gostanza

[Guest arabaliozian]

From: "Ara Baliozian" <[email protected]> |           /ON REPETITION / Again and again I am accused of repeating myself. But weall repeat ourselves. All good Christians say "Thy kingdom come" everyday, more than once; and I recycle the same line when I say, Let honestyand justice reign./ON REPETITION (ii) /And speaking of recycling: Intolerance is adouble-edged sword. If you live by it, you will die by it. Historyprovides us with many instances. Robespierre comes to mind; and morerecently, Stalinists, who after killing dissidents, proceeded to kill theexecutioners, after which history buried them both./WRITERS / Only writers who consider themselves immortal can afford towrite for posterity. I feel privileged if what I write today is readtomorrow, even if it is forgotten the day after./FOOLS / You may have noticed that, when an intelligent man behavesstupidly, the reasons he invents to justify his conduct will be even morestupid. /PUNDITS AND THEIR FICTIONS / A couple of weeks ago my next-door neighborwas arrested for growing marijuana in his basement. A day later anotherneighbor (a devout Catholic) was arrested for sexually molesting twentyminors (among them two of his own daughters). To those who pretend to beexperts on Armenia simply because they were born and raised there, I ask:How much did you really know about your next-door neighbors?/ELEPHANTS AND ANTS / When an elephant and an ant disagree, guess who isgoing to have the last word and who is going to say "I agree."/SUMMING UP / If an Armenian comes up to you and says "I am a morepatriotic Armenian than you," you can be sure of one thing: he is not!The same applies to an Armenian who says he is a morally superior beingor a better Christian or a more principled man. The rule is: an Armenianwho brags is a liar.Speaking for myself: I have been exposed to so much Armenian deceptionand double-talk that I no longer think everything a Turk says is a lieand everything an Armenian says is the truth, the whole truth, and notingbut the truth. And if you tell me I think that way because I am a badArmenian and you are, by implication, a better one, you know my answer tothat./VARIETIES OF IGNORANCE / Garden variety ignorance ("I don't know thecapital of Norway"). Arrogant ignorance ("I know everything I need toknow and what I don't know cannot be worth knowing"). Fascist ignorance("Anyone who knows something I don't know should be silenced so that Imay appear to know better in the eyes of those who know less ornothing")./AT THE AGE OF FORTY everyone goes crazy." I am now quoting the pet theoryof a friend of mine who died recently. There are those whose mission inlife is to recycle crap, and there are their counterparts: those who callcrap crap. Who is to say which form of madness is worse?/WHERE SMART ENDS and smart-ass begins?/ASSIMILATION / Has anyone ever surveyed a group or even a couple ofassimilated Armenians to determine what was it exactly that made them optfor assimilation? Why is it that we are obsessed with the past ( Genocideor Red Massacre) and choose to ignore the present (Jermak Chart or WhiteMassacre)?/ANOTHER QUESTION / Why is it that we are so eager to preach and promotejustice to the world but we cannot even deal with our own petty crooksand contemptible bloodsuckers? -- or we invent reasons to explain andjustify their conduct.

[Vaspur]

nu opjat nachalos... vse po a'glicki da po nenashemu...  Ara-jan, gone Hajeren gri ban haskananq  umud. :confused:

[Guest arabaliozian]

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS*********************************Everything has been said. What remains to be done now is to repeat in order to remind those who pretend not to remember./It is a serious blunder to confuse cunning (which is motivated by greed) with intelligence (which is rooted in objective judgment)./Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves./When I think, sometimes I am right; but when I feel, I am almost always wrong./Before you attain greatness you must achieve honesty, and of the two, achieving honesty may well be the more demanding enterprise./The transparent ignorance of the man who pretends to know more than he does; unlike the silent one who may appear much wiser than he is./It is only when you try to change the status quo that you acquire a better understanding of the powerful forces that hold it together./I criticize with words. The people are much tougher – they criticizewith their feet. I can be contradicted – and I am, every day. But can anyone contradict the people?/It is only natural for those who are part of the problem to pretend not to see the solution./Is it humanly possible to ignore or forget the truth after hearing it?/The astonishing ease with which people believe lies that are to their advantage and reject truths that are against them./To how many Armenians I could say: "As long as there are people like you in this world, we will have wars and massacres."/It is not the best who brag about their identity, but the worst./I have been guilty of many blunders and sins in my life but I have at no time advocated silencing anyone, and what's even more to the point: I have never been in a position to silence anyone. I believe every one of us has an equal right to make an ass of himself in public, if he so chooses./How do you explain the ubiquitous presence of dime-a-dozen experts on any given subject who pretend to know everything except how to behave in a civilized manner? Thus implying, being civilized may well be un-Armenian or unpatriotic./BROTHERLY ADVICE / Most Armenians stay away from community affairsbecause they know from experience if they get involved they stand to losesomething: if it’s not money it will be their self-esteem and probablyboth.To those who say, "There are a great many dedicated and patrioticArmenians who continue to be involved," my answer is: Compared to thosewho stay away, they are only a tiny fraction and their involvement maywell be ephemeral. I count among my friends and relatives individuals whoafter many years of involvement have given up in anger and disgust.What’s the solution to this problem (for those who cannot see theobvious): If you are yourself involved or are in the business ofpromoting involvement: Be tolerant and kind towards your fellow Armeniansand if necessary, suffer fools gladly and pretend to enjoy every minuteof it. Remember, to serve the nation means first and foremost to servethe people, all of the people, including those who may not always agreewith you and those whose IQ may be slightly lower than yours; and if youare incapable of doing that, quit, resign, and stay away from communityaffairs because you may end up doing more harm than good./If only we could teach ourselves to say: I don't know everything and I may not know better!/To think, to really think, means to go beyond the boundaries of the already thought./Where there are commissars of culture there will be no culture./On more than one occasion I have said that Armenians are smart, sensitive, progressive, adaptable, hard-working, and so on; and as far as I can remember, no one ever accused me of racism. But when I say Armenians are clannish, tribal, intolerant and dogmatic, I am described as an Armenian-hating racist bigot.One is therefore justified in concluding that Armenians are addicted to praise and murderously hostile to criticism; and if this is a racist statement, so be it!/"You speak about Armenians loving praise and hating criticism," a reader writes. "But isn't that a universal failing?" He goes on: "My own personal objection to your kind of criticism is that it is repetitive." But so is praise. And yet, no one ever complains about it.It is true: all men are hostile to criticism; but insecure people are even more so. Authoritarian or fascist people, ditto!In democracies, dissidents like Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell were (and still are) universally respected. We all know what happened to dissidents in the USSR. I venture to suggest, we Armenians (judging by the number of writers we have betrayed, silenced, starved and driven to suicide) are more like the Russians than the British.