Again, all of these thoughts of the Balkans are about places in which I can think and work, and write, and have some connection to the culture. My own country is facing some trouble with corruption, and I'm unable to find such a place in the place where I was born, so I am forced to a life of discovery rather than comfort. Adorno, Auerbach, Mann, and Benjamin, among many others, faced a similar fate in the last historical era (taking a stadial view of history is always risky in the near term--one can only know when a reversal happens, not precisely what it is), with varying results.
From the chyron on the news channel feed at the inexpensive gym, it seems the Chinese are reading Spengler (decline of the West, shadowlands, etc.). I've never actually read him, but the way the contemporaneous philosophers speak of him, it seems a bit like a fellow who sees Krakatoa erupt, and writes a bad poem about it, which is reprinted in all the newspapers. Dismissing the poem is easy enough, but then the ashes, and the season of darkness.
Gently down the stream, within the mechanisms of industrial prosperity.