One of the checkpoints of “Dilijan” National Park was attacked last week. The attackers beat the guards and burnt the checkpoint. As with any and every kind of crime, there were justifiers here too: “they had no other way out”, “the regime is to blame”, “what else can these poor people do?”, etc. While it is clear that ordinary villagers have no problem with heating their homes in Dilijan, there is plenty of wood in the forest. The attack was made by people who wanted to cut trees for sale, which is prohibited. Now the “wood mafia” organizes rallies and attacks with heartbreaking slogans.
But most people believe in that populism because they do not believe in the authorities. It is a serious problem in Armenia, not only in this but in all cases, including the case of the Communist authorities. Let’s remember: “I want to and I steal electricity, so what? What about them sitting in their Central Committee, who…?”. Simply there was no Facebook at that time, and taxi drivers were mainly talking about football and Zeynab Khanlarova’s concerts. Crimes were justified at home during dinner conversations.
Nowadays everything is “free”, and not only crimes (if those contain an “anti-governmental” element), but also any anti-social act are being justified. Imagine one of the officials in Armenia say: “it’s recommended to wash hands before eating”. Can you imagine what will happen? What will be the reaction of taxi drivers and Facebook users? “What do they want from these poor people? We had a small opportunity to dine with dirty hands, and now they want to deprive us of it”, “Is it appropriate for Armenians to wash hands before eating?”, “It’s Switalski who says all this bullshit, who wants to deprive us of our national identity”, “Take steps to rise these people’s salaries first, and only then force them to wash hands”, “People can’t afford living, how can one talk about clean hands?”, “One of the government officials has set a soap factory, and wants to make money”, etc.
I assume that not only Armenians have such manifestations of sociopathy, it is a universal phenomenon. Simply, our politicians, public figures, intellectuals, clergymen, journalists, bloggers generally encourage this thinking, to please its holders.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
