Armenia’s traditional, socio-political thinking sometimes shocks me in its brevity. In many cases, brevity should be understood in its literal sense. Either because well-known figures, while interpreting developments are often unable to look ahead or back from, a given point, or the radii of these types of interpretations is unbelievably short, almost to the point of non-existence. This fact became obvious again following the recent statement made by Medvedev-Obama-Sarkozy. Known and unknown circles again and again accused the Armenian National Congress of presenting the negotiation process of the Karabakh conflict in а pessimistic light and raising alarms about the possible (disproportionate) return of the liberated territories, especially since these territories remain under the control of Armenia’s armed forces, as they were before.

It is in these types of interpretations that the shortness of Armenian traditional, socio-political thinking lays. It is not able to understand processes, its comprehension of developments is often delayed, it is not capable of noticing changes in a given situation that, albeit insignificant at the moment, become significant in time, even transformative. For instance, being familiar with a person’s psychological makeup, you insist that he is going to commit suicide. You can’t prove it. And all those who consider your assertion to be inane think so based on the argument that the man whom you deem suicidal is alive. Then you hear that the man is going up to the roof of his multistory building. You analyze the situation you insist that he is about to jump off the building. But you still can’t prove it, because those who deny your suicide version have an argument—the man is still alive. There may even be someone who will insist that the man is going up to find a location for his new TV set and antenna. He might really meet some people who are placing antennas or doing something else on the roof, and go back down with them. At that point they will really laugh at your suicide theory. And they would be “right” because they would have an argument—the argument that the man is alive—while you can’t prove that psychologically and morally he has said farewell to his life long ago. And when the potential suicide realizes that a great deal of interest is focused on him, he will go up to the roof at night and throw himself down without anyone’s knowledge. Up until the moment when he throws himself down, all those who did not want to believe in your assumption would be right, but from the moment when he jumps to the moment of his death you would be right. As a result, you would be right but only for a few seconds, because those who did not believe your assumption would have been right for hours, days, months and maybe years.

Going back to the issue of Karabakh, I cannot but notice that some literate Armenians treat the situation in a similar way—some because of self-interest, others with no self-interest. Sometimes I think that this technical problem in reality has a genetic origin. We, Armenians, do not hurry to see a doctor when we feel pain in some part of our body but we rely on the fact that the pain just keeps recurring and doesn’t last that long. Meaning that we are alive, we don’t feel bad in general and we can eat, drink, rejoice and have fun. As for the pains, well, everybody has pains and there is nothing strange in that. The logical extension here is that the average Armenian sees the doctor only when the pain has deprived him of the ability to eat, drink, hear and perceive. Meaning that there’s nothing left to do but order a coffin. It seems that many people want to disseminate this type of perception of the Karabakh conflict in the consciousness of the Armenian public; or, at the very least they themselves grasp the situation along those lines, starting with the statement made by the presidential trio and ending up with numerous documents approved by PACE, UNO and the European Parliament. Those who perceive the situation in this way are right for the moment; they were right yesterday; and they may be right tomorrow, or for a long time to come. But they will be wrong for a split-second and it is in that split-second that everything will be decided.