Sunday, October 10, 2004
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“Armenians are smart.” “Armenians are tolerant.” “Armenians are progressive.” I am astonished at the ease with which some Armenians spout similar clichés that are motivated more by self-flattery and less by objective judgment. Speaking for myself: when it comes to my fellow Armenians, I have more questions than answers, questions such as: “If suffering ennobles, why is it that we have among as such preponderance of loud-mouth charlatans who feel more at home in the gutter?”
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In his latest novel, THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Philip Roth writes that he grew up “with a definition of the Jew as an object of ridicule, disgust, scorn, contempt, derision, of every heinous form of persecution and brutality.” This might as well be how an Armenian writer feels among his “smart, tolerant, and progressive” fellow Armenians.
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Between a short sentence and a long paragraph, sermonizers and speechifiers will invariably choose the paragraph and the longer the paragraph, the shorter the meaning, and the greater the distance from the truth.
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Only Armenians who have been exposed to many sermons but have not read a single book by Raffi, Zabel Yessayan, Zohrab, Shahnour, Massikian, Zarian, and many other 19th- and 20th-century writers are convinced our Church has played a central role in our survival as a nation.
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The only way to avoid controversy is to use words with contradictory meanings. If you think this can’t be done, read James Joyce.
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Judging by the popularity of religions and ideologies, the world seems to be populated by dupes who, when told 2+2=5, say, no, 2+2=22!
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And speaking of our Church: I wonder, how many Armenians are familiar with Toynbee’s classification of it as a “fossil” – meaning, brain-dead.
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I read the following in a review of a recent biography of Jorge Luis Borges: “He insisted that he was part of a universal culture and refused to be pigeon-holed as an Argentine writer, though he was that, too, of course.” I like that.
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More about our Church. The question we should ask is: Do we believe the fellow with a full belly who speaks in the name of God, or the one who speaks for no one but his half-starving self?
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Monday, October 11, 2004
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A routine occurrence in history: when they are underdogs, men of faith preach love, compassion and mercy; but when they are top dogs, they practice intolerance, hatred and murder.
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On the roots of our own intolerance: after centuries of “Yes, sir!” to a long line of ruthless and alien lords and masters, we turn into control freaks among our fellow Armenians, banning, censoring, and verbally abusing anyone who refuses to say “Yes, sir!” to us.
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If “there is a Turk in all of us,” this Turk surfaces only when we deal with fellow Armenians. Hence, the familiar phenomenon of the Armenian who is a lamb among odars and a wolf among his fellow countrymen.
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Am I right or wrong? Frankly, I am no longer consumed with the rage to prove myself right. I know that in the eyes of those who have programmed themselves to disagree with me, I will always be wrong. I also know that I am not qualified to deprogram Armenians. Nobody is!
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Those who disagree with me today may agree with me tomorrow. When I was young, I too disagreed with many things with which I agree today.
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Whenever something bad happens to me, I look for the silvery lining; and whenever, on those rare occasions, I find it, it turns out to have been a mirage. Once, I remember, I even found a positive aspect in our genocide. If it weren’t for the massacres, I thought, we would now be breathing the same air as the Turks, we would be communicating in Turkish with one another, and we would be discussing such topics as the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. And needless to add, we would all be for it.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2004
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We all swim in a sea of uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety. We hunger for certainties, and when we can’t find them, we invent them; and having invented them, we defend them – sometimes unto death.
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Since the beginning of time men have sensed the presence of an invisible and incomprehensible power which they have called god. And in their efforts to make the invisible visible, and the incomprehensible accessible, they have invented an astonishing number of stories, myths, fables, legends, dogmas, rituals, and belief systems which they have called religions. But because they have failed repeatedly to explain the mystery, or, if you wish, to lower god to their own level, they have reached contradictory conclusions. The result has been a long series of disagreements, conflicts, and sometimes even wars and massacres.
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It has been said that, man cannot create a single worm, yet, he has created ten thousand gods.
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Where people can think for themselves, there will be disagreement. There will be disagreement even where people cannot think for themselves because they have been conditioned not to think but to parrot someone else’s thoughts.
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Disagreement in itself is not a problem. The real problem is how we deal with it. Do we see it as a symptom of heresy, blasphemy, or evil, or do we see it as the beginning of a dialogue that may lead to compromise and consensus, which does not mean agreement but working together — as opposed to working at cross purposes and against one another. So far, religions have failed to follow the path of dialogue and consensus by asserting a monopoly on truth and by legitimizing intolerance.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
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When we use the word culture we think of art, literature, and music. We forget that culture springs from an invisible source within us. It is above all an expression of how we feel and think. Ignorance, intolerance and envy are not culture but barbarism.
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There is ignorance, intolerance and envy everywhere, of course, but they don’t set the tone and they don’t animate institutions and their policies. Only cultures or societies that are on a downward path do that.
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In a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper I read: “God is love, yes, certainly! But God is also justice.” The question is: What kind of justice are we talking about here? An-eye-for-an-eye justice, or love-your-enemy justice?
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Sermonizers can’t be contradicted because they speak on the authority of Scriptures that are full of contradictions.
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There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice.
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I share my understanding with those who are in need for it. As for the others, they shouldn’t even waste their valuable time reading me, because I have nothing to say to people who know and understand everything. And they have nothing to say to me either for the very simple reason that once upon a time I too knew and understood everything.
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