We’ve been spending more time in Georgetown ever since Christine joined Side Rail, so I walked around to see what I can see. Much of this is stuff I’ve seen many times but never stopped to photograph. Some of it is new. I’ve been trying to train myself to “see” more clearly, even without the novelty of new places.
“During the past two hundred years Western philosophically-oriented, and later also socially-oriented thinking has been increasingly reflective and differentiated in its search for an understanding of the phenomenon of alienation. Marx saw also the moment near at hand to do something concrete about its solution.
Yet, it appears that theory and practice, while becoming more integrated, are also becoming more ambivalent. Two extreme fronts can be observed. The one, older and traditional, which is usually identified with religious sentiment and philosophical speculations, prefers to solve the problem by seeing alienation as primarily, if not exclusively, related to interiority, even to sin and original sin. Man must be converted to a toilsome interior purification. … This liberation of man must never be the work of malediction and violence. Rather, mankind’s fate is a long-drawn process of individual transformation and collective illumination. Actually, everyone knows that this has been the religious and philosophical wisdom of East and West throughout the ages. And Christianity in particular has attempted to institutionalize the reform of interiority and the practice of love. … However, it appears that an overwhelming concentration on the interiority of the problem will not be sufficient to solve the problem.
The other, more recent and revolutionary, approach is an extreme call for exteriority, for the liquidation of alienation. The objectivity must be liquidated, in order to transform and liberate man. The development of concrete forms of human alienation forces this alternative upon man.
The sole concentration on making men better by spiritual means comes too late in view of the surging masses of mankind and the awesome products of their alienation. … While the former appear elusive, the latter submit to practical manipulation. … How can these two extreme views be reconciled in view of the manifest urgency of resolving alienation on this earth without violence?”
(Oskar Schatz and Ernst Florian Winter)
Georgetown is a great spot if you like pleasure spiked with pain and music is your aeroplane, it’s your aeroplane.