All those hands! It amazes me there are still new things, everywhere.
Reading Schiller's "Ode to Joy".
Freude, Freude, treibt den Raeder
In der grossen Weltenuhr.
When I think of universal brotherhood, I think about Whitman asking why are all the best poets are nationalist poets, alluding to Goethe. America and Germany both being sort of fabricated and disintegrated nations, respectively. Are these intense feelings of universal brotherhood really an expression of profound loneliness and awareness of the emptiness of national boundaries? The beginnings of capitalist atomization? Maybe this is why Hopper is always sited as the ultimate expression of the American national character. There's real empathy, and there are grand delusions. I had always associated these feelings with anti-nationalism, universal humanhood. Are loneliness, jingoism, and universal brotherhood the same emotion with different cognitive superficialities pasted on top? The difference in outcomes is not superficial.
Those who dwell in the great circle,
Pay homage to sympathy!
It leads to the stars,
Where the Unknown reigns.
Other thoughts: Looking for examples of turquerie in contemporary American culture. Appropriating for the purposes of colonization.
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