Thank you. I don't know as much about Austria as I should, as it's a fascinating country, and its history is so intertwined with European and world history, for better and for worse. I'm sorry for your ancestral trauma.
The West has been at peace for eight decades now, notwithstanding proxy wars and some regional conflicts in the Balkans.…
Thank you. I don't know as much about Austria as I should, as it's a fascinating country, and its history is so intertwined with European and world history, for better and for worse. I'm sorry for your ancestral trauma.
The West has been at peace for eight decades now, notwithstanding proxy wars and some regional conflicts in the Balkans. That has not happened since the reign of Antoninus Pius in the second century. I think that the horrors of WW2 were so obvious and far-reaching that people everywhere did their best to avoid war, and now, the people who lived through that are very old or dead, and the new generations aren't as versed in the horror. I remember Hannity saying that Stalin couldn't have been so bad because he was our ally in WW2, and I wanted to bang my head against a wall.
I hope we are capable of fending off disaster...check that: I KNOW we are capable, but will we?
Dear Greg, thanks for your response! I think you could go down many deep rabbit holes investigating Austria and its insanely influential (seeing what a small country it is, especially post-WW1) impact on world history.
It seems almost everywhere major decisions were made, some Austrian (many exiled) mind was behind them, for good, and more often, for bad. Edward Bernays, Freud, Hayek, Schrödinger, Doppler, Wittgenstein, Hitler, Waldheim, Schubert, Haydn, Mozart, Mahler, Hundertwasser, Jelinek, Strauss, Klimt, Wagner, Bruckner, Herzl, Gregor Mendel, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch, Maximilian I, Maria Theresia, Marie Antoinette, Leopold II, Franz Ferdinand, Bela Lugosi, Hedi Lamar, Schwarzenegger... music, literature, acting, art, architecture, philosophy, psychology, physics, biology, economics, propaganda, politics (oh so many of the world’s biggest political upheavals were caused by Austria/ns!) - all massively influenced by people from this tiny, ancient fulcrum of a country.
And so many of its people to this day suffer some form of collective, multigenerational trauma from all these events - without ever properly and maturely dealing with them. It is a dark and deeply fascinating place, one I had to leave as soon as I could, as its darkness and conservatism would have destroyed me 😞
Wow, to see it listed like that is really something. It's fascinating to me how certain places are like this while others are not. For example: my ancestors on my father's side are Slovak. I tried, for something I was writing, to make a list of famous, influential Slovaks. There's basically just Andy Warhol.
Yeah it is weird! I got Slovak and Slovene ancestry and there’s just nowhere near the extent of influencers (Melania Trump!? 🤮) - although several of the Austrians mentioned above were born in the Austrian-Hungarian empire outside of its current borders. But most of their work / influence started in Vienna!
Thank you. I don't know as much about Austria as I should, as it's a fascinating country, and its history is so intertwined with European and world history, for better and for worse. I'm sorry for your ancestral trauma.
The West has been at peace for eight decades now, notwithstanding proxy wars and some regional conflicts in the Balkans. That has not happened since the reign of Antoninus Pius in the second century. I think that the horrors of WW2 were so obvious and far-reaching that people everywhere did their best to avoid war, and now, the people who lived through that are very old or dead, and the new generations aren't as versed in the horror. I remember Hannity saying that Stalin couldn't have been so bad because he was our ally in WW2, and I wanted to bang my head against a wall.
I hope we are capable of fending off disaster...check that: I KNOW we are capable, but will we?
Dear Greg, thanks for your response! I think you could go down many deep rabbit holes investigating Austria and its insanely influential (seeing what a small country it is, especially post-WW1) impact on world history.
It seems almost everywhere major decisions were made, some Austrian (many exiled) mind was behind them, for good, and more often, for bad. Edward Bernays, Freud, Hayek, Schrödinger, Doppler, Wittgenstein, Hitler, Waldheim, Schubert, Haydn, Mozart, Mahler, Hundertwasser, Jelinek, Strauss, Klimt, Wagner, Bruckner, Herzl, Gregor Mendel, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch, Maximilian I, Maria Theresia, Marie Antoinette, Leopold II, Franz Ferdinand, Bela Lugosi, Hedi Lamar, Schwarzenegger... music, literature, acting, art, architecture, philosophy, psychology, physics, biology, economics, propaganda, politics (oh so many of the world’s biggest political upheavals were caused by Austria/ns!) - all massively influenced by people from this tiny, ancient fulcrum of a country.
And so many of its people to this day suffer some form of collective, multigenerational trauma from all these events - without ever properly and maturely dealing with them. It is a dark and deeply fascinating place, one I had to leave as soon as I could, as its darkness and conservatism would have destroyed me 😞
Wow, to see it listed like that is really something. It's fascinating to me how certain places are like this while others are not. For example: my ancestors on my father's side are Slovak. I tried, for something I was writing, to make a list of famous, influential Slovaks. There's basically just Andy Warhol.
Yeah it is weird! I got Slovak and Slovene ancestry and there’s just nowhere near the extent of influencers (Melania Trump!? 🤮) - although several of the Austrians mentioned above were born in the Austrian-Hungarian empire outside of its current borders. But most of their work / influence started in Vienna!