We spent a few hours in one of the European capitals last summer and I bought one-day tickets for all kinds of transportation. They were trying to convince me not to do that – “nobody is going to check it anyway.” They really didn’t. However, I buy a ticket not fearing “to be caught”, but for an absolutely different reason – I know that the given service is provided for a certain price and if I use this kind of service, I must pay for it. Following these explicit, unambiguous rules that are mandatory for everybody is the foundation of everything – the European values, law-abidingness, furthermore, the constitutional order and legitimacy. Unless the majority of the population in Armenia thinks that way, there is no need for talking about these brilliant and absolutely necessary things.
Certainly, not only customers, but also suppliers should think that way. E.g. I have been complaining about the low voltage of electricity in my house and that electricity winks from time to time becoming a special way of torture, but the electric network doesn’t care for the complaints, because I am compelled to pay for that poor service anyway. I used to think that the problem is that I live in a village – they probably think “well, they are villagers, they will manage somehow”, however I have received letters lately that there is the same situation in many neighborhoods of Yerevan. Only contract can be in effect in the social relations and the more explicitly and detailed the contract items are written, the more those items are respected, the more harmonious the internal life of the given country is. It is not casual that he European mentality, for which we seemingly long, originates from the 17th century philosophy, the cornerstone of which is “the social contract”.
The questions I hear in the street every day “when will this establishment start to think a bit of this nation, is this the way the nation should be taken care of?” have little in common with that mentality. However, as a matter of fact, the so-called “this establishment” are people temporarily hired by us whose contract (legitimate, constitutional) functions do not include neither thinking of us, not taking care of us. We hired them to guarantee our security and secure our rights. Their fulfillment of the first obligation can be graded “C” and of the second one “D”. However, the demand of the majority in our society is defined, as I mentioned above, and directed to “daddies”, “masters” and “kings”. The latter behave like that – look after “their” people from time to time, in particular during elections, handing out 5, 10 or 30 thousand AMD.
…I haven’t managed to find a man who could have taken care of my garden (certainly, for payment) for four years. It is weird under the conditions of general poverty, unemployment and most importantly permanent complaining about life, isn’t it?
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
