Conclusions Eastern Europe, September 2012

Any observations necessarily are all the result of visual experiences since I did not have a conversation with any local inhabitants at all.  It is usually the case that it is difficult to meet people in developed nations, and worse if you happen to be old.  I also think it is 'not cool' now to speak to others except via some tiny screen or on some cell phone.  Certainly, the immense volume of tourists today makes it unlikely that locals are anxious to speak to them, except unless they want something,

In all five cities...
The immediate and constant impression in every city and nation I visited was the complete lack of obese people.  It is just as much of a shock to return home and see so many XXXLs  cruising the streets .
For me, being from Toronto, it was also constantly surprising how white the populations were in every city I visited.  You may not have been in Toronto, or not recently, and you would probably be shocked to see that the so-called Caucasian population is either a minority now, or very close to it.  I don't care, and mention it only as a demographic and visual matter.  I thought U.N. members of developed nations had an equal obligation to take in considerable numbers of refugees.  I recall that Switzerland was way out of compliance and was induced into cooperating only after some years of kicking and screaming.  But I can say that I was walking and on public transit constantly day after day, and there were days I did not ever see even one non-white - except for obvious tour groups like Asians.

The overwhelming vandalism everywhere...
Berlin has had a reputation for skinheads and graffiti for a couple of decades.  But I was saddened by the utter, mindless defacing of every city I visited.  Not only handsome buildings, but a lot of marble and granite statues (from which the paint can never be removed).  Worse, the obsessive scratching of glass and metal surfaces is ubiquitous, disgusting and  a kind of collective insanity among the vandals.  My favourite restaurant in Berlin had one glass window looking out onto a park thick with large and beautiful old trees. That sheet of glass was 6' x 12' and some of the meanest, most reprehensible people alive, scratched some initials and symbols (well, at their own moronic level) into the v. centre of the pane.  The damage is probably about 16 x 16".  It would cost a huge amount replace and I am sure the arrogant idiots would do the same thing again.  In that lovely neighbourhood, everything is - I mean every single inch of every building-  covered in spray painted nonsense in several colours.  They say that some residents actually paint over it weekly, but it only presents a new palette for the slobs to work upon, and that they cannot keep up with the vandals. I must add here, almost nothing makes me angrier than the so-called art galleries and writers who make claims that some of this vandalism is art.
On a few trips to China. I saw the results of the hideous 'Cultural revolution.'  Most of the damage - and of course - dead bodies, have been long since removed.  And the Chinese I spoke with all were entirely in denial - they will all tell you that it was really nothing at all, really minor, nothing important was hurt.  Then you see a formerly noble stone lion with its head mostly broken off due to hammers attacking.  And you can find quite a lot of items still listed in travel guides which no longer even exist.
 What this all means is, China has no culture, unless you think shopping is a cultural matter (I constantly ask even educated Chinese to name their best national writers so I can read their works.  It is only 1 in 100 that have any idea at all of great Chinese writers - like in the West, where some can only name 'the bible' which is not actually recognized as great writing).  Mao was in fact, an uncultured jerk and an uneducated peasant and thug.  In a few decades, he and his fellow thugs eradicated anything and everything from architecture depts. in Universities, to libraries, to art to instilling such fear in the entire population, that China's culture was abolished; to the extent that you would find it hard to discover more than the tiniest fraction of Chinese in any way interested in any cultural matter.  Worse, I constantly find Chinese still praising Mao.  Let me be clear; the Chinese situation was state -sponsored and directed vandalism, which is clearly not the case in the West at all.  But the results are the same.  The constant dumbing down, stupidification, and political correctness of the population here also will have about the same effect as closing down faculties in universities.

What the Chinese cultural revolution means to us
Why does this matter?  Because I have feared since my travels in China that this will eventually happen here.  I fear it even more since that truly precious Rothko canvas in the Tate modern was assaulted and ruined with a large section of graffiti this past week. The problem is 1).  The trash class has no respect for anything at all.  They allegedly do most - or much - of this damage to gain entry into drug sales.  Certainly today, drug sales are indisputably important to the apparently vast population of high income people who love to consume same, and thereby perpetuate the various crimes of the drug sellers.  2).  There has always been a contempt for culture of any sort that the under-classes regard as being representative of wealthier classes.  Well, for the most part, it is difficult not to be wealthier than them.  The new Four Seasons opera building in Toronto was only a week away from its opening, when a spray painter wrote a huge and long message across its metal and glass with some resentment toward people who could possibly attend operas.  Following that, there were plenty of messages on the internet congratulating the vandal who sympathized with his ignorance.
I saw quite new and advanced subway cars and many streetcars in Vienna, with windows scratched severely.  There seems to be no limit at all to the damage these goons will do.
The hip hop, thug, goon, criminal, gang- and ignorance-loving era we live in is not going to end soon.  Rothko was - in my view - the greatest artist of the XXth Century.  The nine panel Seagram set that was displayed in the Tate (one panel of which was ruined) are the most profound and compelling abstract paintings I ever saw.  I have read art critics and others who also say the experience of sitting that small, circular room surrounded only by those panels was an ineffable and singular experience.  How this deranged "artist" could have selected those particular works to assault makes me think there is a Satan.  I think the future of great museums will be all works of art behind glass walls.

Think about this
A few years ago, I had been travelling in Asia a couple of weeks and was finishing up on the Island of Pulau Wei off the north tip of Sumatra in a really primitive  situation - which I loved.  By that time, I was really missing hearing classical music and was often thinking how much I would enjoy hearing some Mahler or Sibelius.  Then I slowly came to realize something I never realized previously. 
If you isolate the European cultural period from the mid-1700s to around 1900, that is the bulk of our culture today.  In fact, the parts of Europe we all most enjoy, the Baroque, Rococo, buildings, the grand interiors of opera houses, castles, palaces, the great parks and gardens so perfectly laid out,  the precious pianos & instruments of the time, the vast collections of antiques, and libraries almost all come from those couple of hundred years.  Just erase, Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and other composers and Victor Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens, etc. etc., and (somewhat earlier) Rembrandt, Renoir, Durer, Vermeer, and all the great painters and sculptors, and what we would be left with for "Western culture" would be very thin indeed.
It struck me while travelling that Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China, actually the whole of Asia has fragments of culture mostly scattered around in different tribes and ethnic groups but they did not happen to have that inexplicable period of colossal creative productivity that has endured in the West.
I read that the philosopher Bertrand Russell was in China in the '20s.  That was while the emperor still lived in the Forbidden city and he could not have gone inside of it.  But he did write that he thought the Temple of Heaven might be the most beautiful building in the world.  Upon reflection, even 90 years later, I think I might agree with him.  But as old and large as China is, it has only a handful of remarkable buildings, while Europe has armies of them, all full of many sorts of treasures, and most of them from the most slender slice of Western Civilization and Culture.
It is only a stroke of good fortune that some of this survived war after war.  When I was in the USAF in the 60's, the truly militant career officers and airmen all wanted to see nuclear weapons used on Russia and the sooner the better. The had no concern at all of what great and small treasures they would be destroying. I read that when JFK wanted the pentagon generals to be certain Laos did not fall under Russian influence, the generals demanded free use of nuclear weapons.  Laos then (and to a lesser extent now) is about like a national park anywhere else - it is almost impossible to imagine what target a nuclear weapon could be used upon.  It is a wonder that anything survives such colossal arrogance and ignorance is these cases.  I am grateful for what remains, and that was much of the point of this 2012 European trip.