How to Permanently End Corruption in Armenia

"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."
―Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

It's easy to underestimate the corruption that pervades virtually every social and political level in Armenia. I certainly did when I first moved here. I would never have predicted that the reality of life in Armenia could be so far removed from the stories almost everyone tells about it. This first became apparent to me when, as I've frequently commented on and been censored by local news for saying, Kalavan village's public media narrative of spreading entrepreneurship and economic self-determination among its residents turned out to be fabricated by politicians for the purpose of appropriating ill-gotten grant money. But the longer I stayed here and the more I tried to get involved with productive efforts among Armenia's populace, the more I saw how difficult it was to get people to follow through on everything proactive they boasted about doing.

The first thing most people will think of when I mention corruption in Armenia is that of the governmental variety. This should be no surprise. Corrupt politicians permeate every country on Earth. This is nothing noteworthy. But Armenia has a particularly bad problem with political leaders promising great things that never come to fruition. Even worse are those who perpetuate the illusion of action, of progress, and of success where there is none, taking advantage of the naivety of their supporters in order to reap the benefits for themselves that they promised to create for others.

It is better to be a bad man who everyone knows is bad than to be a bad man who manages to fool the public into believing he is good. To pretend to have solved a problem draws attention away from it, making those who would actually be capable of doing something about it think they need not act when and where they are needed most. False heroes are bigger villains than villains themselves. People continue to suffer from the problem, but their suffering is now ignored because it is not in line with the happy story people have adopted to replace their prior awareness that something needed to be done.

Even if you are miraculously lucky enough to be dealing with a unicorn of an honest politician, still political solutions to social problems, enacted with force upon the people they are supposed to be helping, rarely produce the intended outcome. And, even when they do, it is a foregone conclusion, according to the laws of economics, that they will not do so efficiently and without tremendous waste.

There is, still, a more insidious form of corruption overlooked throughout Armenia, pervading the entire culture on an unconscious level and corrupting the minds of nearly everyone who identifies as Armenian. What is corruption? The willful separation of cognition from reality. It's lying to yourself (which, ultimately, necessitates lying to others to maintain the illusion) about what's going on. The corrupted are those who have stopped seeking the truth and lost their respect for reality. They have come to rely on self-deceit for vanity, emotional comfort, and strategic manipulation. We forget how to live without it. It's our only copying mechanism for the pain of dealing with a disappointing reality.

Corruption is always bad and always wrong. Even if the initial willful separation from reality does not seem to cause any meaningful degree of harm, it is impossible to foresee all the downstream effects the lie you start with might eventually lead to for you and everyone tangentially affected. That was the case when I became a victim of Kalavan's corrupted narrative about entrepreneurial development that caused me to invest so much of myself here instead of somewhere I would have been genuinely valued and welcomed.

I recently interviewed an Armenian woman who immigrated to the West more than ten years ago with her family to escape the country's infamous political and cultural corruption and live more freely and fairly in the developed world. She bravely spoke of understated issues like the restrictive cultural environment in Armenia that demands conformity to a narrow way of thinking and acting. This is a common concern I still hear expressed among the young people here, most of whom are eager for an opportunity to leave Armenia and establish a life under freer and fairer conditions abroad, especially if they wish to raise children.

It's not all backward here. My experience in Armenia has shown me that there is a variety, a mixture of levels of civilization in this country. Civilization is a measure of the self-awareness and moral standards of the citizens composing it.

Toward the end of the totally uncivilized are people like some of my neighbors who, I'm sure, generally don't intend to harm me. But even if we discount intentional criminal acts, such as the case with a neighbor I hired to work on my house who I recently learned stole and sold my chainsaw years ago but acted like I merely misplaced it, there is still endless chaos brought about by childish carelessness. Due to how irresponsible and un-self-aware the residents of my village are, they allow harm to come to me and each other through their chronic unconsciousness and negligence. They are similar to children in the West who have not yet had the opportunity or discipline to see other people as conscious vessels deserving of respect and fair/ethical treatment. They do not see it as their responsibility to change anything about the situation when, for instance, one of their dogs attacks and kills my cat (or, as I recently learned, even biting people and sending them to the hospital for stitches). My cats and dog are presently the only animals in the village vaccinated for rabies and other common diseases, which keeps not only them safe but also all other people and animals they might come into contact with. When I offered to provide vaccinations free of charge for other dog owners in the village, they acted as though they did not understand why they would ever bother to do such a thing.

I thought about giving up on Kalavan after the first year and starting over again in another rural part of Armenia. But I quickly realized I had no reason to expect things to be different anywhere else, no matter what types of appealing stories I was told. Corruption is a systemic cultural problem here. It's part of why so many Armenians find me so threatening: I am dedicated to reality and consistency of character. I hold myself and everyone who willingly interacts with me accountable for the promises we make about reality. The whistleblower, the steadfast soul who shows up and starts speaking truth to power, becomes public enemy number one.

It can take years to realize that what Armenians say and try to show has generally little to do with their behavior. Many foreigners who come here, upon realizing they've been deceived by idealistic narratives, grow frustrated with the national populace's unwillingness to follow through on the stories they tell about what they envision. Many knowledgeable and wealthy Armenians come from the diaspora abroad with the best of intentions to aid their homeland and countrymen. Organizations issue grants and offer their expertise to local projects or NGOs, thinking they are doing good things to develop Armenia's infrastructure, economy, and culture. Instead, they end up inadvertently filling the pockets of corrupt oligarchs and charlatans who convince them their donations of time and money will serve the needs of the people – charismatic criminals who launder misleading information as readily as they launder ill-gotten funds.

These generous but naïve souls fall for promises that never get realized (and were probably never meant to). They give up and leave Armenia not long after, disillusioned with the integrity of its people and social systems. It's how I felt when I began to realize the dream of Kalavan as a hub for spreading entrepreneurial ideas and teaching the locals to be economically self-determined was an elaborate fabrication. All the grant money that was funneled here due to corrupt politicians' efforts to spread a narrative accomplished little in the end beyond providing a temporary narcotic effect. Guesthouses were renovated. An expensive, still-vacant Kalavan Community Center, called the Scientific and Adventure Tourism Center, was funded by grants from USAID and the United Nations for $150,000. It was meant to serve scientific excavations, hikers, and eco-tourists and provide educational opportunities to the local youth and employment for adults. But almost six years after I moved in, to what capacity have these minor physical developments actually been used to achieve the type of social progress they were intended for? How much actual economic activity has been generated? How much new knowledge and skills have been spread to the people? If I were the one who had invested all that grant money in Kalavan, I'd be demanding a thorough audit and accounting of where all my money went – into whose pockets it ultimately flowed.

Other noteworthy examples are easy to find throughout the country. Kirk Kerkorian's more than $200 million investment was supposed to fund the construction of the North-South Highway/Corridor starting in 2009 with completion by 2019. It was supposed to connect Iran to Georgia through Armenia, boosting the economically isolated Armenia. To date, it remains stuck in development hell, having been started over several times.

Money that was supposed to aid in the construction of shelters for earthquake-affected people has failed to provide any housing. Now, more than 1,000 people have been questioned during an investigation into the misallocation of funds. Five were charged.

Ara Vardanyan, Director of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, was arrested for embezzling 130 million Armenian dram (about $325,000 USD), which he spent at online casinos instead of for the development of infrastructure in Armenia, as it was intended for.

Corruption on this scale can only exist because the Armenian people, by and large, want to be lied to. If they cared enough about the truth, they would investigate lofty promises before being sucked into the catharsis of illusory progress. But instead, I find that the Armenian people do not care about truth. They care about stories that sound good and that make them proud of the group identity they belong to. They cannot recognize bullshit and are not willing to call attention to themselves by publicly labeling it as such. Accountability is still a foreign concept here, which is why they get so offended when someone from abroad points out what's actually going on here and expects those responsible to be punished for their actions.

The root of the problem of corruption in Armenia is that Armenians still have a slavery mentality that relies on higher sources of authority to dictate reality for them. It's a manifestation of pathological fear to live, think, and choose. They've never been independent in any meaningful way, which means they cannot assess the world on their own terms. Beautiful lies are a coping mechanism for a chronically victimized population. The only viable solution is that which will implement honesty and accountability from the ground up. Individuals must hold themselves accountable to their words with their actions. They must stop writing checks with their mouths that their asses can't cash. They must develop a genuine sense of pride in being someone who lives in close alignment with reality – even at the expense of other momentary benefits that overzealous promises would have brought. And they must demand the same from every other Armenian they interact with, no matter how unpopular it makes them.

Corruption in Armenia will be permanently ended when enough Armenians clearly see how much better their lives and their society have become by their newfound stubborn insistence on sticking with reality whenever fantasy seems so much more appealing. There will be no inclination to turn back to their old ways then, as their children will have grown up in a world vastly wealthier and more moral than all generations of Armenians past knew. They will carry this superior understanding forward as a permanent, irrevocable value in the culture.

"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
― George Orwell, 1984

To the foreign humanitarians who wish to get involved with spreading good in Armenia, I issue a stern warning:

You must realize that you are dealing with a population that is still rising out of its economic, cultural, and moral infancy. They are, by and large, people who have not yet learned how to take responsibility for their choices, including the promises and agreements they make because they still live in a pre-truth society. They are not used to having to think long-term about the effects of their actions. They do not know how to communicate and coordinate on large-scale and complex projects. They have never been held accountable to anything serious in their lives and will treat anyone who attempts to be the first to do so with them like a cancer. The things you take for granted about the developed world do not always apply here. If you do not want your money, your effort, and your good intentions to go to waste, you must be absolutely certain that the Armenians you are collaborating with will not merely placate you with excuses and the appearance of fulfilling their obligations to you and the people. Do not let them treat you like a piggy bank.