Category: Ethics and Satire

August 3, 2021 Ethics and Satire, Philosophy

Posted on Aug 03, 2021

An Armenian Philosophy…by a Comedian

Written by Hratch Demiurge
Posted in Ethics and Satire, Philosophy

I argued in previous articles that satire is a subcategory of ethics and, by comparing Armenians in America in 1981 and Armenians in Armenia in 18 A.D., showed conclusively that Armenians don’t have now nor have ever had an ethic. Therefore, to do what I want to do, which is write satire, and to do it in the right way, I’m forced to create an ethics. But ethics in turn is a subcategory of philosophy…If ethics answers the question “How should one behave?” then philosophy answers the question “What is real?” It’s obvious that a person who doesn’t have...

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July 7, 2021 Ethics and Satire

Posted on Jul 07, 2021

An Ambiguous Blur: Ethics and Satire, Part 3

Written by Hratch Demiurge
Posted in Ethics and Satire

When author Jack Antreassian, writing in the year before I was born, astutely observed that the image of Armenians in the U.S. was “a blur, and even the amorphous shape of the blur is without readily identifiable characteristics” (251), he attributed this to the following causes. Most Armenian Americans at that time were thrust there violently due to massacres and deportations at the hands of the Turks. They were few in number in a vast land, and they never fully invested in the new country because they were still psychologically tied to the old, even entertained hopes of one...

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July 2, 2021 Ethics and Satire

Posted on Jul 02, 2021

The Rule of Feasting: Ethics and Satire, Part 2

Written by Hratch Demiurge
Posted in Ethics and Satire

From the beginning until now, the only consistent principle I can find governing Armenian behavior is feasting. The ubiquitous banquet halls and their glut of food and drink that spring up wherever Armenians settle, far from being a new development, extends as far back as the available historical record. Herodotus in the late 5th century B.C. calls Armenians πολυπρόβατοι (polyprobatoi) that is, “rich in sheep”...

June 28, 2021 Ethics and Satire

Posted on Jun 28, 2021

Of Laws and Laxatives: Ethics and Satire, Part 1

Written by Hratch Demiurge
Posted in Ethics and Satire

In the following series of articles on the relationship between ethics and satire, I touch on the nature of laws and ethics, often using these terms interchangeably. While ethics and laws are not the same, they both fall under the category of human behavior. Ethics poses the philosophical question “How should one behave?”, while laws are the answers proposed to this question backed up by force. Thus one is the theoretical, the other the practical aspect of the same problem. It’s unimaginable, for example, for a legislator to create a law that he deemed unethical, while actions that are...

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