I am Bulgarian. I do not consider myself “patriot” or “nationalist”, but I love Bulgarian culture, nature, history, which together compose the background of our nation and country and gives us a feeling of worth, proud, satisfaction with our roots, nationality and hence – ourselves.
That is why it is sad to see the tendency of Bulgarian culture falling into decay. Bulgarians are still alive, but it seems under economic pressure and Western propaganda they forget their own national and family values and identity, the legacy of their parents and predecessors and so much more…
Globalization hit us right after we were in a police-slave-like information-censorship society, and we did not have the life skills to take the situation in our hands and manage it. Rather, we allowed the former State intelligence agents to take over the country – its assets and management, and start destroying and selling, rather than building, preserving and creating value, of what is left as legacy from our millennium old nation as a whole and socialist management in particular.
Those 24+ years are the most disgraceful in our history. Today we drain our national resources and we let our historical and cultural heritage to become destroyed for not taking care for it. My opinion may seem to you too pessimistic, so I’d say, that there are many people waking up and starting to fight for different causes. They make a difference – for example, they forced the politicians to ban Shale gas extraction, GMO plants, protected natural reserves from building… there are also people like Svetlio Kantardjiev, who found NGO’s, trying to protect, restore and popularize what’s materially left of our cultural and historical heritage, but still… In the battle of opposites, the dark has the advantage.
I know we have a lot more to worry about besides our culture and abstract values, but I think they are the foundation of everything else – including economic prosperity and happiness of the individual and the society. So I hope that more of us will wake up, we will save what’s left and turn the tendency of our culture melting in the pot of globalization.
