PNS editor Franz Schurmann is a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of numerous books on foreign politics. Nor is it world horror over ethnic cleansing which arouses memories of the Holocaust. History is stories about ancestry which entire peoples share but which in individuals become as vivid as personal remembrances. It's widely held that in the Balkans there is too much history. A good way to get a sense of history is to envisage it as a stream.
All streams have currents.
If they are big enough we can swim in them. If we swim leisurely and carefully, it can be exhilarating or soothing. We can be such good swimmers that we may even forget we are in water. Or we may be poor swimmers or good dreamers and so run the risk of drowning. Within a few decades what had been a prosperous Orthodox Christian people turned into scattered remnants of peasants, shepherds and monks.