Posted by panch from pool0247.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.247) on Sunday, July 21, 2002 at 12:01PM :
In Reply to: When a Jew Turns Christian... posted by panch from pool0279.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.211.24) on Sunday, July 21, 2002 at 10:59AM :
Agendas are a big deal with us. Everyone denies having one while accusing everyone else of having a secret one. I guess we're all just aimlessly wandering around...or are very deep and subtle agents and spies...who get "exposed" for what we really are periodically.
Well, I DO have an agenda. It isn't to trash Christianity, Islam or Judaisim...or pump any of them up. I could care less for any of them as systems of thought and guides to moral conduct. I wouldn'[t dream of passing any of them on to my innocent and blameless children. Doesn't matter what they think they're saying...the only reason they all exist is because they provide just enough "wiggle room" and loopholes to allow us all to remain the Blackguards we always have been.
My agenda is to try to figure out why we make such a consistently terrible showing AS Assyrians. Why the worthwhile ones run screaming in the night, why they are forcibly driven out...why they deny any contact with the Heritage...why there isn't any sane and intelligent place to be with Assyrians or do anything as Assyrians...why none of the people who claim to be Assyrians behave anywhere near to what we would expect of an Assyrian...especially in regard to bringing any honor to so honorable a name...why we behave like delinquent Cannibals instead...why we seem almost to wish to destroy this good name rather than enhance and secure it.
It is a puzzlement.
Asking these questions inveitably brings one round to a most enormous transformation among us in our history...the moment we changed religions. That's a pretty profound thing to do at any time and for any group. Surely its impact could use a little study?
But you can't even ask the question without scaring the shit out of those who claim to be Assyrian the MOST...as if being afraid, of anything, was an Assyrian characteristic at all...at any time. But a question?
I see in this martyrology business...and in our declarations and protests and demands....as with our unwillingness and inability and downright fear to seize the day and GET what we say we want...most clearly in evidence when we continually blame Turks and Muslims for 1347 and 1786 and 1845 and 1933...you get the picture...I see this institutionalized Victimhood as a serious problem and a possible explanation of what has been ailing us all this time. Even when we continue to act, and insist on acting, like victims when there ARE no Turks or Muslims holding us down in the West...and hardly in the East where our lands and people are being pounded by the Christian WEST...yet we still must ferret every instance of a Muslim arresting a Christian...as if THAT was the thing holding us all back all over the world...and would continue to be our excuse for all eternity.
Something not "quite right" in all of this...and it bears examination because we are either unwittingly or deliberately turning off and turning away the only people who have a chance of maintaing our identity as Assyrians, Christianity is safe enough, for the future...and that is our young people...the next generations to come along.
As if we were in a Relay race, passing the baton on, down through the age, till this lap, our last one...where we decide to bend all our energy, not towards completing the race, but in tripping up the last runner.
You simply cannot "dance" your way to greatness anywhere...and to come now, after years of neglect and cannibalism and throw symposia at us, as Janey and Jackie vie to do once a year...only adds insult to the injuries they CONTINUE to heap on us the rest of the year.
A Jew working for the Arts Council of Chicago has been waiting for seven years to honor our Heritage...and has been stopped by one Assyrian with the silent approval of 80,000 other Assyrians. The real reason I'm beggining to realize, is that our leaders are pumping their own egos and this one in particular doesn't want to share any "glory" with anyone else...because he sees me through his own eyes...as another one who's trying to enhance his own prestige...like ANYONE would come to us for "prestige"!!
Another Jew has extended an invitation to me to be represented in his gallery at its openning in September...the same week that thousands of Assyrians will be gathering together at a convention to which I am welcome to come...but am the only artist to be barred from displaying any sculpture.... the same sculptures the Jew wants..and it's going to COST him to get them...whereas I would be enhancing the experience for our own people in the convention at MY cost.
Something odd? Or is it just me...just the fact that in my life and in my work I am unapologetically Assyrian... a "troublemaker" to these people precisely because I am NOT working on behalf of my ego? Something they don't believe....cannot understand because it is so foreign to what motivates them to "love" their Heritage...and because they resent the image of them that emerges when once we stop this trend and turn back to go into the Palace that Ashur built...and see what they have been up to all this time.
-- panch
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