may/31

Sunday, May 28, 2006
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Of the many forms of cowardice, fear of free speech is the worst. I have said this before but it bears repeating.
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Some of the most devastating comments on Armenians, like the following, were made not by our critics and dissidents, but by darlings of the establishment, among them Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian): “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”
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Whenever I speak of corruption in high places, some of our defenders of the establishment are eager to inform me that, very much like the rest of mankind, we have our share of rotten apples. What they don’t say is that, the only way to explain the longevity of our rotten apples is that they enjoy the tacit support of semi-rotten apples like themselves.
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When you are wrong, they make fun of you, but when you are right, they hate you.
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I wear the insults of my readers like a medal of honor. As for those who insult me anonymously: I don’t see any reason why I should take cowards, that is to say, men without honor, seriously.
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Monday, May 29, 2006
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QUOTATIONS FROM
JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL (1924-2006)
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“Man has not yet acquired a taste for truth and freedom.”
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“In free countries, information is seldom designed to inform.”
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“Among the arts, the art of leadership is one of the least developed.”
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“Why is it that men feel the need to support a regime whose aim is their own destruction?”
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“I have met many remarkable personalities that were not famous, and many celebrities who were not in the least remarkable.”
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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
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Sidney Morgenbesser (b. 1921), American philosopher: “”To explain why a man slipped on a banana peel, we do not need a general theory of slipping.”
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Love of freedom was the only reason why we rose against the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century, or so I was brought up to believe. It never even occurred to me to ask, “Does that mean during the preceding 600 years we hated freedom?”
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Sometimes what remains unsaid can be much more revealing than what is said.
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There is a Rashomon-type witness in every historian. A thousand historians writing about the same occurrence will have a thousand, sometimes even a thousand and one, different versions of it. A dupe is one who believes only the version that is flattering to his ego.
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We rose against the Empire because we saw an opportunity; which means that our idealism was modified by a touch of opportunism.
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The Empire was disintegrating and may even have been a shadow of its former self, true. But in so far as we believed as rabbits we were strong enough to deal with a wounded tiger, we behaved like dupes of our own illusions or wishful thinking.
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We had the moral or verbal support of the Great Powers, also true. But in so far as we believed that their support would translate into military alliance, we behaved like dupes.
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Reality is not an extension of our ego. If we want to understand and learn from it, we will be better off to choose the version that is most injurious to our vanity or least favorable to our self-interest.
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To persist in thinking that which we thought a hundred years ago only means that we have learned nothing during the last hundred years.
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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Standing between a hungry carnivore and his kill can be as dangerous as standing between a civilized man and his source of income.
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I think it was Jean-Luc Godard who once remarked that the most complex philosophical system can be reduced to a cliché. Consider the following passage in Levi-Strauss: “Sartre deplores the ‘mythopoetic thinking’ of primitives which he contrasts with the ‘logico-empirical’ thinking that permits the construction, or even the use, of machines that can melt cities.” Or, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change the more they stay the same). Or again, can we really speak of progress if a primitive kills with arrows and civilized man with weapons of mass destruction.
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Benefactors operate on the assumption that they are helping people who are in need of their help. But what if, by helping the wrong people, they end up doing more harm than good? Hence their need to surround themselves with flunkies whose most important function is to remind them, as princes among men, they can do no wrong.
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Once upon a time when I could not yet think for myself, I never questioned my infallibility. Now, all my efforts are concentrated on avoiding being spectacularly wrong. Some day I hope to be right once or twice a year.
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