10 Insights from Tigran Hayrapetyan's book "A thousand years of desert" (video)

 

1. A monstrous entity emerged from the fusion of the most corrupted form of Western liberalism and the authoritarian ambitions of Eastern dictatorship—a brand of Armenian democracy that has spiraled beyond control, even for its politicians. "Gentlemen, this is not how statehood is established."

2. We have a history of thousands of years, but the beginning of the 20th century almost became the last cry of our thousand years of suffering. Today's politics of Armenia shows that we have not learned from suffering.

3. Yes, we have an old and rich culture, but its fetishization has led to the reality that the ideal of the Armenian people has remained in the past. Seeing the best of everything in the past, we have become the past. Even the world appreciates us as "valuable antiquity".

4. Armenia is falling into the abyss of authoritarianism and neo-colonization. History has proven the devastating consequences of such a choice. The only hope is that there are still robust forces in the homeland and diaspora that can prevent such a course of events. And if not...

5. You will come to understand that both you and the world must be known as they are created. You will realize that those who govern the world differ from you because they comprehend the law and subject their intelligence to its demands. Moreover, they are not arrogant like you because they recognize their true worth. It is not without reason that spirituality and freedom of will hold the utmost importance for them, as the greater the freedom, the higher the organization of society.

6. Whether you go to war, your weapons increase, if you don't want to go to war, they force you to fight. They try to convince you that if you stand up to them, no one can defeat you. And you believe because for 1700 years you never understood that you will not defeat evil with that weapon. You are deeply convinced that in the last World War, Germany was defeated with weapons. Of course, they were defeated with a weapon, but not with the weapon you assumed, but with the weapon chosen by the German people who threw away the Thinker's pen.

7. "Bread and circuses". The ancient Roman method of ruling the masses has not lost its relevance to this day and continues to be the basis for the permanence of one or another regime. In the newly independent states, the lack of "bread" forces the main emphasis to be placed on "circuses", which should make it possible to prolong the power of the regime as long as the emotional "circuses" can compensate for both the lack of "bread" and other demands of society.

8. What is the point of presenting the dilemma of "war or peace" in Armenia, if neither one nor the other depends on our will today? Therefore, peace is not needed for the construction of statehood, but it is necessary to build a strong state at any cost to acquire the right to live in peace.

9. Like the family that burned the Book in the fire of the wedding barbeque, the society that strives to burn the soul in festive or everyday celebrations, is fated to sober up and at first in individual depths, only days later also in the group outburst, to search for an answer to the one simple but not primitive question: what’s next?

10. At the stage of squandering the energy of the national awakening first in gluttony and later in the screw game of materialism, honorable ladies and gentlemen, you gave birth to the criminal system of power, stood up for political demagoguery, worshiped the priests of economic plunder and became the guardian angels of preachers of spiritual ignorance.