Saturday, 13 June 2009
Before recurring to the subject of the “Round Table” we must develop the frame of the issues – the agenda and we must have the courage to present our ontology and our fundamental approaches of our world view. And if it becomes clear for the audience how we perceive the modern world, it will become easier to rouse the existing problems of RA.
Which are the five most distinguishing characteristics of modern world?
The first in the speed of changes, which changes the quality of our lives, we don’t manage following those changes, don’t manage finding out their logics, as those changes are not only quantitative but also qualitative. And we together with you must learn to live in this rapidly changing world and must memorize that factor.
The second one is that we live in rapidly reducing world, where interactions essentially become stronger. The world is becoming smaller, and today, for example, the Brazilian community of Armenians is not as far from us, as it used to be in 1960. Today we can feel all the influence of the world, which couldn’t be felt 15-20 years ago.
The third most important process is the fundamental process of modern world – mind activity. If the fundamental process of industrial society was the serving of products and services, the modern fundamental tendency, the fundamental process of world’s progress is already the production of knowledge. Knowledge is the most important output in modern world.
The fourth characteristic is that the person who has the knowledge becomes very important creator and bearer of intellectual resources. And the main goal of that person becomes self-realization, execution of his ability and capability. That is the main goal of an intellectual person. If we want to have talented people, we must create an appropriate environment for them to be able to self-manifest.
And in these conditions the issue of national cultural phenomenon becomes the fifth one. What future does the national one have in this rapidly changing and rapidly reducing world? Every week a language dies on the planet Earth, becoming a dead language from a living one. The reason to it is the reducing of the world; the subjects of the world are not the countries already, but the civilizations take their places. The circumstance of self-sufficiency preservation is becoming the most important issue of 21st century.
Now leaning on these ontological warps, let’s try constructing RA’s agenda questions, which we must be able to solve. I will divide them in two groups. The first group will consist of those questions, which are in the center of society’s attention, there are numerous discussions around those questions and the solution of which will discover many things. It will discover how the Armenian society thinks, who are the social role players or social actors (I liked this formulation of our friend from France) of our society. They are actors as they are in social environment and they play their role well, they are loved by the people and are able to lead them, they form social opinion which dominates and creates an appropriate environment. The most important question on the agenda of RA is the issue of Nagorno Karabakh: how it will be solved, which is its philosophy, in the end we must be able to come to an agreement in the question: what is justice in 21st century. Civilizations differ by the perception of justice. It is really a touchstone for us to thoroughly answer and present to the world the question of our perception of justice in the solution of the issue of Nagorno Karabakh is a touchstone for us.
The second troubling issue is Armenian-Turkish relations, as it also concerns the world view of Armenian nation. Parallel to this we have the issue of the genocide and our attitude to it on the agenda.
The next is the issue of Armenian world. We suddenly discovered for ourselves, that all of don’t live in the RA, not even in the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, but in Armenian world, because on day that fact just knocked at our door and became obvious to us. By saying Armenian world we mean that between the ones who created that world have been established such relations, which play important part for all our spheres of activity. And this reducing world created or made that fact more noticeable in such way that we cannot help noticing, that we live and work in Armenian world. Most people don’t realize this fact yet, but it is real. It was first discovered for the Central Bank, because when developing financial programs the bank takes into account the supply and the demand of money, deciding how much money the RA needs. And one day CBA found out that its activities don’t function only in RA, because the Armenians in Los Angeles and Russia, whose number exceeds the population of Armenians in RA, think of Yerevan as the center of their economic interests. In spite of where they live, they send billions of dollars to RA; they receive billions of dollars from RA and perform financial functions. To see with how much amount of finance it has to deal with, CBA was forced to study the economic potential of Armenians in Los Angeles and Russia, without evaluation of which we wouldn’t be able to determine how much money to issue. We stepped out of RA borders and found ourselves in Armenian world. It broke into political sphere then, started influencing our political, economical, social, cultural and other decisions. We have a serious problem here: do the institutional buildings that exist in RA give us the opportunity to manage successfully the legal relations not only in RA, but also in Armenian world. I proclaim this issue as the next one in our agenda. We will discuss the ways the answers to these questions are given separately. Now I would like to face the following issue: who is the one searching the answers to these questions? We can discuss this issue from the researcher’s point of view. Armenian communities residing in different parts of the world are connected and the connections become stronger and stronger. The object of our research is a very complicated one. Every time discussing an issue on RA agenda, we must realize that the issue troubling us will get another formulation in Australian community of Armenians, and another one in the USA community and so on. So what is the complexity? If today we follow our ontology and judgment, we will abduct, what the speaker says, when he says: “This is an important question”. From whose point of view is it important and what is the object?
Let’s face the issue of the genocide, which is a subject of active discussions. What attitude must the country have toward the issue of the genocide? What attitude must the lobbyist organization in USA have toward it or the attitude of Armenians who live in Armenian world, but have never been in RA and maybe will never be? 95% of Armenian Diaspora has never been to RA, and it’s obvious, that their world view differs from ours. Hence the subjects are different the object we are talking about differs too. Maybe other nations exist in the world, that are in the same condition as we are, meaning, that the population living inside the national border is three times less, than those who live abroad. This is a very interesting phenomenon, the study of which we must perform ourselves. Nobody can do that better than us, as for that you’ll need not only knowledge, not only economical willingness, not only precise methodological formulations, but also the ability of the researcher to feel.
How must we deal with those problems? Firstly, we have different ways of organizing our national life, and it is not that obvious, that the highest level of organization is the state. I doubt that, and if our classics from last century were supporters of that formulation, in 21st century we can see that new unions come forward, new civilization approaches, other ways of organization, which become dominant. It is obvious: the 21st century is a century of competition between civilizations, and not competition between countries. Hence, we have the issue of thinking what modern phenomenon will look like in the future. Will they be nation axis builder countries? If yes, what future are they going to have? Many people insist on us becoming a member of EU, though we haven’t announced such goal officially, or maybe our way leads us to “EurAzEs”, because we know that new programs of integration are being held there, or are we more an Asian country, maybe we should try existing on our own as a local civilization, discovering fundamental characteristics and proclaiming, that we want to keep them for a long time, because in 21st century our characteristics give us relative advantage over other ones in the completion.
In RA, compared to the number of population, the number of murders is very high, especially, political murders. The president of the writer’s union, the president of NA, prime minister, the deputy president of NA, the deputy prime minister, the ministers, the mayor and others. This is a serious problem that needs a sociological research. It may seem, that the reason is the environment of intolerance, when people not finding a solution to a problem think, that by eliminating this or that official, they will solve their problem. In reality, of course, it is just vindictiveness. It just means that the society hasn’t come up with mechanisms that build environment of peace and tolerance. There is another subject that must become a serious issue for our sociologists: our country is one of the most ethnic countries in the world, the 98% population of which are Armenians, and this fact also creates the characteristics of the organization of our life. What answers will these questions get? What will be the platform around which it will be possible to form acceptable solutions? I think, the best way is the open dialog, in which all the important matters of the object of our interest must take part. If we create that environment, than the dialog can take place on different levels: political debate, professional discussion, like here in our auditorium.
We must create the platform of the dialog, peace and tolerance, for people to be able to listen to another opinion, to adapt with the idea that the other opinion is going to exist, especially in 21st century, when everything changes so rapidly, there must be more opinions.
The issue of that dialog platform must be another subject of discussion for us, for the powerful forces of Armenian world to unite and get maximum output. And the maximum output will be the creation of appropriate environment in Armenian world and the strengthening of Armenian world in diversity. In my opinion 21st century is a century of diversity. In the end of last century most people was inspired with globalization, many spoke of unification, unitary standards and about the rules that were going to be maintained through the whole world. But I suggest another idea: 21st century is going to be a century of peculiarities, the fundamental activity of which is the mind activity and the main bearer of it is the intellectual person, most important thing for whom is self-sufficiency, which is his central peculiarity. That is the treasure of 21st century. That original thought and the creation of that field certify that 21st century must be a century of diversity, and not a century of seeming unitary standards. And the platform, which will be forming in Armenian world, will follow the same goal: to unite different, talented Armenians who have different
opinions in the field of knowledge.
Thank you for your attention.
