They want to suggest to us that we are some wild tribe , that there is neither society nor civilization. But we are not like that. We just aren't. Don't be fooled! Look around in real life and you will see what we really are: decent people.
It is time to stop despairing. And despair is easily reached when one closes himself within the "big" media and Facebook. Once there, tons of stinky slop is dumped on you daily – until everything around you stinks. For general affairs – i.e. about politics – people speak with wild and raw voices spewing vulgar profanities, screams, gangster threats and fat jokes.
All these voices broadcast the same message, hidden under the tones of filth: There is no society, no civilization here; there is some unwashed wild tribe that cannot govern itself - and therefore needs a tribal chief. And since Bulgaria is still a small country, in the international arena this Bulgarian leader will have to be a vassal of a bigger leader, located for example in the Kremlin.
Is there a society in Bulgaria
This is a trick, a ploy, a propaganda trick aimed at covering up some people who steal from the commons. This is not the truth for us. We are not like that. Adam Smith – the great moral philosopher, not that flat caricature that economists usually try to present to us – is perfectly clear on the issue of society. “A society”, he wrote in the treatise “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, “cannot exist between people who are ready at any time to injure or inflict pain on each other”.
Society exists there, again according to Smith, where “people need each other – where the necessary help is given mutually out of love, out of gratitude, out of friendship or respect…“.
And the first sentence of the treatise reads: “However selfish we may consider the human being, there are evidently some principles in man's nature which make him interested in the welfare of others and make their happiness necessary to him, though from that he gains nothing but the pleasure of observing it”. So, we have a society where people help each other without deriving any selfish profit from this help. To find out if we are like that – are we a society or a savage horde – it is important not to listen to each other as we say them; and let's see how we do them.
Last week I watched the following incident at the traffic light on “Montevideo“ in front of the "Mizia/New Bulgarian University" metro stop. A car caught fire – flames started coming from the bottom and top of the engine. The car stopped and two young men jumped out. One aimed the fire extinguisher at the flames below, while the other tried to put out the flames above with his jacket.
We are not a horde
What would be the reaction of a wild horde? Onlookers would gather to take pictures, point the finger at the young people and shout: “Screw the idiots, just look at what they are doing...”. However, we Bulgarians are not a horde. In five to ten seconds, four other cars stopped, from which men jumped out with fire extinguishers and rushed to help. After another five seconds, two other cars stopped in the opposite lane and other men ran across the street to put out the fire.
However, their fire extinguishers ran out, and the flames grew. A small explosion was heard inside the car. The men – already 7-8 per piece – retreated in case a larger explosion occurred. Other people appeared around them, bringing them water, as they had escaped from the flames. About 30 meters up the boulevard, a motorcyclist stopped, blocked the roadway with his bike and began to regulate traffic so that traffic did not approach the burning (and, it was expected, shortly after exploding) car.
The first reaction of the people around me, before the thought was even activated, was “after Adam Smith“ – to rush to help their fellows in trouble without thinking of any profit of their own. Other people brought water to the helpers.
The motorcyclist, on the other hand, devoted himself to protecting the life and health of random motorists who would suffer if they happened to be next to the burning car at the moment it exploded. We are a society and besides – not badly organized. A woman at the bus stop on the opposite sidewalk called the fire department, which arrived in no more than three minutes.
We are not an uncultured society either
Don't be fooled by the savage, crude, simpleton voices in the media. For reasons of hygiene, I have long been neither a viewer nor a listener of the "big" media – and I live a wonderful life. All but one of the music radio stations, for example, provide me with a larger and more balanced range of news (albeit within only two or three minutes) than BNR manages. While poodles, lapdogs and mountains of cash are being discussed there, FM+ radio (for example) keeps me updated on things that happened in Europe, Mexico or South Korea. According to the “boutiques” television channels, I watch political shows that are in no way inferior to the BBC – while in the “big“ television, politicians and analysts spew brazen lies or plain platitudes.
So the other day, listening to the boutique program “Hristo Botev” I came across a show by the poet Silvia Choleva. She, as well as all her guests, were representatives of the highest form of European civilization. The presenter discussed important spiritual matters with a publisher, poet and philosopher. They did this not with the usual media snarls or vulgar jokes, but with calm and educated voices and with a vocabulary that most of the most widely circulated politicians would not understand.
Only crooked and poisonous mirrors show the Bulgarians as a horde
Stay away, people, from the “big“ media and from Facebook bubbles. They are not mirrors of the real world we live in. They are crooked, poisonous mirrors, purposely put up by people who are not on our side. The goal is to show everything in our lives as ugly, simple, humiliating, slavish and ill-mannered. They want to present as a rule a minority of wild and simple brats who do not know that in a decent society they will have to earn their money by the sweat of their brow.
We are not like them. We just aren't. Look around, see and hear our real life – and you will see each other as we really are: decent people.
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This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and of DV as a whole.