Every stage of human development turns into a specific spotlight that illuminates and “sees” certain dates as important while placing other “dates” in the shade of impersonality and the complex of unrealized potential. But in all cases this “spotlight” determines the distance between what is achieved and what is expected in the existential being of his ego.
Throughout my entire conscious life I have lived with and through the idea of working in the field of science. The metaphysics of the spirit was the purpose and meaning of my life. Nothing compares to the construction and reconstruction of a man’s spiritual world; and to the spiritual catharsis attained by the “enlightened” from the understanding of this “divine act”.
And yet it so happened that in the late 1984 and early 1985 in relation to the so-called “Revival process” I witnessed the crushing of human dignity and the violence over the entire human community.
I was shocked. I was ailing for a week or two and cast away everything that had been the “purpose and meaning of my life” until then.
Instead of metaphysics, I started dealing with hazardous political activity against the regime.
I realized that the internal moral status of Man has no alternative. And without any particular hesitations I left the sphere of “pure reason” and started living with the problems of “practical reason”.
Instead of “pure constructs” I started dealing with the moral cases of life. The “Tree of life” proved stronger than the “viewpoint of God”, just as Politics proved stronger than Metaphysics.
Before the metamorphosis “date” I used to think that nothing could ever divert me from the path of Knowledge, but Alas! My hurt dignity and my crushed morality placed me in such a trial that I was ready of a self-sacrifice.
Certainly, at that time I did not have the self-awareness that I was starting to make history. Yes, instead of explaining it, I started understanding and creating it. And – to my amazement – the philosophy of the Deed proved significantly more difficult. I realized that the creation of history is not a matter of science. The things necessary are “only” organization, information, experience and adequate self-growing purpose. Plus being “infected’ by the “charisma” to produce significant events. Yes, every event gives rise to other events. And if You walk after them – you are finished. The new challenge turned into a constant test – of the intellect, moral and willpower. I moved on the edge of what was allowed and prohibited. I was ready of everything but not at any cost. The risk and the “sensation of the end” set another dimension to real time and the related significant “dates” in my life. Past, present and future pulsated in one rhythm. Each single thing acquired meaning only if it was related to my “destructive” activity here and now. My own “Ego” in a center-oriented urge headed towards the shelter of the “supra-ego’s orbits of the collective personality of the Community and started living with its problems …
I was satisfied with myself. Because I knew that I was creating the new rules of the game of “Life”.
To subordinate to certain rules is a matter of diligence. Then you act correctly. But when you have to create new rules or restore forgotten principles related to the survival of the Community to which you belong, then you do not have a measure of how to act: correctly or incorrectly. This is the same existential dilemma of choice. What would you choose: your mother or the justice of the “Others”? Because there you find the beginnings of “yourself” in the “shared” time.
If this is the case, then the result is objectified in finding the Way Out!
Hundreds of thousands of believers were infected by the spirit of negation. And they headed to where Our predecessors came from. They were banished and yet they started to realize that They were the ones to determine the degree of what is good and what is fair. And they were right. Because they had developed rules available through which to stand for themselves over time…
The time
The time and its Omni-essence…
For millennia on end, according to the civilizations and cultures they represent, people have thought of its one-way direction, continuity and multilayered character. They have searched for its universal dimensions in nature, culture and the spiritual world of man. These issues continue to be the most inaccessible to human reason. Because they are related to the essence of the Universum of Man.
Exactly because of that the metamorphoses in the world of meanings of a man often result from the collapse in the sensation of the connection between the historical and the personal. As well as from the shifting of the layers of compatibility of truths and rules within the architectonics of time.
The transition. The transition from totalitarianism to democracy, from a closed to an open society is a transit from one qualitative condition of time to “its other one”: the “old” is incurably ill and the “new” is not yet self-sufficient and daring. Indefiniteness sets in. The hard rules acquire ambivalent nature. The space of what is “allowed” is distorted. The survival instinct starts “devouring” the norms and ideals of society. The system of values of the individual and of the community changes; along with the criteria of truth-untruth, right-wrong, success-failure. The ideas of man about what is beautiful, good and fair are also transformed. And therefore, the world view and the attitude to the world, thinking and mentality transform as well. The world view starts shaking and stands on the edge of “another” time.
In such dividing times the answer to the question “Where is your place?” is related to the question “Who are you in time?”
Traditions are the freight train of history. However, the inertia of the habits of man and his community are also the traps of time: they are the threshold and fault line of that: to what extent we are in time and time is in us. A dangerous boundary!
Exactly in that connection of “my” time and the time of the “others” is the key to answering the question: whether we are, or we are not, in “our” time and in the “shared” time.
If you have gone too far ahead of the rest in the “shared” time, this is good. But only seemingly. Because if you start surpassing both “your own people” and the “rest” you go beyond your “own” time, which does remain unpunished. Then fate smiles at you with her tragic grimace. And …, “people!!!” turns into a bitter account of the meaning of your own transformation…
If customs, traditions and the related conservatism refer to the extent to which time has turned us into carriers of the status quo, then this does not mean yet that “we” live in the necessary time. In order to be in the necessary time, you need to be what you have to be! And not what you want to be and what you can be. Truth is in the measure!
If you want to be in the time, you are obliged to be a part of its inner tension, to be its initiator and to have a sense of the pulse of time.
To cross the “threshold” of “your” normal time. That is the question. When this is necessary, though. And for what you are prepared!
To be in tune, even when the majority measures another “correct” time!
Exactly in this “deviation” the Occasion is born. And the occasion helps only the one who is prepared.
However, not to controvert your foes and opponents, but to harmonize their differences as necessary tinges of our mutual doom in the name of Togetherness.
Not to explain and justify yourself, but to penetrate into and understand the “other” and the “otherness” as a condition for your own affirmation and development.
Not to conserve yourself by locking yourself up in the capsule of “your” time and space, but by rushing towards the difference and diversity and take the challenge to your own identity.
Not to pull back and oppose, but to subside and overcome. Nevertheless, while changing, You must resurrect the Same.
Because in the “shared” time of the New World Order identity will generate identity only if your identity has turned into a principle of every other identity.
If You are in this category, then the truth of Time makes You Free!
Ahmed Dogan
Source.: “Bulgaria and the New World Order”, Liberal Research Institute, 2000.