Recently, German Avagyan’s photos appeared on the Internet showing the subsequent act of vandalism against the Ardzagank sculpture on the Sevan highway.
It must be said that the woman’s fate was no good in the independent Armenia as it was regularly attacked by vandals, who either are tempted by the metal of the sculpture or they are just mentally sick people. In both cases, there are all grounds to assume that the vandals are not the Azerbaijani subversives, nor are the ones sent to Armenia by the “Islamic state” jihadists. They are citizens of Armenia and, apparently, people who while drinking at the feats mandatorily drink the toast to their children, parents and the nation, who seeing some sort of shortcoming, hit their hands on their knees and cry incessantly, “What the hell did they bring to our poor people?”
To be honest, I do not think that people desecrate the sculptures based on financial needs for stealing the metal. In a lot poorer countries than Armenia, people respect any handmade work as a miracle of nature, because they are brought up so. And vice versa, there are much richer countries than ours whose inhabitants, in part, are deprived of this respect. As Dostoevsky’s hero was writing from the “Underground”, Shower upon a man every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would risk everything simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. The great Russian writer was right, the man’s moral image is not directly proportional to its material welfare.
Some societies are largely maintain the human image, while in some societies it fails. What does it depend on? I think from the fact as to what extent the idea of personal accountability is introduced to these societies starting from kindergarten and the nursery schools. When we say, “Wow, what is going on in this country?” and then we ourselves are break-up and smashing something, including (perhaps, in the first place) the human relations, it speaks of our pathological irresponsibility.
But the entire sorrow is that we, also the media, do not pay attention to this matter of accountability. We are more interested in the fate of Kokol Gago and Yerrordmastsi Lyovik. What we are interested in is what we grow.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
