[caption id="attachment_300" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="25 year old Bulgarian Revolutionary "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/dsc03869.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-300" title="Young Revolutionary " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/dsc03869.jpg?w=225" alt="25 year old Bulgarian Revolutionary " width="225" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

I've been to this great little town Koprivshtitsa twice: once in August with my language school and then I went again this month with the Fulbright. It was great. Both times. The town is known for a series of historic homes from the Bulgarian National Revival period.  The village has been well preserved because it was named a town museum in 1952 and then in 1971 it became a historical reserve.

I think that the village is worth visiting for the architecture and the the beauty of the seasons.  But I think that most visitors are interested in the history of the place.  This is after all the town that Todor Kableshkov announced the the national uprising against the Ottoman Empire--on April 20th, 1876.  We now know this event as the April Uprising.

What was pointed out to me during this trip, was that Kableshkov was only 25 years old when he died.  It seems that he knew what he wanted; he was motivated by his ideals.  He not only fought for the revolution but it seems that he started it--firing a gun from a bridge not far from his home.

Maybe he was caught up in the furor of a revolution, it certainly must have been an exciting time, but he did what few of us would do today.  He fought for something that he believed deeply in and he died for it. He seemed to believe that political change was possible.  Even after a 1000 years of Ottoman foreign domination, he thought: we've got something here, we're a people and we can rule ourselves.  (Either that or he was having mother issues and it was easier to fight the Turks than to take it up with her.)

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It's one of those things that is daring and bold but maybe a little bit foolhardy as well.  On top of this, it's not like you can test out a revolution to see if it's something that you really want to do--either you're in or there's no revolution.   I think the same rules apply to participation as well.  It's not like the Turks will care if you only participated a little bit.  So it means that you're either all in or nothing is going to change--there's not a lot of in between.

Given all of this, I couldn't help but wonder: do I believe in something so deeply that I would fight and die for it?

The answer: I'm not sure.  I think I believe in a democracy that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't; I believe in capitalism--kind of; I believe in the power of homemade macaroni and cheese to warm the soul and turn a blustery day into something good (but I don't think that is fight-able); I believe in a woman's right to choose; and I believe in the freedom of the press and freedom of speech but I've already sat back while the Bush government chipped away at these rights as well.

So, could I do it? I'd like to think so.  But I also think that something has changed--we're not longer encouraged to think in these ways and in my life time there have been very few opportunities to fight for these thing.  On a whole, we don't protest--we don't vote--we don't care much unless it hits us in our pocket books (and it has).

What it is I think, is that democracy and capitalism seem to offer us a range of possibilities whether or not in practice this is actually true.  I think that it's this range of possiblities that allows us to settle into our lives and not think about seriously committing ourselves to something bigger than ourselves.   Because we do not live in the either/or dichotomy that our predecessors faced, we tell ourselves that what we have is okay and we wait for others to act for us.

That is I think the sentiment that motivated this post.  It is an interesting question: what is it that motivates some of us to action while others wait for someone else to solve the problem? This is a question that i cannot answer but one which I think is worth considering.