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2 September, 2000
Consumerism in Bulgaria

This summer I was invited to lecture at a conference in Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria. After the conference I stayed in the area for about six weeks and was able to board with local people. It gave me the opportunity to really get to know the culture.

Ten years ago, Bulgaria ended its Communist period and entered into a free market system. The country is still trying to organize its economy and culture in the wake of this shift. Bulgarians were poorer than many neighbouring nations so they associate communism with poverty. Also, they believe unrestrained consumerism is the path to prosperity and fulfillment.

Walk around the main thoroughfares in St. Albert, especially where there are many young people. You will see many dressed in the latest fashions having bought whatever is in the day's television advertisements and the week's roadside billboards.

But you may also chance a sighting of the occasional young person who has not spent their paycheque on what greedy consumerist powerhouses have told them to--or who does not hold a part-time job because they don't need that salary to spend on free-market obedience lessons. Now walk down Whyte Avenue in Edmonton. You will likely see many more youths who aren't plugged into the capitalist profit/fashion matrix.

In Bulgaria, virtually everyone under the age of thirty is "tuned in" to what's new and hip. The stuffy old Communist system didn't seem fun or fruitful for anyone, so young Bulgarians figure that listening to the up-to-date news coming from the West is the way to truly be at the forefront of progress, of savvy.

Pop music has a sickeningly solid grip there. Everybody is wearing the latest trends. Everybody also has a cell phone, and, if they can afford it, a nice new car.

The ubiquity of luxury consumerist commodity in Sofia jars heavily with the reality of Bulgaria's economic state. Derelict buildings crumble, abandoned yards and lots succumb to weeds and pests, roadways rot, signs and rails rust, and the general state of neglect goes unchecked. This is partially due to poverty and partially due to the rush towards consumerism.

Bulgarians have not been informed of Capitalism's full story. They don't see that somebody still has to do all of the jobs that people were forced to do earlier, that capitalism is a service-based system. All they know is that everybody gets what they want and they have received this impression from television and movies. Just buy the latest cologne and the roads will repair themselves.

Western corporations are setting up telecommunications in the country to take Bulgarians' money, not to improve the state of their country. Blind adherence to corporate mantras will not help the country catch up to the standards of living of the countries advertising in Bulgaria. Bulgarians are actively rejecting their own culture and history in favour of the "new" and "best" ideas from the West, which they are not learning fully and completely.

It's sad, because Bulgarian culture is rich, lush, open, passionate, and downright sexy. But at the same time, their culture is a tree that has shunned its roots in a drought and allowed itself to be uprooted by the winds from abroad.

We in the West must be aware of what the gigantic corporations in our countries are doing to other cultures. Young Bulgarians are being willfully misled by vapid, empty pop culture and advertising. Who knows what this will lead to for them?

Think twice next time you label a bearded, dreadlocked guitarist as a dirty hippie. A tree can't live long without roots.

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