same last name as that other famous French writer, Moliere.”
Which reminds me of the story that when Malraux was named the winner of the Nobel Prize, Mailer received several congratulatory calls from American friends.
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REFLECTIONS
*********************************
Some day even the most absurd occurrence may make perfect sense, but by then the perceiver and the occurrence may well be one and the same.
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About Armenians and Turks: There is probably something true in the saying that if you hate somebody too much it may be because you see yourself in him.
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When I was young I was unteachable. Hence my intolerance of phony pundits.
There is an old Spanish saying: “Women and horses: let someone else tame them.”
And I say: “A horse’s ass: let a shrew tame him.”
#
June 16, 2010
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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“The true source of wisdom,” Socrates tells us,
“is not knowledge but moderation.”
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I don’t look for enemies;
they find me.
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Just because a man is not bought and sold
it doesn’t follow he is not a slave.
Likewise, just because we silence critics
it doesn’t follow we are not open to criticism.
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It was Kant who said that very often
ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.
*
Self-criticism is not treason.
Silencing criticism is.
*
An insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre,
perhaps because it is verbal massacre.
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According to Buddha:
“That which is spoken, heard, and understood
are three different things.”
What scathing book reviews Buddha would have written
of the Bible and the Koran!
*
Our history is an apt illustration of Murphy's Law:
“If things can go wrong
they will go wrong at the worst possible time.”
*
The aim of philosophy is to open the mind.
The aim of a belief system is to close it.
*
When I hear the word Islam,
the first four words that come to mind are:
giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad;
and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words
boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

June 17, 2010
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A SUGGESTION
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Juvenal: “No one ever reached the depths of wickedness all at once.”
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Since so far divisions have been of no discernible use to us, why not give solidarity a chance to fail on its own demerits?
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Divisions begin as aberrations by overambitious leaders who care more about their own powers and privileges than the welfare of the people. It's never too late to see this and begin a movement in the opposite direction.
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Divisions are expensive luxuries. By contrast, solidarity is much cheaper. One school, one community center, and one place of worship for every large community, would save enough money to feed and house thousands of families living below the poverty line in the Homeland.
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It should be mandatory to include the initial “S” (for Solidarity) in the acronyms of all our organizations.
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WANTED
**********************
Speechifiers who will unleash a verbal torrent thick with insults to dead ancestors; and comedians who will make merciless fun of our dividers.
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READING
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I have been reading two books on the ephemeral nature of power and wealth, especially when they are illegally, not to say criminally, obtained:
THE MADOFF CHRONICLES by Brian Ross (New York, 2009), and
KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS: THE LAST TESTAMENT, Translated and edited by Edward Cranshaw (Boston, 1974).
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Brian Ross on Bernard and Ruth Madoff's lifestyle: “They sought the 'old money' look, even though their money was freshly stolen.”
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Khrushchev hated Stalin but loved using the power amassed and concentrated by him.
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ONE-LINERS
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Among Armenians, yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.
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I repeat myself because I am told again and again that the earth is flat.
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The credo of all ideologues and partisans should begin with the words: “I believe in a false god….”
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If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.
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June 18, 2010
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FROM ZERO TO INFINITY
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Not all stories in one's life have a clear or even a discernible beginning and end. “At the beginning was the word” is a sentence conceived and written by men, not by God or Reality. It is more likely that both beginnings and ends in one's life take place when we are asleep, sometimes even long before we were born.
Our genocide began 600 years ago when we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan, and even long before that, when we welcomed our enemies by failing to present a united front to them.
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READING KHRUSHCHEV
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In his memoirs Khrushchev speaks of “loafers, charlatans and toadies who overcrowd our institutes, bloating the staffs and gobbling up state funds without giving anything in return.” And I think of our own institutes – schools, churches, centers, political and cultural organizations – and above all newspapers (with their respective publishers, editors, assistant editors, and correspondents) of which we have a good number when one or two will do just as well – assuming their function is to publish news (as opposed to pushing their respective propaganda line) and not to provide employment to loafers, charlatans, and brown-nosers.
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“SMALL PEOPLE,” AND “LIFE BACK”
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It is in thoughtless moments that we reveal our real thoughts – as BP executives may have realized by now.
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DOSTOEVSKY SPEAKS
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“Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”
There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all time confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.
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AN ARMENIAN PERVERSION
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Instead of studying our present complexes and contradictions, our academics prefer to study our graves.
#
June 19, 2010
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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In Saramago's obituary I read this morning: “A militant atheist who maintained that human history would have been a lot more peaceful if it weren't for religion, his novels are preoccupied with the question of God.” Which reminds me of the words of a theologian (Karl Barth?) who said: “You may let go of God but God will never let you go.”
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First you are taught to respect your elders, then you are lied to.
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Better a useful idiot than a useless genius.
*
If I disappoint some readers it may be because I dare to think for myself as opposed to delivering the same speeches and sermons they were exposed to as children.
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To those who accuse me of pessimism, I say: To write is to hope, and to hope is a symptom of optimism.
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Capitalism is morally superior to communism if only because greed for money is better than greed for power.
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More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.
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Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”
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Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”
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Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”
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Once in a while I am tempted to remind my fellow Armenians that there is more, much more, to being Armenian than Turks and massacres.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

June 20, 2010
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SKINHEADS ARE NOTBORN BUT MADE
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QUESTION: Who is a skinhead? Can you define him?

ANSWER: If you insult those who disagree with you, you qualify. It goes without saying that where there are skinheads, there will also be architects of a context within which skinheads thrive. Likewise, where there is racism, there will also be academics, historians, political and religious leaders and pundits who will equate patriotism with fascism.

Q: Do we have such a thing as a dominant idea today, and if we do, how would you define it?

A: Turcocentrism is our dominant idea and I would define it as the misconception that Turks are the source of all our misfortunes. It goes without saying that Turks deserve all the epithets we heap on them. It is equally true that we could heap the same number of epithets and then some on ourselves and our own leadership.

Q: Such as?

A: Incompetence, lack of self-reliance, ignorance of history, divisiveness, tribalism, intolerance, myopia bordering on blindness, inability to discriminate fact from propaganda, too much dependence on benefactors and charity and hardly any discernible effort on exposing and eliminating corruption.

Q: How do we combat these aberrations?

A: We begin by not silencing or insulting those who disagree with us.

#
June 21, 2010
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READING GANDHI
*********************************************
“We hold that the civilization that you support
to be the reverse of civilization.”
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“I am fighting against three opponents:
the British, the Indians, myself.”
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“Violence is a result of fear.
Dishonesty is fear.
Fearlessness is the key to Truth.”
*
“God is neither in heaven, nor down below,
but in everyone.”
*
This last quotation might as well be a paraphrase of
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
But if the Kingdom of God is within us,
so is the Empire of the Devil.
How else to explain wars, massacres, and man's inhumanity to man?
*
And speaking of fear:
I think of readers
who insult me anonymously
and from a safe distance.
What are they afraid of?
What else but being exposed for what they really are –
skinheads who have been brainwashed by liars.
*
More often than not men look up to liars for moral guidance
and are more than willing to kill and die in the name of a lie.
How else to explain organized religions
and religious wars, persecutions, and intolerance?
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Primitive man was wiser and more civilized
when he believed in an unknown and unknowable Power
which was the source of all good as well as evil.
#
June 22, 2010
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KIND WORDS
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“What have you really done for your country and fellow countrymen?” I am asked once in a while by readers who, as dupes of “men of action,” have been brought up to believe contemplation is a waste of time and those who engage in it no better than mental masturbators.
To them I say: Sometimes what we don't do can be as important as what we do.
Allow me therefore to tell you what I have not done:
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I have never said, as God's favorite people, we can do no wrong.
I have never spoken in the name of God (whom I believe to be incomprehensible) or Truth (which I believer to be unknowable).
I have at no time tried to legitimize our failings by saying we have none.
Neither have I covered up our contradictions of which we have many.
I have not treated my readers as dupes who will believe anything they are told.
I have never written a Panchoonie letter that ends with the line: “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money).
I have not violated anyone's human rights by silencing him.
I have never said “Yes, sir!” to leaders whose number one concern is number one.
I have consistently refused to join the chorus of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and speechifiers in ascribing all our defeats and catastrophes to our enemies and phony friends.
*
Have I accomplished anything?
I don't know.
What are my chances that some day I may succeed where far better men than myself have failed?
Probably next to none.
Why do I go on writing?
That is a question I ask myself every day and so far I have failed to come up with a remotely satisfactory answer.
Am I a useless member of the community?
If I am, I do not consider that to be entirely my own fault, but the fault of readers who believe action (even the wrong action) to be superior to contemplation.
*
In a commentary in today's paper I read the following quotation by Al Capone: “You get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”
If so far I have failed, it may be because I have used only kind words.
#
June 23, 2010
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DANGEROUS WORDS
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If I were to name the two most dangerous words, they would have to be “I believe.”
*
The wold is too ready to criticize and condemn Jews for the suffering they have inflicted on Palestinians during the last decades but less willing to criticize the world for the suffering that has inflicted on Jews during the last centuries, not to say millennia. I call this disparity a symptom not of anti-Zionism but of anti-Semitism – an 'ism” or a belief system as dangerous as any organized religion that has declared and fought wars, committed massacres, and murdered innocent civilians in the name of God or Truth.
*
Speaking of religions with their holy books and monopolistic claims: I suggest they should be judged not by their intentions or principles but by their history. Theory is one thing, practice another. Ideologies like nationalism and communism may have good, even noble intentions, but their abuses have been such that even some of their most dedicated adherents had no choice but to reject them.
*
As for capitalism: recent economic and political developments in America have made it abundantly clear that in practice, it means free enterprise for the poor and the unemployed, and socialism for the rich and chief executive officers.
*
Organized religions like Christianity and Islam have not only behaved as though they had a license to kill not only the foreign infidel but also the domestic heretic. Consider the case of Catholics versus Protestants, or Shiites versus Sunnis...
*
A belief system acts on the human brain like a potent drug or alcohol.
*
And speaking of drugs and chief executive officers: Early this morning I heard on the radio that the tobacco industry has given up the claim that smoking is not addictive or that it does not cause cancer. We may now look forward to the day when the Pope of Rome will also give up his absurd claim of infallibility. But I for one am not holding my breath.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

June 24, 2010
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MORAL OF THE STORY
*********************************************
To be brainwashed means to be blind to reality.
I speak from experience.
*
If God is love,
why is it that there is so little of it in jungles
(both natural and man-made or asphalt)
or anywhere else for that matter?
Are we to assume gardens are planted by God
and jungles by the Devil?
Who in his right mind
would introduce an evil serpent in a beautiful garden
knowing full well what will happen next?
If we are dealing with symbols
whose intent is to understand and explain reality,
then I suggest the explanation is not a very convicning one.
Which is why it is rejected by the majority of mankind.
God's ways are not our ways?
If so, let us agree once and for all
that He is incomprehensible and unknowable
and theologians who try to explain His actions
are no better than charlatans and blasphemers.
*
Moral of the story:
Don't be a dupe!
#
June 25, 2010
***************************************************
REFLECTIONS
ON OUR PRESENT SITUATION
*********************************************
Nothing can be more misleading than to think the men at the top know better.
*
History is made not by people who know better but by charlatans who have mastered the skill of organizing dupes.
*
When a member of the Party writes, it is not his brain that speaks but his loyalty. No one can be as brainless as a partisan.
*
The moment you surrender your freedom of thought to a closed system, you cease to think for yourself.
*
History is the propaganda of the victor, we are told. What we are not told is that losers too have their propaganda line whose intent is to make them look blameless and morally superior.
*
To think of oneself as morally superior is the surest symptom of moral bankruptcy.
*
If there are those who prefer the victor's propaganda to the loser's boast, it may be because they think winners may know something losers don't.
*
The only endeavor in which our Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded so far is grooming another generation of haters and braggarts.
*
Where the profit motive is supreme, there will be first-class merchants and an abundance of dead poets.
*
We have been brainwashed to believe politics is a filthy business, except of course our politics.
*
We don't choose our belief system, it is thrust on us.
*
It is a well-know fact that you can teach children to believe anything.
*
Prejudices are as carefully taught as the multiplication table.
*
That which is good for the few is bound to be bad for the many.
*
Anyone whose powers and privileges depend on the support of the people, will never say anything remotely critical against a system that allows the brainwashing of children.
*
At the root of all crimes against humanity, there will be a generation of brainwashed children.
*
As long as we think criticism and dissent are un-Armenian, we will never acquire the status of human beings – or “mart bidi ch'ellank.”
#
June 26, 2010
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PARALLELS
*********************************************
The Palestinians have been so consistently wrong in overestimating their military might and in believing they can defeat the Israelis that nothing they say can be trusted. I am not talking about right and wrong here, or about principles and moral values. I am dealing with facts. Morally superior losers are a dime a dozen. Neither am I talking about the Palestinian people in general, most of whom are no doubt very much like most other people, including ourselves, dupes of their incompetent and megalomaniacal leadership, and as such guilty only of poor judgment.
*
When the popes sanctioned the persecution and torture of heretics, what were they defending? God or their own power?
When heretics were willing to die for what they believed in, what were they defending -- beside their freedom of thought?
*
To say that those in power are more interested in the truth than philosophers is to ignore such facts as countless wars and massacres.
*
A charlatan is one who not only claims to have the final answers but also to know better than you what you should think, feel, and believe.
*
Minor errors of judgment are covered up and ignored; but catastrophic blunders are explained, justified, and believed. I suggest truth is not what deceivers and their dupes conspire to believe in.
*
When it comes to reading, we tend to reject ideas, feelings, and values that do not spring from our own experience. It is almost as if the purpose of reading were to reinforce and legitimize our limitations, prejudices, and fallacies. Knowing this, propagandists and charlatans (but I repeat myself) are more than willing to adjust their message to the lies that are most in demand.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

June 27, 2010
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SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO
*********************************************
When men in a position of power and responsibility
promise one thing and deliver the opposite,
I call that much worse than incompetence,
I call it criminal conduct.
When our revolutionaries promised
freedom, independence and our historic lands
and they delivered
massacres, starvation, pestilence, and dispersion,
and having done so they now say
none of it was their fault
and they are believed by dupes,
I call that much worse than
b.s., lies, and charlatanism;
I call it the quintessence of evil.
*
I love books that expose b.s.
One such book that I enjoyed recently is
Laura Penny's
YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US:
THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLSHIT.
In this morning's paper
I read that Laura Penny has published another book titled
MORE MONEY THAN BRAINS:
WHY SCHOOL SUCKS,
COLLEGE IS CRAP
AND IDIOTS THINK THEY'RE RIGHT.
I have something to look forward to.
#
June 28, 2010
***************************************************
THE KING IS DEAD,
LONG LIVE THE KING!
*********************************************
Prophets and reformers may change the world
but they cannot change human nature.
What have the major religions really changed?
The 20th century has seen more revolutions, wars, and massacres
than at any other time in history.
That's because human nature tends to adapt,
that is to say, to lower
the noblest ideas and ideals
to its own level, namely the gutter.
*
I suspect the honesty and integrity of men
who subscribe to a belief system
simply because as children
they were educated (that is, brainwashed)
to trust and respect their elders.
I am not saying
all Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Marxists are dupes.
I am saying most of them are.
Exceptions exist.
But I don't speak of exceptions.
I speak of rules.
*
Reformers may change the power structure
but not human nature.
And changing the power structure means
replacing one set of rascals with another.
You gain nothing by replacing one sultan
with many mini-sultans,
or one czar with many commissars,
and many commissars
with many more crypto- or neo-commissars.
#
June 29, 2010
***************************************************
SELF-ANALYSIS
*********************************************
Confucius: “If you see a good man, emulate him.
If you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
*
If you want to know what's wrong with us,
Naregatsi tells us, examine your conscience.
Exposing and naming your own sins
is more important than
bitching endlessly about your enemies.
In that sense, Naregatsi, like so many of our writers
from Khorenatsi to Zarian,
may be said to have been a dissident.
*
You want to know why I write the way I write?
To keep alive the voice of dissent in our media.
*
If revolution is organized and armed dissent,
I may be said to be an unarmed and solitary revolutionary.
Which is why I feel justified in maintaining
I am not silenced by the offspring of revolutionaries
who dared to challenge the might of an empire,
but by empty suits whose greatest enemy
is neither the Turk nor the Russian,
but their own fear of being exposed as cowards.
#
June 30, 2010
***************************************************
ON OUR MEDIA
*********************************************
Freedom of the press will not turn bad writers into good ones.
Granted. It may, however, de-emphasize Turcocentrism,
which shamelessly exploits our emotions
and distracts us from focusing on our present problems
of which we have many.
*
SCUMBAGS (I)
***********************
A capitalist makes money at other people's expense
and to combat his guilt, he builds churches
and by doing so he compounds his felony
by making the blasphemous assumption that
God can be bribed by scumbags.
*
A MATTER OF CHOICE
*********************************
The world or reality provides evidence
for contradictory belief systems.
As a result, both a believer and non-believer
will find all the evidence they need
to justify their choice of credo
and to accuse the other of siding with the devil.
Our convictions are not based in reality
but on our perception of it
and our choice of evidence.
*
SCUMBAGS (II)
*****************************
There is a type of scumbag
who thinks the only way to prove he is right
and the other wrong
is by going down into the gutter
on the assumption that a decent man
will refuse to follow him there.
But then he runs the risk
of running into a scumbag like me
who can take it as well as dish it out.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

July 1, 2010
***************************************************
ON BEING RIGHT
*********************************************
Being right has nothing to do with logic, common sense, and evidence. Being right is a state of mind which can be controlled by auto-suggestion. If you want to assert superior knowledge, assume you are right, raise your voice, or pull rank. Once when I disagreed with a bishop, he said: “I have a degree in theology from a university in Rome.” Which is why whenever a coward insults me anonymously and from a safe distance, I say: “You must be a bishop or the son of one.”
*
OUR BETTERS
*******************************
Heine's definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.”
We don't have aristocrats. What we have are empty suits with money; and in our environment money doesn't just talk, it sings like Pavarotti even when it brays like an ass.
*
ON SOLUTIONS
******************************
To readers who demand solutions from me, I ask: “How many problems have our Turcocentric ghazetajis solved?” And now consider the number of real problems we could have solved with the money, energy, and manpower wasted on Hai Tahd.
#
July 2, 2010
***************************************************
THAT WHICH WE SHARE
*********************************************
Every Armenian is different, granted.
But all Armenians share in common the same history,
the most salient feature of which is
a thousand years of subservience to ruthless and alien tyrants.
In “Rule Britannia” the Brits may sing the words
“An Englishman cannot be a slave,”
but we are in no position to make the same claim.
Subservience – a euphemism for slavery –
comes so naturally to us that
it has become an integral part
of our psyche, character, and worldview.
Our nationalist historians may rewrite history,
but so far none of them has gone as far as suggesting
that we are all reincarnations of David of Sassoun.
*
It is true that at the turn of the last century
we finally did produce a generation of revolutionaries
who dared to challenge the might of the Ottoman Goliath.
But unlike the American, French, and Russian revolutions
ours wasn't exactly a popular uprising;
and worse, our revolutionaries relied less on themselves
to carry out their mission
and more on the Great Powers of the West.
As a result, in addition to being an abortion,
our revolution may be said to have been
one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind.
*
If we were to rely less on our propaganda
and more on historic realty,
we shall have to conclude that
our past is a litany of internecine conflicts,
defeats, blunders, and lies.
*
Am I saying anything that hasn't been said before?
Listen to Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973):
“Our history is a litany of lamentation,
anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception
and abysmal naiveté mixed with the smoke of incense
and the sound of sacred chants.”
*
Raffi (Hagop Melik-Hagopian: 1835-1888):
“We are like sheep without a shepherd.”
*
Baruir Massikian (1912-1990):
“Instead of books, they want basterma.”
By “books” Massikian means writers
who assume the role of honest witnesses.
*
As a nation we have no use for honest witnesses.
We prefer vodanavorjis who, in the words of
Leo (Arakel Babakhanian: 1858-1925):
“...like birds perched on a branch
and at a safe distance from reality,
they have entertained the moon and the stars
by singing songs about roses and virgins.”
*
I am all for emphasizing the positive,
but I am against bare-faced lies,
and I am deeply offended whenever I am treated
like a cowardly dupe whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
*
Allow me to conclude with a remark
by President Harry S. Truman:
“There is nothing new in the world
except the history you don't know.”
#
July 3, 2010
***************************************************
THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE
*********************************************
Because I refuse to recycle propaganda,
I am told I am consistently negative.
Charents said our salvation is in our solidarity;
and all I have been saying is,
solidarity, very much like the Kingdom of God,
is within us.
It is an act of will within everyone's reach.
*
If so far we have failed to achieve solidarity
it may be because we have trusted our fate
into the hands of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
To those who say our leaders are essentially good men
who are doing their best
under unfavorable conditions, I ask:
How so? By ignoring the word of the very same God
they profess to believe in, and Who tells us
“a house divided against itself cannot stand”?
Who is being consistently negative here?
Those who promote solidarity
or those who divide the nation?
And why do they divide us?
Does anyone know?
Can anyone enlighten me on that score?
*
Our divisions are buried in our past?
What past? If you rewrite history
you can justify anything;
and if you don't want to learn from history
you rewrite it.
It's a vicious circle.
*
Dealing in abstractions is easy.
The question is: What do we do in concrete terms?
I suggest the following:
If you are a Protestant, Catholic, or Anteliassagan,
visit the opposition.
If you are a Tashnak, apply for membership
in the Ramgavar Party and vice versa.
You may discover that all Armenians
regardless of their loyalty to a party or church
are human beings like you
– that is to say, dupes of propaganda.
*
Sooner or later we all have to discover that
not only all Armenians are brothers,
but also all men, including Turks.
#

[Ara Baliozian]

July 4, 2010
***************************************************
THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION
*********************************************
Nations and empires die as surely as individuals.
Scientists tell us the same fate awaits
not only the planet on which we live
but also the universe itself.
I doubt if I or anyone else
can postpone the inevitable final catastrophe
by even a fraction of a second.
Perhaps I write the way I write
not to save anything or anyone or, for that matter, myself,
but to kill time.
*
The older I grow the more doubts I have
and the more certain I feel
of the essential meaninglessness and absurdity of life.
The idea itself of saving someone strikes me as an empty illusion.
There are those who identify the Messiah as our Savior.
There are also those who assert He,
or rather His followers,
saved no one and nothing;
if anything they made things worse
by legitimizing intolerance, the persecution and torture of dissenters,
and religious wars, among other horrors.
Their intentions may have been good – no one denies that –
but history – including our own -- tells us
“the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“No one can save another,” the Buddha has said.
Which, if anything, proves that even messianic figures
contradict one another when it comes to
unraveling the mystery of existence,
or when they speak in the name of
the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible.
*
I believe true knowledge consists less in what we know
and more in what we don't know;
and what we don't know
exceeds what we know to such a degree
that if we had all the answers
what we now think we know would shrink to nothingness.
Why do I write?
Wrong question.
A better question would be,
why mankind has consistently trusted deceivers more than honest men?
#
July 5, 2010
***************************************************
HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS
*********************************************
Propaganda works because it flatters, and flattery is an offer very few people have the strength of character to refuse or reject.
“Fatigue increases suggestibility,” we are told by Pavlov of conditioned-reflex fame. After centuries of subservience and degradation we readily believe in the big lies of our propaganda, among them the illusion that we are smart.
Germans under Hitler behaved like barbarians with the unshakable conviction that they belonged to a superior or master race.
Speaking for myself: in my youth I was so convinced of my high IQ that I refused to learn from those I viewed as my equals or inferiors even when they were far ahead of me in understanding and dealing with reality. Which amounts to saying, those I viewed as my inferiors were in fact my superiors.
*
Do Yanks trust gold more than God? It depends on whether you are a partisan of fact or fiction. It goes without saying that the average American is convinced Americans are the most religious and idealistic people on earth.
If in crime it's cherchez la femme, in propaganda it's cherchez the truth or fact that it attempts to contradict or cover up.
*
Propaganda, Aldous Huxley tells us, “cunningly associates the lowest passions with the highest ideals.” It also contradicts the truth with lies.
When Pope Benedict decided to make his anti-Muslim views public, he quoted a Byzantine emperor on Islam's addiction to violence. A bad choice for which he had to apologize, because, to paraphrase a popular American saying, “Violence is as American as cherry pie,” or again, as Christian as Western imperialism.
A better choice on the part of the Pope would have been Islam's promise of a paradise where sex-starved teenagers are allowed to deflowers a harem of virgins.
Christian paradise promises eternal bliss. No mention of sex. This may explain why we have a lower suicide rate in the West. Who in his right mind would kill himself in the name of a poorly defined metaphysical abstraction?
#
July 6, 2010
***************************************************
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
*********************************************
Hegel's famous last words:
“No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me.”
Who among us can truly claim that he has been understood or,
for that matter, that he understands himself?
*
Confronted with the impenetrable mystery of life and death, men have constructed countless belief systems all of which claim to have a monopoly on truth.
We disagree on what we think we know and understand.
We disagree even more on things we neither know nor understand. Misunderstanding may be said to be our most abundant commodity.
For a thousand years men believed the earth to be flat and at the center of the universe, in the same way that today we believe the dimension in which we exist is the only dimension because we cannot conceive of any other.
*
If God exists, He is not and cannot be what we believe Him to be but something as inconceivable and incomprehensible as the line that scientists tell us separates existence from nothingness -- on the grounds that the universe is not infinite.
The paradox is that to have an idea of nothingness we think of existence before we were born, as if nothingness were an extension of being.
*
What if God exists in a dimension beside which existence as we know it is as nothingness?
Please note that I am not making any assertions, only asking questions, which may well be our only option when dealing with metaphysics -- asking questions without ever giving in to the temptation of making dogmatic assertions. Because, as we should all know by now, the road to hell is paved with dogmatic assertions.
#
July 7, 2010
***************************************************
GOOD ADVICE
*********************************************
Winston Churchill:
“Never hold discussions with the monkey
when the organ grinder is in the room.”
Which is why I ignore cowardly, loud-mouth idiots
who call me an idiot anonymously and from a safe distance.
They are not my targets.
My real targets are the fascist idiots
who brainwashed them to believe
dissent and free speech are unpatriotic.
*
According to Heidegger,
before we pretend to have the right answers,
we must learn to ask the right questions.
What have we learned from our history so far?
Only this: We are surrounded by ruthless giants,
as opposed to being self-righteous dogmatic midgets
who have learned nothing because they think
they already have all the answers.
*
Which one of our political parties
may be said to be on the right path?
One way to answer that question
is by quoting Samuel Johnson:
“Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency
between a louse and a flea.”
#

[Ara Baliozian]

July 8, 2010
**********************
PHILOSOPHY
*********************************************
Faith can move mountains?
What nonsense!
God created mountains to be stationary.
Why would anyone want to challenge His will
by moving them?
*
You tell idiots
faith can move mountains
and next thing you know
they raise armies,
go on the warpath
liberating distant lands,
converting infidels,
and engaging in plunder and massacre.
*
If we don't know the meaning of life and death
it may be because God wanted it that way.
Not knowing is not ignorance.
Pretending to know the unknowable:
that's what I call the quintessence of ignorance
compounded by blasphemy.
*
Tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge
can be a risky business.
But when it comes to learning from history
or repeating it,
men have exhibited a marked preference
for repeating it.
*
Three of my favorite philosophical statements:
“Of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates).
“We don't know why things exist” (Heidegger).
“We believe that we believe but we don't believe” (Sartre).
*
“I think therefore I am”?
Countless men have ceased to be
exactly because some moron said:
“I think my belief system to be the only true one
and anyone who does not think as I do
doesn't deserve to live.”
#
July 9, 2010
**********************
POWEER AND TRUTH
*********************************************
Power will listen to truth only if it (truth) can be exploited.
Which amounts to saying,
only in so far as truth may serve a lie.
When I speak of truth, I include God.
And I am not talking in terms of theoretical abstractions here.
I am talking about history; and more particularly
the bloody history of organized religions,
about which Voltaire said:
“Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.”
*
A true atheist is not one who denies His existence,
but one who exploits the idea of God to serve the Devil.
*
You think I have a suspicious mind?
Read James Joyce who saw deception and charlatanism everywhere,
including Freud and Jung, who, said he,
enjoy some degree of popularity
with the “yung [who are] easily freudened.”
But when his (Joyce's) daughter developed a mental illness,
he sought Jung's help who was of no help.
Which may suggest that even those who warn us against deceivers
are themselves vulnerable to deception.
*
To be taken in by smart operators is bad enough.
What is infinitely worse is to be taken in by idiots.
I speak from experience.
If I ever write an autobiography,
I suspect the longest chapter in it will be
about idiots who deceived me – or rather,
were smart enough to see my vulnerabilities and weaknesses
and I was idiotic enough to make them visible.
#
July 10, 2010
**********************
IN THE NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY
*********************************************
Experience, it has been said, is not what happens to us,
but what we do with what happens.
So far we have emphasized the Genocide to the point of obsession,
but we have made no effort to deal with it.
As a result, we have only replaced the “red” massacre
with the “white” (alienation and assimilation).
*
At all times and everywhere, Hegel tells us,
man is given two choices:
to say “Yes, sir!” to his Master,
or to risk his own life (or means of survival) by saying “No!”
To behave either like a sheep or a wolf.
*
After six centuries of playing the sheep,
some of us – a tiny and non-representative group
of self-appointed revolutionaries -- turned into wolves
by risking the survival of the community,
and what was bound to happen happened.
The sheep were slaughtered and the wolves survived.
*
The wolves survived and became our new Masters.
Dissent is out!
Saying no is anathema.
In the same way that once upon a time
we were not allowed to say no to the Sultan
(who spoke in the name of Allah),
today we are not allowed to say no to our bosses
(or neo- or crypto-sultans),
or bishops (who speak in the name of God),
or benefactors (who speak in the name of Capital).
*
Christianity, Hegel tells us, only replaced the human Master
with the Divine Master.
Likewise, Capital (according to Marx
who was greatly influence by Hegel)
replaced the Divine Master with, in modern parlance,
the Almighty Dollar.
*
The ambition of every charlatan
is to speak in the name of the Almighty
(be it Allah, God, or Capital) and the punish or silence those
who dare to disagree with him.
The more things change,
the more they stay the same.
*
The choice is yours.
But be warned:
If you choose to play the sheep,
there is no guarantee that you will survive.
But even if you survive,
you will survive not as a man but as a slave.
Not as an Armenian with your own identity
but as a rootless, traditionless, alienated empty suit.
#