Can you can imagine a bad violinist, who realizing his limited possibilities, nevertheless, justifies his horrible performances, indicating that there are worse violinists in the world than he. This last assertion by itself is indisputable. There will be always worse of bad, more stupid of stupid, more scoundrel of scoundrel. How sad is the life of the people, who have set a goal to compete with the bad and be comforted by the fact that they are not the worst. Followed by the same logic, I particularly do not like when our officials and politicians are proudly stating that Armenia is more democratic country than Azerbaijan or, let’s say, Russia. Why should we be compared with them rather than striving to be better with high level of democracy and low level of corruption than Norway or Denmark? There is no practical obstacle to it. The economic situation, yes, has objective reason to 20-30 percent, but the maturity of the political system in 100 percent depends on the will of the political elite and the citizens.
To be oriented with bad examples and relative standards means doing regress by individual and national levels. Suppose, you are an MP and every day you are saying stupid things. When someone pays attention to it, the justification is ready: “are my opponents better than me?” In other words, people are striving to be good in the politics and other sectors not by themselves and the absolute standards set forth before them, but on the contrary, not to yield their opponents in “being bad”. The latter, being led by the same standards, strive to worse. After that, does it worth to be surprised why the level of our political debate is so low? Before the elections I was talking to a representative of one of the parties. I ask, “Why do you distribute election bribes?” Response, “Well, when they are distributing, why we shouldn’t do. Are we simpletons? This is the way, you can’t do anything.” Is it possible to achieve a positive outcome in this bad “way”, which means degeneration of society? And, perhaps, you should not find your opponents an excuse, differ from them and create your own standards. The risk, of course, is great. However, the prize is also great in case of success. Its alternative is to sit in the swamp and participate in the choir of frogs.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
