Sunday, April 24, 2005 *********************************** If you want to understand the past and human conduct in general, you will be closer to reality if you assume, in time of crisis, man is motivated more by irrational drives and less by reason. * While on every April 24 we mourn Talaat's victims, let us not ignore Stalin's victims, whose number remains unknown to most of us. But perhaps we prefer to ignore them because the executioners were not Turks but Armenians. * In the Middle Ages Jews who copied the Holy Scriptures believed that even a single letter in the wrong place might mean the destruction of the world. How much more so the death of a single innocent human being? * What if the world is being destroyed even as I am writing and you are reading these lines, but because the destruction is in slow motion we have the illusion of survival. * The Genocide is a tragic episode in our history, but it is only a chapter, not the whole book. It is a factor, even if a defining factor, in shaping of our identity, but it is not the only factor. * The Genocide is history, it is not theology, and it should not be allowed to become pathology. If we allow it to become pathology, it may paralyze our will to confront and solve our present problems of which we have more than our share. * We speak of our writers and intellectuals who were Talaat's and Stalin's victims but even as we speak, we ignore their works. I am reminded of Antranik Zaroukian's words to the effect that even as we mourn our crucified writers, we crucify their memories by ignoring that which is best in their works, and by extension, in the Armenian psyche. # Monday, April 25, 2005 ********************************* G.K. Chesterton: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." * Violate free speech and you violate freedom. Violate freedom and you legitimize slavery. * Armenians who hate are convinced that their hatred bears God's seal of approval. * We are better at excommunicating friends than converting enemies. * We have more enemies than friends, and our friends are friends in name only. We cannot even rely on our fellow Armenians for friendship. * An Ottomanized Armenian may be defined as one who believes in the power of hatred to change the world. * Good and evil, friend and foe, love and hate: they are not permanent conditions. A friend may turn into an enemy and vice versa. Unless we make an effort to excommunicate less and convert more, we condemn ourselves to remain perennial sheep in a jungle of predators. * When it comes to literature, we prefer writers who plagiarize patriotic cliches and recycle pro-establishment platitudes to one who speaks his mind and says what must be said. We stifle originality when it fails to flatter our collective ego or when it challenges our prejudices. How many of our contemporary writers (do we have them?) would have the integrity and courage of Raffi and say "Treason and betrayal are in our blood"? And it is worth remembering that Zarian confided his true feelings about his fellow Armenians (such as "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another") only in his notebooks, which were not meant for publication in his lifetime. # Tuesday, April 26, 2005 ********************************** Some of my readers, it seems, have an ego so precariously balanced on the edge of the abyss that even the shadow of an alien idea may topple them. * I never said "our political parties have been of no political use to us: their greatest enemy is free speech." It was Gostan Zarian, universally acknowledged as one of our greatest writers. * I see nothing wrong in disagreement. But I see something pathological in a disagreement based on the misunderstanding or the distortion of a simple sentence like the one quoted above. * Leo Rosten: "Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them." * I never said, "Our revolutionaries should be crucified!" It was General Antranik. * And I never said, "Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy." It was Derenik Demirjian, another prominent author of the 20th Century. * When a reader who disagrees with me pretends I am the only Armenian he disagrees with, I have no choice but to conclude that I must be the only Armenian he reads. * It is an insult to all Armenians to think that they are so vulnerable and fragile that they can be ruined by an idea that does not bear a boss's, bishop's, or benefactor's seal of approval. * God loves all men, except theologians and propagandists who parade as pundits whose convictions are dogmas. # Wednesday, April 27, 2005 ********************************* Elbert Hubbard: "If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost, you can still call him vile names." * Only if we make an honest effort to view reality through Turkish eyes may we be able to enhance our credibility in the eyes of skeptics like the Americans and the Israelis. * Reality (or god) does not see friend and foe; it sees only misguided men committing blunders. * The Turks did not single us out for extermination. They would have exterminated all their enemies. They didn't because they (enemies) were beyond their reach. By contrast, we made an ideal target. * It makes little sense to suggest that after 600 years of coexistence the Turks suddenly woke up on April 24, 1915 and decided to exterminate us because we aroused their cannibal instincts. No one with any degree of objectivity and common sense will ever agree with us if we say or imply in any way that we are better than Turks. All such talk is bound to smack of racism and lower our moral standing. * The Genocide is a central issue with us. It was only a peripheral one for them. We were only a small fraction of their problems of which they had many more than they could handle in a rational way. They massacred us because they had the power and we didn't. * We only damage our credibility if we as victims assert moral superiority or adopt a holier-than-thou stance. Because by saying Turks are evil we also imply that they are good only for extermination. But to think in terms of extermination is quintessentially Ottoman. * Let us therefore put an end to all talk of Turks as bloodthirsty savages and Asiatic barbarians. #

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