And boasting of your own sufferings is a stupidity
“40 % of Armenia’s population is poor,” often repeated by our politicians, who, by the way, are usually not poor. It’s the best kind of populism, which should be liked by the poor or those who consider themselves poor, allegedly proving that they are people taking care of them. The opposition (non-government) rich gossips through its news channels about the government rich, which also, perhaps, deserves the approval by the poor. Because it approves the thought of people failing to achieve success in life (or, let’s say again, those who think so) that the state, the government authorities and most importantly the rich are the cause of their failures.
No one, naturally, wants to be poor. But there is a thought in subconscious of some people who were at least brought up that being poor witnesses about their merits: honesty and incorruptibility, that all rich (at least in their country) are thieves and robbers, and that one should definitely commit a crime to achieve wealth. And when these people, many of whom, in fact, are not included in this “40%”, are gathered, let’s say, at some entertainment table, then the subject of their discussion is first the complaint about their own life, and then, “their” luxurious cars, houses and “cubic meters” money. The matter is not in what way they have obtained the money. The matter in this case is that thus people unwittingly justify their failures and lay the basis for new failures. A very old idea is underlying, which is exploited by all kinds of fundamentalists. I want to make a special emphasis, not the adherents of this or that religion, but those who deliberately distort the meaning of their religions and impose the idea on people’s heads that you need to suffer now, suffer and be poor and unsuccessful to receive reward in afterlife. Communist utopias were also born of these false claims, henceforth, the official propaganda of equalization and asceticism of revenues and individualities of people. This propaganda, as you remember, had nothing to do with real life, and the communist nomenclature was not leading an abstinent life. But in faraway corners of our, post-Soviet people’s soul, the false idea that being poor and suffering is an evidence of our high merits is still alive.
Naturally, the same propaganda was conducted in the West, too, and it is known that the Protestant fundamentalism generated in the United States. There is also a Catholic and Orthodox fundamentalism. Well, as for the Islamic one, we all know about it. But in Europe, intelligent people were always rebelled against these ideas. Here, what the English writer Somerset Maugham wrote, “ I knew that suffering did not ennoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, mean, petty, and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things. It did not make them more than men; it made them less than men.” Maugham wrote this in his “The Summing up” book, reviewing poverty and suffering of various peoples of in the world over the decades.
I entirely do not intend to preach dissipated life of the rich. On the contrary, if much is granted to a person, he must stint himself. But when little is granted to him, he should not present it as his own merit. Another Englishman living in the 20th century, Aldous Huxley, wrote. “Poverty and suffering ennoble only when they are voluntary. By involuntary poverty and suffering men are made worse.”
As for religion, I must say that at least Christianity, as I understand (the rest knows themselves), is a belief of love, forgiveness, repentance and helping the neighbor. When I sit down and start envying, hating and gossiping about more successful people than me, I do not hurt them. I only hurt myself.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
