Thursday, November 11, 2004
***********************************
In whatever I write, my aim is not to assert the superiority of my ideas, but to suggest that there is nothing wrong in once in a while questioning the validity of our fundamental assumptions, in order to separate that which is ours (therefore authentic) from that which is someone else’s (therefore alien).
Cases in point:
What if hating a fellow Armenian is more Ottoman and less Armenian? What if the status quo we support is more authoritarian and less democratic? – that is to say, more Ottoman and less human?
What if inflexibility is not love of principle but infatuation with the self?
And what if, since in an authoritarian environment, yes-men have a far better chance to survive and succeed than honest men, we have been educated, manipulated and brainwashed by charlatans?
*
Chinese proverb: “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.”
*
Generosity is a virtue praised by the poor, and avarice is a vice practiced by the wealthy.
*
Longevity does not guarantee wisdom, only senility.
*
Stolen apples taste better because only the very hungry steal.
#
Friday, November 12, 2004
************************************
Our intellectuals today do not aspire to expose the charlatans and overthrow the oppressors half as much as they do to join their ranks.
*
We are all dissidents, if not against the state, then against the dissenters.
*
It is not easy writing for readers who know better. It is even more difficult writing for readers who know everything and are never wrong. Hercules had it easy: his labors were only twelve in number.
*
An old Catholic once told me: “When I go to confession, I tell the priest: ‘Father, you know me, it’s the usual.’ And he understands because he has been my confessor for many years.” Now, imagine if you can this old man to be an Armenian confessing to an Armenian priest. Not only the priest would insist on hearing every single sordid sin but also, at the end, after accusing the old man of covering up, he would refuse absolution.
*
What’s the difference between an Ottomanized Armenian and a Turk? The Turk does not pretend to be the opposite of what he is.
*
When honest men keep silent, only the loudmouth charlatans are heard.
#
Saturday, November 13, 2004
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*********************************
One does not kill in the name of God but in the name of an idol. Pascal is right: “The worship of truth without charity is idolatry.”
*
What would happen to him if he were to convert to Hinduism, asks Toynbee, and he answers: “In the hierarchy of castes I should rank below the sweepers.”
*
In his book of travel impressions, Denis Donikian quotes a woman in Yerevan as saying: “Today no one gives a damn about the people. If they want to build a church they go right ahead and build it. Speaking for myself, I have lost all faith. Believe in what, may I ask? And what’s the use of buying a newspaper? I am not illiterate. I wouldn’t mind reading a newspaper. But I can’t afford one.”
*
Elsewhere: “Once upon a time there was a country in which everyone spoke the same language and no one understood what the other was saying.”
*
When criticized, Donikian writes, our politicians have a pat answer: “Our present problems are the gradual accumulation of many past problems.”
*
Why is it that the very same readers, who accuse me of dipping my pen in arsenic, dip theirs in cobra venom?
*
Knowledge advances, propaganda stays the same. If you say, “Tomorrow I will think what I thought yesterday and what I think today,” the questions you should ask yourself are: “What if my thoughts are not mine but someone else’s? And what if someone else’s thoughts are the thoughts of an ignoramus?”
*
Trash my kind of ideas
and alienate all those who think as I do.
Alienate those who do not parrot your sentiments and thoughts
and surround yourself only with like-minded men.
In the company of exclusively like-minded men,
entertain the illusion that most people think as you do.
Live in that misconception long enough
and blur the line that separates reality from illusion.
And is not confusing illusion with reality
the first stage of insanity?
*
Like Captain Boycott and Judge Lynch, Bush has enriched the English language with a new word: Bushism, meaning any incoherent and nonsensical sentence.
#