Perhaps the most powerful motivator across all of Armenian society is fear of social ostracism. Here, nearly every individual perceives themselves as vulnerable if they lack the support of the collective.
BLOG
Armenia Needs Hippies
01/03/2024
In the last few months, I've had ample opportunity to refine the purpose of my experiment in societal development that began when I purchased my house in Kalavan village five years ago. I saw so much opportunity then among a small group of Armenian villagers who invited me to live with them and portrayed themselves as sharing the same core...
More than 100,000 Armenians have fled Artsakh into Armenia proper in the last weeks, fearing ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan. It is doubtful they will return to their homes since the Nagorno-Karabakh territory will be fully signed over to Azerbaijan on January 1, 2024. That means there are now 100,000 people who need housing, food, utilities, and...
Recently, I was publicly accused in a News.am article of having "serious problems with integration" in Kalavan due to my "difficult personality." This was part of a denial about a claim I had made about having sent this man $500 at his request upon buying my house here so that he could send workers to install plumbing and...
The Deceptive (and Ironic) Way My Interview about Kalavan on Arrajin Alik News Was Edited
19/06/2023
Update: Alexandra Hunanyan, a journalist from News.am, read about how my interview with Arrajin Alik was distorted in editing and was kind enough to reach out to me and interview me for two much more accurate articles about my experience living in Kalavan. Read them here:
A miracle happened at Losh cafe in Dilijan a few days ago. I ordered a cup of coffee in Armenian. The barista called out to me in English a few minutes later, "Your coffee is ready..." then stopped herself and started over in Armenian, "Dzer surchy patrast e." (Ձեր սուրճը պատրաստ է։) I am calling this miraculous because...
This online discussion took place April 7, 2023 with students of the Ayn Rand Center of Armenia (https://www.facebook.com/ARCArmenia/). It focuses on the content of Gregory V. Diehl's (https://www.gregorydiehl.net/) book, Everyone Is an Entrepreneur: Selling Economic Self-Determination in a Post-Soviet World, which was recently translated into...
The Wall in the Armenian Mind
23/04/2023
"There is some part of your brain that insists that the cost of being wrong is infinite and another part of your brain that insists that the cost of missing an opportunity is zero. The truth is nearly the opposite."
In the Armenian short film Red Apples (free to watch on Vimeo), the mother of the groom loses her mind when, the morning after her son's wedding, she fails to find bloodstains on the sheets of their marital bed. Blood, of course, would normally be the result of a virginal bride's hymen breaking on the night of her wedding...
For the last month, Azerbaijani "environmentalist protestors" have been blocking the Lachin corridor, the only road going in or out of Nagorno-Karabkh (Artsakh), preventing supplies, medical services, and human movement in or out of the disputed region with limited exceptions.