ARF meet Piaget, Piaget meet ARF

I read LTPs most recent speech multiple times. And obviously have been reading some of the reactions to the speech, including the response of the ARF, and its extremism and oversimplifications, its attempts at manipulation and misinformation, its overcompensation and sensationalism. And I have come to the conclusion that in addition to its numerous own political motives for such a strategy, the ARF follows this type of course because of an intrinsic problem, which became clearer to me when I thought to myself that, man, these guys are concrete thinkers, they just won't, and it seems can't, see the non-literal, the complex, the abstract. Which brought me to Piaget's famous stages of development: Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational.

So at first I thought, these guys are stuck in the Concrete phase of development - but then I read that definition again:

Children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking. Children can now conceive and think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric.

Wow, that fit pretty well, but these guys still are stuck on themselves a lot of the time. So I went back one step to Preoperational thinking:

Magical thinking predominates. Acquisition of motor skills. Egocentricism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking.

Sounds pretty close. I can see where/how this stagnation in development occurred. The ARF, so heavily based in the Diaspora, are the sons and daughters, granddaughters and grandsons, and yes, greatgranddaughters and greatgrandsons, of fighters, martyrs, and victims - like so many in the Diaspora and Armenia. Crimes against humanity were committed which have gone yet unrecognized in a world which claims to want to stop violence, murder and genocide. And yet the Genocide has gone unrecognized by the majority of the world's countries; the pride of our nation and the sorrow of our victims goes unwritten in most history textbooks. And while the stories of our grandmothers and grandfathers must echo ever louder in our memory so that they will not be forgotten, this places a heavy burden of conscience on every new generation. They say time heals all wounds, but time does not pass when we relive history every day. When my image makes a 90 year old woman gasp, thinking she has seen her old childhood friend, one of my greats, time has not passed.

And so, I understand this stagnation. This need to relive, to remember, to find some justice and closure in recognition.

But the collective psyche does not Foreign policy make, and time does pass. And countries are revived, new wars are fought, pride, identity and freedom are renewed and revised. And the new Country and Nation has new needs to secure itself, in addition to the old needs. And yet, the ARF, from even before independence in 1991, has been unable to adjust. And so I think it is not just a lack of desire, and of course, the inner politics of the upper echelons of the ARF, but a developmental inability to see such things.

For the ARF, the ideals of Freedom and Liberty, Truth and Justice, apply only to 1915, and not to the Citizens and Republic of Armenia, of today, or of March 1, 2008.

This developmental stagnation pertains not only to those who would make decisions, but maybe, maybe even more so, to the common member of the ARF - a condition which, appropriately tended and fostered, makes manipulation by those who do make decisions - and are more involved in politics and have more to gain - much easier.

What the heck is my point? Here is what I am saying. LTPs speech is completely internally consistent - the priority is Armenia, the people of Armenia, Democracy, and Human Rights. This was true of LTP in 1988, and it is true now. The purpose of all major decisions is to help the development and progress of the priorities above.

I do not see an absolute contradiction in the following: Sargsyan is an illegitimate president. He gained his power through illegal and violent mechanisms. He, along with certain others, are accountable for the violence of March 1, and the continued oppressions, imprisonments, cover-ups, intimidation and violence which started even before the presidential elections of Feb 2008, and continues today. Sargsyan has willingly made unnecessary and unacceptable concessions in international diplomacy in order to gain the chance to be viewed as legitimate by the international community. Nothing changes any of this. However, keeping in mind the priorities of LTP and the HAK, Sargsyan has the chance, in fact, he has the chance every morning when he wakes up, to change things, to free political prisoners, to allow freedom of speech and press and assembly, and to follow a different path than that which he has so far. If he were to show such interest, then LTP, in line with the principles outlined above, would be open to helping him along that path.

That is by no means a Sargsyan-Ter-Petrosyan Union, as the ARF would like to have people believe. It is an offer of guidance, a restatement of priority, a paving of the road toward doing the right thing. Such manipulation of terms, of ideas, is an attempt to weaken LTP and HAK because, it seems to me, the ARF itself is actually, in some type of weird ARF-collective subconscious, intimidated by an entity (whether it be LTP, HAK, or an individual independent Armenian who does not need to be told by the ARF how to be Armenian) that will pursue guiding principles over a chance to spew venom, incite irrational fear and frenzy, and potentially gain more power.

In contrast to LTP, the ARF is now so internally inconsistent that it now thinks that a bill regarding March 1 presented to parliament will be a convincing opposition-type move. Sorry, that picture of the ARF raising its champagne glass with the rest of the coalition after March 1 is forever etched in my memory, and the memory of so many others. In fact, what is truly consistent about the ARF, is that it chooses to pursue Power, over any other principle.

I don't know if there is a 'cure' for developmental stagnation. Every day that the decision makers of the ARF wake up, they have the choice to make a new and better set of choices. That speech and guidance contained therein is almost as much for them as it was for anyone else... If so, that would mean, using the same logic that they used, that there may be an ARF-LTP Union?!!!!

But wait, making that jump requires consistency, logic, abstraction... (aka Formal operational thinking). And it would require an ARF that is principled, and truly Opposition. And they've got none of that.