essays

[Guest arabaliozian]

<font color='#000000'>COMMON SENSE AND DECENCY**********************************************************After reading one of my recent pieces in which I use the expressions "common sense" and "common decency," a reader demands to know what exactly do I mean by them.My first reaction is to say that those among us who are not fortunate enough to be endowed with these faculties will have trouble understanding them even if they are given copious definitions with voluminous examples, footnotes, and bibliographies, in the same way that tone deaf people will never be able to appreciate the subtle beauties of a Bach fugue or a Mozart sonata even if they are given several scholarly volumes of musical analysis and appreciation.But for those sincerely in need of definitions, I would say the following: When, during the Inquisition, theologians justified torture in the name of God, common sense could have told them they were wrong and what motivated them was not faith but sadism.When, more recently, religious leaders of a different persuasion, legitimized the murder of innocent women and children in the name of Allah ("the compassionate and the merciful") common decency should have told them they were worse than murdering hoodlums – who, at least, when they go about their grim business, do not feel the need to invoke the name of the Lord.And when our bosses and bishops divide the community in the name of an orthodoxy, common sense and decency should tell them this so-called orthodoxy (if it really exists) belongs to the dustbin of history (very much like those who uphold them) because it has outlived its usefulness.FREEDOM++++++++++++++++++++++=Freedom, Spengler explains in his Decline of the West, is not the freedom to do this, that, and the other, but what must be done.Imagine a country with a law that says, if your house catches fire you are free to do a thousand things – sing a song, writer a letter, have a cup of coffee, take a walk, go the movies, read a book, talk to a neighbor, and so on – but you cannot extinguish the fire. One doesn't have to be a prophet to predict that sooner or later such a country will be reduced to ashes and its citizens to homeless vagabonds.No one is against helping the needy and feeding the hungry. But to do these things and remain silent about an unjust system that promotes poverty and hunger amounts to legitimizing criminal conduct.Likewise, no one is against partisans who promote cultural activities. I will go further and say that I see nothing wrong in kissing the hand of a bishop or the butt of a benefactor, if that’s what it takes to advance a worthy cause. But to do these things and to cover up the cancer that has been gnawing at our vitals (our tribalism) or to ignore those who support or justify divisions, amounts to accepting them as inevitable facts of life, and ultimately, collective suicide.A final note on cultural activities: education, ideas, literature, creativity, freedom: these are all interconnected. Literature is first and foremost dissent. Where there is no dissent, literature will be reduced to propaganda and, at best, to entertainment and escape,and education to indoctrination; and where there is indoctrination there will be tyranny, even if the tyranny is that of ignorance and prejudice.PROPAGANDA***********************************One reason we cannot see eye to eye on anything is that when one speaks of facts or experiences, the other recycles propaganda or spins theories based on false or unproved assumptions. Some day we shall have to agree that a single drop of fact is worth a Niagara of propaganda and wishful thinking.At one time or another, we have all been exposed to propaganda, with one significant difference: some of us have eventually seen it for what it is while others continue to confuse it with reality. Propaganda is not reality. It never was. It never will be. Propaganda is propaganda, at best only a fraction of reality. Its aim: to promote prejudice, to legitimize intolerance, and to organize hatred.If we want dialogue, compromise, and consensus, we must learn to separate fact from fiction. None of us is qualified to say, my facts or experiences are more authentic or more patriotic than yours. If we exchange experiences, we may have a chance to learn something from one another. But if we recycle propaganda, we are bound to end up in a downward spiral of mutual suspicions, accusations, and insults.It is as simple as that. But leave it to our partisans and chauvinists to complicate matters in order to assert their moral, intellectual, or patriotic superiority, which happens to be another figment of their own imagination and, in that sense, worse than propaganda.RACISM********************There is a type of racist who thinks by saying "I am not a racist," he absolves himself of racism.*To say that when Palestinian women and children die it is a tragedy, but when Jewish women and children die it is a comedy is inconsistent as well as stupid.*To say that when Palestinians kill Jewish women and children they are freedom fighters but when Jews kill Palestinian women and children they are war criminals is another example of logical inconsistency and stupidity. *If the Palestinians can kill in the name of freedom, the Jews can also kill in the name of peace. Both freedom and peace are noble causes worth dying and killing for. But can you have one without the other? What is freedom worth without peace? And what is peace worth without freedom?*Prejudice is an impediment: it limits, sometimes even obstructs to the point of blindness, our perception of reality.*Prejudice, like all transgressions, comes with a price: it has its own in-built punishment: it makes a man deaf, blind, and stupid.RACISTS (II)***********************According to one of our pundits (or is it punchoonies?) in a recent commentary, what we need more than anything now is a new generation of massacrists (scholars whose field is the Genocide). After reading this, I couldn't help asking the following questions: What have several generations of massacrists accomplished? Did they resurrect a single victim? Were they successful in convincing the Turks that they are guilty of crimes against humanity? Were they able to annex a single inch of Historic Armenian soil to the Homeland? What are the chances that a hundred or a thousand more books will strengthen our case and produce the desired results? Consider the Jews and their Holocaust. There are not a thousand but ten thousand books, movies, and TV documentaries on the subject with no end in sight but Holocaust deniers continue to exist even among Armenians. What does that tell you about prejudice? If a man is predisposed against you nothing and no one can make him change his mind. On the contrary: more books and arguments may make him hate you even more. If you doubt my word, try the following experiment: be honest and write for Armenians.</font>