OBSERVATIONS and ATTITUDE

Unity makes strength, disunity makes us
(part one)
http://blackqueenwhitequeen.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/unity-makes-strength-disuni...

To finish the theme of the previous two classes and complete a peculiar trilogy, I am going to draw few final lines on the question of relations between people inside and outside the same boundary. I find it illogical, though explainable, when we tend to accept and behave to each other as foreigners rather than kindred, as belonging to different worlds rather than a common one, and experiencing different problems rather than sharing common fate and destiny, only that we follow different paths to outlive it.

When it is a point of personal choice, to leave losing your faith or to go seek for another, what makes us disrespect each other’s choices and thus alienate?! Do you agree that at various stages in our past and for various reasons in our present, disunity comes to be a prominent feature of our common history?! I shall even state that we use to divide in moments we need to be united and force on unification when we have the right to be ourselves and act as individuals.

Dividing and consolidating are two opposite-sounding on first sight parts of one and the same process. Logically thinking you will ascertain that whenever having a process of consolidation, grouping among certain amount of individuals, it leads inevitably to separation, dividing from the rest; no matter how real or fictive, on purpose or idealistic, with “good” or “bad” intentions that process is. It stirs my mind, what makes people divide (respectively group)?! Is it instinctive or an act of consciousness?!

If anterior times have found some objective reasons for people consolidating to protect from malicious intruding or threatening, respectively dividing or separating into formations and therefore achieving ability to possess and rule through or over them, then are these processes of the past still alive in our present?! To what extent they are naturally stimulated or come predominantly on purpose hiding under fictive causes?!

Most of the threatening of modern times comes from tendencies and phenomena opposing to the similarly modern processes of increasing people’s recognition in the direction of tolerance, humanity, acceptance of others, free movement, communication, relation and policy of general respect. Such tendencies and phenomena as nationalism (in its human-centrifugal formats), chauvinism, discrimination, racism, xenophobia, separatism, fundamentalism…

Is it fear, the foundation of such leanings or gaps in human personalities and their self-identification?! And is the fear that leads to the need of identifying with certain others, if fictive or subjective, not a consequence of the disability for personal identification?!

At this point it is important to make distinction that this particular topic is not about peaceful in their nature and motives formations among people based on common interests and beliefs as well as their natural need to connect and interact with other “soul-mates” to express and share what moves them on mutual bases, seeking and finding understanding, exchanging information and knowledge, forming societies and cultures, and being not disrespectful and/or obstructive to others’ similar ones. Such needs come namely from achieved ability to truly recognize one’s individuality and interests.

The article emphasizes on necessities to recognize through a certain group or other types of divisions at all costs which I can see as inability to define one’s self as and through their own selves. Moreover, when in such consolidations there is leaning to intolerance, aggression and means by force towards others outside it, I can see it as lapse of achieving one’s internal peace, resulting from uneasiness that namely lack of personal identification can stir inside oneself.

If I begin with thinking of “myself” case, I can say I can only truly feel belonging to a group of people if my family. It is unconscious and I can find it based on nothing else more than my undisputable love towards them. Even when it comes to consciousness I still agree to admit my belonging. I can see myself quite clearly identified among them, I can see the differences and similarities between me and them, and despite these differences, and not because of the similarities I can determine my family is my people. It comes less of the fact of our common origin than it is more because I am bounded to them through my love. I can recognize this feeling inside myself namely because I love them. We share very strong connection between ourselves on this foundation and we call this home.

(part two)
http://blackqueenwhitequeen.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/unity-makes-strength-disuni...

In this thread of thoughts, I can also feel sentiments towards my home, my home town, my homeland. Yet, despite the theoretical fact that these are my home, my home town, my homeland for the circumstance that I have been born there, I only truly recognize them when via sentiment. If I cannot experience my bond through my feelings then it is an artificial recognition, ink on sheet of paper.

The process of locating one’s belonging; is there really a reason to do so?! Yes, I am a part of my family, my family is settled in my home town and my home town is located in my country, but then my country is situated on my mainland and my mainland is a part of my planet. So, I am a member of my locality and a citizen of the world at the same time. Belonging is not a point of physical parameters; it is a point of sentiment. Geography is for the records. The way I am bonded to my family, the same bond I can feel to my homeland and to any part of the world provided there is my sentiment. Any of these places can be my home.

Most of what we call “belonging” is artificially imposed and the motives can be both constructive and oppressive. Normally, people accept and admit geographical and political boundaries to the point they coincide with their sentimental determination for home. And home is where I feel loved and accepted. These are the true boundaries. You will surely agree that there are cases of having one’s family, home town and country but not feeling home there.

The vivid sensation of belonging comes from the existence of a relation based on love; and it is essential to be mutual, shared. In this relation, as in love, there is no place for possessing. I belong to my home through love and I do not possess it, namely because it is granted to me (by birth or other form of acceptance) and I have not bought it, namely because having home is not equal to owning a house. Moreover, the way my home is mine, the same way it is home to the rest of my family, my fellow-citizens and kindred. Also, it can be home to others who wish to find their place and settle there. Literally and figuratively, situation is the same with one’s home and country. My home is also my friends’, my guests are welcome to visit me there and my door is open to new comers who enter my family specially bonded in some way or another and even become its members. I shall only obstruct an intruder with violent intentions to come within.

Perhaps, the way we recognize and accept our own families, the same way we behave towards the other groups where we consciously or unconsciously belong. Lack of family and of love bond within a family can be painful and can cause seeking of a substitute. If the substitute turns to be successful in supplying with love, then the person may achieve internal peace and even recognition but if not, then the lack of love can turn into hatred. In example, people lacking recognition use to seek their belonging on purpose and tend to gather with others in similar situation. If naturally gained love within family makes its receivers able to respect others’ similar love to “their kindred” on their turn, when people use to artificially achieve such sentiments, they are not able to recognize the sentiments of others. It leads to intolerance and therefore to the fore-mentioned phenomena.

Conclusion is that love is crucial for one’s identity and peace; and they, on their side, are crucial for having a balanced human, respectful to others. Lapse in achieving self-recognition can provoke feelings of insecurity and fear leading to aggressive reactions and/or rejection of others without existence of actual obstruction or threatening by them. It can be executed and happen everywhere, towards fellow-citizens and foreigners, brothers or strangers. The target of such behaviour is not essential itself because the real disturbance comes from inside.

We are all humans, we bear common human features and characteristics, and from this moment onward we are individuals with unique and varying personalities who can respect and interact with others’ individuality or who cannot. To live peacefully we should learn to accept. Being individuals is not an act of dividing; it is a natural state of humanity. (Mass can be objectively more dangerous here when a gathering of individuals with lost or missing self-identification that can become a convenient tool in hands of other individuals with malicious intentions knowing how to use its disturbing features.) Difference between people is not the cause for our internal wars and reasoning our violence with it has not to be accepted, neither excused. (As internal peace is self-responsibility, when I am troubled I am not excused to being troublesome to others and to obstructing their peace.)

Leaning to artificial belongings and drawing artificial boundaries will not lead us to unity and sharing a common world. It will not fill our gaps, cure us from our omissions. It shall not make us home. What shall do it is finding our internal peace by recognizing our true selves and therefore accepting the rest and respecting their differences and individuality. Love and acceptance is what we desperately need. If we concentrate on achieving more of them, giving more of them and therefore receiving as well, only then we shall find our true belonging here.


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Not to shoot the sheriff, not to kill a mocking bird, just to try few words at them
http://blackqueenwhitequeen.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/not-to-shoot-the-sheriff-no...

There is wide spread manipulation here, extreme and one, I assume, on purpose that people who choose to emigrate from Bulgaria are close at being national traitors; they leave their country and turn their backs to their kindred. In the soft version, these are persons who give up easily the fight for their homeland. People…, wake up to your consciousness and stick to the logic and sober mind. Allow yourselves to see the others’ points of view, begin with this.

I begin with the first of all that every one of us is a free human being who has natural rights given by birth to possess their lives, to take care of them (or not) and to follow (or not) their well-being; and to do this to the point of not being obstructive to the rest who have the same rights (to execute their rights) without exception. In this thread of thoughts, every one of us have their personal right to (choose to) stay in their home country or leave for another; to stay and be happy here, to stay and be unhappy here, to live and find happiness abroad or to live there despite feeling unhappy. Nobody else have any right to judge others for what they choose is best for them and their own lives. (Well, of course, we are humans, we can have opinions; and do you see a difference between judging and having an opinion?!) Nobody and nothing; none of these, an outer person, a ‘sheriff’, the ‘deputy’, an institution or the state.

The next step is to explore the variety of views that exist and to seek for, to try to understand them in the place of judging. (When I myself learnt to do this I realized how many better and positive results it can lead me to.) Why people leave; why they need and wish to leave?! How do you think, have most of them not tried to find their places here, their purposes and reasons to stay?! Have they not made their best attempts to find solutions for the problems and resolve them?! What if their hard-trying have been paid zero attention; if their appeals have not been heard and even listened?! What if they have been directed but not replied as to persons?! How would you feel yourself if having been treated with disrespect?! What is to be the natural, the human, the normal reaction to such treatment?! Is it to be “fight” or is it to be “leave”, or maybe both?! It is to be every individual’s choice to decide for themselves. Some will stay and do nothing, others will keep on fighting for their better future until they have strengths or have been devastated; others will decide to leave and protect their potential for more rational causes and results, or will do it to just try another salvation. It is all their right.

Besides all subjective and personal reasons, which are nobody else’s matter but persons’ themselves, there is a good amount of objective reasons for a civilized human to (want to) leave or to have wished to do it at least one time in their daily round. From these objectives, fundamental bases are missing in our reality, and this is quite a serious problem, not to say dangerous, when concerns a civilization. Beginning with the very first level, even before coming to the question of comfort, and in simple words, we lack security for our lives and we lack healthy environment for our well-being here. A long list of topics is ready to follow, and long topics themselves ready to be long discussed, so I shall only summarize the main keys.

There is no security for our health. There are serious problems and respectively lack of trust in the Health System generally, medical centers and care, hygiene and prevention, professionals, mentality, control and monitoring of these all. There is no security for our children (respectively for all of us in the same number having already been there), for our background and upbringing. The improper, archaic-modeled education and the wrong, malicious treatment, coming from our mentality, starting from the family and being further exercised in school, university, work, services, institutions, elsewhere in society, are the main factors that cause the social diseases, complexities, inferiority, ignorance, imposed fear, aggression, disrespect, self-disrespect… I call them “direct weapons of persons’ massive destruction” and they are. There is no security for our lives, interests and well-being. There is no effective control of crime, crime is widespread. There is no willing control of corruption, corruption is widespread. There are no adequate rules and monitoring over their observance, breaching of rules is widespread. Respectively, there is trust neither in police, nor in the legal institutions. We are not safe in our families, at home, in our neighbourhoods, anywhere in society, in our towns, in our streets, on our roads, on our common homeland; we are not protected in our own country. Sounds really scary so generalized, but if you stop at each of these points and try to figure an example, unfortunately you will be successful.

To those who still misbelieve that the state is not responsible and it is not its business (giving this improper situation a credit that way), the true answer is one, ON THE CONTRARY, IT IS. Health, education, children’s safety, people’s safety, law and order, security and protection are business of state. I am aware this subject has become tiresome of over repeating; but what deserves reaction here and is responsible is not the repetitive statement of the fact but the prolonged existence of the same fact. On the other hand, it can be really tiresome as well when people say without a relevant point, “lets stop wanting and waiting from the state”. I understand what they mean, and I say to them, let us first separate the two things. In this topic we do not speak of our duties as members of the state, which we are responsible to execute, and we do or we do not execute. Here, we speak of the duties of state, and YES, this is exactly what we do (and need to do) as active members, we want (and need to want) from the state to execute its duties. This is why the state is for; it is its job which people assign to it and pay (taxes) for it (and to help it), and it is responsibility of the state to do it, and to do it well. It is the obliged in this case. The state is subject of its people, and not the people are servants of the state. Not in a democracy. In this thread of thoughts, if someone (something) does not do their job but take the money paid for it, then, either it is a stealing, or it is a question of discharge, or I should leave you for your uselessness.

It is mostly natural that people refuse to stay here because they feel and they are not protected in their own country, and the state (again, being its sole duty and responsibility) does not show a notion to care of changing this situation to better. If the state needs its people (and it cannot be otherwise in a democracy), it is its basic obligation to make them stay, and to do it not by force and/or manipulation but with civilized, human-oriented means; by establishing such conditions and services that they need and can feel satisfied with, then do even more to comfort them and raise their standard. Along with the question of moral norm and codex, that people have built the state to enjoy security and comfort, serviced and not granted by it, if a state does not care of its own people and act with cynicism, rage and malicious means towards them, the logic concludes, such a state cannot count on having a future.

So, you can go on in the same old manner but I do not care for your manipulation because I am a sober, conscious and tough-grounded person who is capable of seeing things clear and follows the true logic, not your evil-twisted one. You know I feel best where my roots are but my roots need fertile land to grow in or they get rotten otherwise. Therefore, it is the most essential point for my living and I have one way here. You have two choices. You can keep on telling me, “if you don’t like it, go away then”; but you can also try to hold me stay, to comfort me and make me feel a normal and respected human being, a person. Only then I shall re-think my decision to leave. You.


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Features of Bulgarian Mentality
Judging
http://wednesdayinwonderland.blogspot.com/2009/05/features-of-bulgarian-mentalit...

Judging, judging, judging. Too much judging. Judging everywhere and for everything. "He is good" and "She is bad"; "I don't like him but I like her".

There is a common feature integrated in Bulgarian mentality to accept everything and everyone by judging; judging at a first glimpse and most of the time on a subjective basis. It is a widespread model of personal and social behaviour starting from inside the family and covering the whole ground of public relations. There are various ways of its expression. In the majority of cases, it is an instinctive, simultaneous reaction, although when coming to realizing it people do not tend to stop there but continue to execute it consciously. Interesting here as well as controversial comes to be that Bulgarians do not feel comfortable as objects of this mentality, yet it will not stop them from being executors.

I think of the following indicative example from the real daily life. If a person enters a brand new society or group of people and tends to differ from them in one way or another, they would not gain an interest (which I assume to be the normal reaction in the case) but rather provoke a rejection in the group. An instant judging will manifest this rejection likewise “I don’t like the person.” If the group is therefore asked, “Why??” they will be unable to give an objective answer because their reaction is based on a subjective basis and is not logical regarding the targeted person. The reason for it does not lie in the object. To be different from others is not an objective and logical reason to be judged as “disliked”, in general and principally speaking. Therefore, the problem comes from the subjects themselves and their mentality.

This situation can go further on. The same group of people’s subjective negative reaction can provoke another anti-one in its turn. A similar unconscious subjective reply from someone who would rather judge out, “I don’t like that group of people for they don’t like her/him” in the place of, first of all, trying to understand the situation, asking, “Why do they do so??”, “Are they right or wrong??” and “Am I in any position to like or dislike them??” People are able to come to “like” someone only because they “do not like” those “disliking” the same one instead of “liking” someone because of the persons themselves and their qualities.

There can be a more complicated scenario if the person whom someone has decided to “like” for being “disliked” by those the first “does not like”, if this person does not reply in a similar manner, and not obligatory reply in a negative one. Then they can be easily put in the column of the “disliked” ones nevertheless having occupied the opposite column until sooner. This resembles a nightmare carousel but unfortunately, it happens in reality.

Besides from being a problem of a person and of a society, it can be a dangerous syndrome when people in their acceptance and opinion of the others do not count on objective basis but on “quick sands” that can twist reality to fictive perceptions and drift it away from the sober and stable mind. If it is a general tendency in a people’s mentality, it can come dangerous for its well-being, improving and future as a whole. Unfortunately, this is what I notice to be the case here.

To my opinion people behave this way as a protective reaction to their feeling of inferiority. I count inferiority complex as one of the main reasons here but I see some other reasons too.

Inferiority complex: It is one of the basic diseases that deteriorate the personal health and the health of society, making it and its people eating each other and self-eliminating. Bulgarian traditional model of upbringing and education is one of the leading factors that found this essential problem and Bulgarians need to seriously rethink over and change it basically if they want to improve their being.

Intolerance: Lack of wish and ability to understand the others, to accept their differences and qualities, even superior ones and to accept them the way they are, based on their truth, is the other main factor feeding this mentality.

In conclusion I can see the problem in the usurpation of the right to judge, and in the irrelevant subjective judging. People would rather prefer to do it, and to do it in one wink, instead of trying or even wishing to try to understand the others and to see, accept them in the way they are, giving themselves enough time to accumulate that objective amount and quality of information necessary for creating a relevant idea for the rest. In the thread of thoughts, we can come this way to the objective idea of our own selves as well, as possible as it can be. Moreover, coming to knowing better our intimate worlds is the way to approach to better understanding to the rest of the world. The path to the others begins from inside the human.


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Features of Bulgarian Mentality
The Patriarchal Model
http://wednesdayinwonderland.blogspot.com/2008/10/features-of-bulgarian-mentalit...

Imagine the following situation. There is a boy in a family and he is an excellent student. What happens in result is nothing else been expected from the young gentleman but keeping him on a pedestal. He picks up with full hands the gratitude of the family; commonly the female part of it - mother, grandmother. The perfect boy is being perfectly spoilt and in result taught to expect he deserves to receive everything he'd wish from his future relationships. A birth privilege.

Now imagine another situation. The child in the family is a girl and she is an excellent student. What happens is that in the place of the worshipped god you find a slave. Everything is expected from the young lady. More perfect the girl is more the expectations towards her reach to their utmost. In the place of being appreciated for her ideality, she is kept responsible for every little fault. Her perfection is not a gift from Heaven - it is a Holy obligation.

It is the patriarchal model; one of its common expressions among the Bulgarians. Not a cast-like phenomenon but a wide-spread syndrome. I can even say it is unexpectedly popular within the well-educated families and intellectual environments.

The most controversial in first sight here appears to be the leading role of women in the forming process. They are not pleased with this mentality being objects of it. Being subjects they won't act trying to change it but via versa - they grow issues who will sequentially exercise the same model over their relationships and in parallel support it.

Complex for analyzing but no impossible. Few assumptions: the never ending want resulting in a constant need for approval from parents and society; the lack of knowledge or motivation to change or wish to; the lack of helpful or willing supporters; the personal reluctance for others be different from oneself, interacting with the social state of mind; even blind or washed out brains.

One sure thing in final - this model violates the basic human rights for equality of sexes. It is a moral duty and evolution in mentality to cease its further stimulation.

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