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Radioactive: Regarding causes and the change in Bulgaria




(5/10)

It's good to have a cause. If you don't have a cause, you don't get to bitch that others are only interested in stupid shit.


Admittedly, I get distracted pretty easily to make a charitable cause stick. I am not consistent enough to help out in a soup kitchen or participate in cleaning initiatives and I do believe that is a fault in my character that I should probably fix.


Maybe I am just lazy because I choose the easy way out.


I donate to cause X that I find meaningful. For example, third-world countries, disaster relief, even weapons and armor for Ukranians. I do concede that war can be a meaningful cause. Especially in the only meaningful circumstance: self-defense.


As small tasks I've chosen things that require less energy. To smile at people, to do good. To be vocal that love is the way to go, to inform people about curious facts and to make their life more interesting, to eliminate stigma and to call out injustice.


Basically, a bullshitter.


But in this so-called system of mine, I do find something meaningful. I believe that my own Bulgarian society is suffering from many afflictions, but most of all we have lost the sense of touch with our humanity. In my book, I am painfully honest because I care about honesty, a forgotten ideal in Bulgaria (and perhaps in many other countries).


Moreover, it would have been easier and less expensive for me to originally write The Ultimate Deal in English, and find an English professional to edit it and directly send it to Kindle Direct Publishing, instead of going through the route of Bulgarian paperback, Bulgarian edit, English Translation, English edit, and then KDP. Note that Bulgarian is not supported in KDP.


However, some ancient patriotism wanted me to write my debut in Bulgarian. I am Bulgarian, after all.


My good friend Gabby played a role in this, since she told me that I was in Bulgaria, and I should write in Bulgarian. I don't know if that is true, I did not forget, however, that she said that. She did. forget


But it was the right thing for me to hear at the time. I do love my country despite making The Ultimate Deal an international saga.


With The Ultimate Deal, I wanted to show that not only fucked-up shit, gossip, drugs, criminality, mafia stories, corruption, or depression are exported by Bulgaria. I wanted to show that a modern sci-fi novel can be written in Bulgaria. It did not turn out as competitive, as I had hoped, but I already did the work for my home country.


By creating a novel that loved humans.


Of course, I am heavily influenced by foreign cultures such as the English, the Scottish, and the American. But I don't hide these influences, I pride on them. The Ultimate Deal shows the advantages and disadvantages not only of the Bulgarian culture but also of other cultures.


My mother used to quote Wittgenstein: All philosophy is the philosophy of language.


I tried to unify cultures in my book through the spoken word of characters. This is more evident in the Bulgarian edition, where words from English are directly copy-pasted in Cyrillic, similar to what was done in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.


Some people wrongfully believe that the dissolution of borders leads to depersonalization. The point of removing borders is actually to put two sides in conflict, so that something develops out of them. There is no need for the traditional two-sided conflict of war or natural selection, with the removal of borders we can guide a peaceful process based on our beliefs, values, traditions, and ideologies to choose pluses from both cultures and to eliminate what we dislike. Not by the sword.


That is the only way to grow up from the political, cultural, selfish swamp in which the world has been submerged.


Another mission that The Ultimate Deal had was to put forth an ultimate goal: love towards the other.


I love my characters, despite their intended imperfections. I do believe that this love should exist in literature so as to remind us that we should apply in real life too.


Barry's hedonism, Alexa's knowledge greed, Dragan's insanity, Entity's any-means-necessary thinking are things which need to be presented, understood and loved, even if misguided.


Only when someone can love someone together with their shortcomings, can they love them truly.


And when a person loves another person, they can fight for life itself.


We are social animals, we need causes. It is important that others feel loved. That's how we get loved too.

Take it as an unimaginative derivative Kant's Categorical Imperative.



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