We are no longer a state society, we are more like a large refugee camp, the outcome of which will be decided in the near future. Vahe Hovhannisyan

We are no longer a state society, we are more like a large refugee camp, the outcome of which will be decided in the near future.

Wrote Vahe Hovhannisyan, a member of the Alternative Projects group.

“Alienation is the new “Constitution” of today’s Armenia.

The quality of the public discussions surrounding the detention of a schoolboy leaves no room for prospective optimism.

Lazy, inertial, barricaded public discourse against the backdrop of collective indifference and observation actually shows the degree of our national disorganization. Unfortunately, we are no longer a state society, we are more like a large refugee camp, the outcome of which will be decided in the near future.

The next series are before your eyes. In the event of the reproduction of this government, voting “Yes” to the constitutional amendments demanded by Aliyev. During the public act of passing under Aliyev’s sword, we will be ashamed to look each other in the eye, but this will be hidden by the behavior of revelry, cynicism, jokes, blaming the world, and not engaging in politics.

Days after that, Aliyev will make a brazen speech in Baku and declare that only two steps remain for peace to be established: the return of 300 thousand Azerbaijanis and the partial “geochization” of Sevan.

And the same public debate will begin as today: half-childish, indifferent, adaptable, mercantile, with the falsification of history and one’s own “I”.

The reality is that we have ceased to be a society. Society presupposes certain written and unwritten laws, norms, rules of coexistence, a sense of shame, a list of “cannots” and at least a minimal opportunity to listen to each other.

We have none of these today. Anticipating this, 2-3 years ago I said that we should go to an inter-electoral dialogue. I am sure that it was the only right way. But the moderator of that process was not found. Because in our country, leadership means something else: unilateral decisions, playful machoism, infallibility and other such things.

And the fact is that today the electorates within Armenia are more alienated from each other than we and the Azerbaijanis. It is not difficult to assume what this will lead to.

It is also no coincidence that various authoritative and serious sociological surveys today receive completely different images. An anomalous society has an anomalous sociology.

Can a self-alienated, fragmented society make a real choice for the sake of its united future? Our current situation in a region full of wolves is terrifying when you look at it with the eyes of a rational person for a moment.

Who will undertake the process of creating internal public relations, this is the biggest question.

And until then, we do not hear, we do not see, we do not perceive the risks of months of distance. We do not understand what foreigners are warning us about, telling us plainly. We have also become alienated from reality and truth.