March Madness

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. How's it been? I've been silent on the writing since the new year. I feel the need to write as an outlet because I believe reading and writing is the greatest tool for communication as a medium. Sure, I talk to friends and family, but you just don't get to really say everything you want to say with friends and family. That's why I've had this blog for so many years. The blog is a good outlet not only for creativity but also to say everything I want to say. I haven't really been too busy or anything, but I do think I had some slight writer's block that lasted all of February. But I've been good. I've been reading, working, and tonight I was playing guitar and electronic keyboard, just practicing, and improvising. 

I've been on a roll since the new year 2026 reading a lot of books. So far already since January I've read 10 books: The Mammoth Hunters [by Jean M. Auel], Van Gogh The Passionate Eye [Pascal Bonafoux], Plato's Symposium, Caesar's War on Gaul, Lolita by Nabokov, Words of Wisdom, The Nibelungenlied,  Cousin Bette by Balzac, The New Grove Mozart, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I'm also currently reading The Portable Medieval Reader and A History of China. My reading has stayed mostly in the realms of fiction, non-fiction, western canon but I will sometimes still read science fiction, more modern day science fiction as well as the golden age sci fi stuff. 

All the reading has been keeping me sharp and keeping me going. The state of our country isn't good and now all of a sudden we're on day 5 in a war against Iran with our partner Israel. What does reading all these great books of the western canon tell you about the political nature of the times we're currently living in? As Hegel would put it, "We learn from history that we don't learn from history." As bad as Trump and the MAGA Republican tinfoil hat crowd are, we have seen this before and we have been here before. 

Even this war against Iran. We're shooting at them with all these airstrikes and we're hoping for a regime change with no boots on the ground as of yet, which is unheard of and has never happened before. Well, this scene looks a lot like Bush's declaration of war in Afghanistan, but at least Bush got approval from Congress to go to war. With Trump, he declared it and we were instantly in war. It's an interesting time to be alive in the United States, being someone of my age, of my education, of my economic and social class. 

You see, you could argue that Americans like me, American citizens with good education, good family structure, they're doing okay economically, they're eating well, they're exercising, they're getting entertained, they have friends and family, they read books, etc, well you might say that Trump, what Trump does, and the new war against Iran, maybe it might not affect them as much as you think. 

The reality is that the Trump regime has had a profound influence on practically every facet of American culture, politics, entertainment, and governance. I believe, personally, that ever since President Trump was elected, since even the first time, American culture has largely degenerated and gotten worse and worse. I could even see it among the largely minority employees and management at the retail grocery job I worked at for years. You could see that because they loved Trump and praised him, they wanted to become like Trump, which included becoming more hateful and full of cruelty towards others around them. For them Trump wasn't just a symbol of American conservatism, he was the example to show them that it was okay to be a racist, to be hateful, to be cruel, and show it anywhere and anytime they wanted. Yeah, it was that bad there folks. That was just a market. Imagine how people who love Trump would act in a mob [January 6], or in Congress as leaders in the White House. Houston, we have a problem.

Which brings us to the end of February 2026, a new war with Iran. This war is like the perfect foil for Trump because he was already in trouble for the killings of two US Citizens with his gestapo-esque police force ICE [Rene Good, and Alex Pretti who were called terrorists by Kristi Nome leader of Homeland Security] and in addition Trump was in trouble for his too close ties to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Also, there's the fact that the economy under Trump has slowed down a lot, there's a lot less jobs, food and gas prices are very high, and companies are putting more and more money and effort into AI [stupid idea] when in reality, Americans are struggling to pay rent, eat well, and find a job that gives them enough cash to live in a house or apartment. Trump's problem as President as always, has been affordability, as Democrats would say. Trump inherited a robust economy from Biden, and now when you go to Fatburger you're paying $24 for a burger, fries, and a soda. 

It almost seems at times like what Trump does is seemingly random. Which makes you wonder what is really going on in this world, what systems are controlling what's going on behind the scenes. For example, you notice how not once has Trump pushed back against Putin despite Putin's war crimes against Ukraine. So it makes you wonder, what does Putin have on Trump? Is Trump really a pedophile rapist like the newly reported story said? If its true, then we have to seriously discuss and decide what kind of a country we are and what kind of a country we should be. Because if we allow a guy who's done that to be our President and get us into a war then we have fundamentally failed as a democratic experiment. 

It helps to be somewhat of a cynic right now. In a way, to stay informed, you pretty much have to read the news every 24-48 hours or watch the news on TV daily, just to stay up to date on basic information, but in reality, you still have to question everything, not only Trump and his administration and their actions, but also the news and media itself, as well as yourself. Henry David Thoreau has this great quote where he says all the news stories are all things that have happened in other super old news stories from other times and years. That was a stunning revelation because in some sense, yes, it's very true. 

But why is this, why is that quote true? I think a small part of being a cynic is the feeling and knowing that something is amiss, something is not right, even though you don't know what it is, something like a conspiracy, who's to say that there isn't something like that going on right now and/or has been going on since the foundation of this state. Like I said, you have to question everything, even yourself and your own beliefs, even if you have a low education level, play videogames, and are more concerned about being 'turnt at da club.' There's something undeniable about the current times we're living in that has an eerie similarity to the past, something we don't understand, or perhaps will never be granted the right to understand. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

New year, Happy 2026

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Happy 2026! It's already been wild this year but we must keep pushing on with our goals and work. 

Personally, I've been tired a lot this year so far but I try to balance out a lot of rest with a lot of work at the job and activity at home. I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of music. I discovered Bach cantatas and I found a correlation between Bach's cantatas and Mozart's opera work, its downright fascinating. I've also been tuned in to Small's jazz club in Greenwich Village NYC, tuning into a lot of live performance music as well as their nightly jams. There's a community online there and we chat and talk a lot about music, everything from straight ahead jazz to avant garde jazz to classical and sometimes even rock. There was a funny moment during Christmas where a random jammer at Smalls went viral for having a breakdown and cursing out the other jammers. It went to the heart of how people that have breakdowns in public often get made fun of and criticized even though it could happen to anyone, and that we need to be more understanding of others. Other people thought he was rude and probably on drugs. The incident went viral and lots of youtubers made response videos about it. Yeah, that was a interesting phenomena during Christmas. 

In addition, it wasn't really that the guy was terrible. However, he brought an acoustic guitar to the jazz jam, which is a no-no, but he said in a interview video he's been struggling financially and doesn't have money for a regular electric guitar, which goes to him struggling mentally and apparently even being homeless for a while. I would agree that the hardcore jazz elite who shamed this guy publicly on YouTube got it wrong, and that we should be more understanding of this guy and his problems. He wasn't really that good at jamming, and he's not really a 'jazz guitarist,' and he doesn't know the songs per se, but his rhythm comping to the tunes and under the soloists was decent enough to be there onstage and I thought a lot of the jazz elite were publicly shaming him, to their own detriment. I think, even as hardcore musical afinados, we should be more understanding of different musicians and their ability to play the music, especially jazz, because not every jazz musician is a Charlie Parker or a Wes Montgomery. I've seen high caliber jazz fusion musicians perform at The Baked Potato in Studio City, LA, and a lot of times even their playing was uninspired and mediocre albeit tuneful and tasty.

Moving on, more importantly, everyone I know who has a heart has been disgusted by the murder-killing of Rene Good by an Ice Officer. What can I say about this? It's an outrage and should be denounced by our government but of course with Trump and the Trump administration he has decided to double down and say that Rene Good was in the wrong and that the Ice Officer did the right thing to do what he did. Compare the way the Trump Administration is treating Rene Good with the way they treated Charlie Kirk, that pretty much sums up the divide between the so-called woke far-left and the maga Trump republicans. But the way its being talked about through the media is that this is left-wing versus right-wing but the truth of the matter is that its more about the way American citizens are treated by Ice Officers and those in law enforcement like cops. It's more like a George Floyd killing than anything particularly political, but the media has us all divided on the issue as if it matters that she was a left-winger. I suppose in a way, it does matter, but for me personally, I see Rene Good's killing as like a George Floyd killing, for white people. 

In addition, I think race matters here in this context because I believe white people think that they have certain rights when it comes to law enforcement. Well, this incident rebukes the whole idea that white people have rights when it comes to law enforcement, because we see in this particular incident that Rene Good didn't have rights and that she was seen as something 'less than human,' and this particular Ice Official decided it was in his best interests and that it was okay for him to deny her her human rights, and kill her, murder her. 

Downright chilling stuff. Her story should chill us and warn us that we're not in Kansas anymore. This shows us Americans that Ice has been politized and policed against us as Americans and that if you or anyone is on their list you are in for a lot of trouble. We're probably too far already down the Maga Republican rabbit hole to get out of this deep backwater that we're in. What's the answer to this? I guess the Democrats would have to come to up with some deep strategy to win and take back control in 2028. But there are lots of problems with voting such as the fact that most voters aren't even politically aware or smart enough to make decisions that would be in their own best interests. One man's vote has to equal one man's education and without that, the system develops an outsider character like Trump to somehow win the White House for the second time after being convicted of rape and being two times impeached. And don't forget about the Epstein files. 

Lastly, there's a lot going on and it's hard to follow if you're just one person trying to live your life, provide for yourself and your family, and to be a productive intelligent member of American society. After all, if you're too busy struggling to make money at a job, providing for yourself and your family, and don't have enough time to dedicate to learning and educating yourself, then there's no way you can actually think about how things are so bad in America right now. You have to sort of have some kind of privilege to be able to read the news everyday, learn more about what's really going on in society, read books, educate yourself, these are things that not everybody really has time or space for. In fact, you'll find other people my age are spending their time playing video games, working nonstop at their 9-5 jobs, maybe they drink and/or smoke weed, they gamble, they're doing stocks, they're doing crypto/bitcoin, but most of them aren't politically aware or class conscious to the fact that things are going south very fast, probably faster than I can keep up to even write about in these blogs. Let me rephrase that, they're politically aware, but they're struggling so much that they can't do anything to change the System from within. Even from the last post I wrote, a lot has happened. 

In conclusion, there's a lot we can do but most people are going to be too busy trying to survive and maintain and cope with the life they've been given. We as young people are struggling to maintain the lives we've created for ourselves and our families. Not everybody can sit around and write blog posts about their thoughts or even read the news daily. And this ends up working in the bad guys' favor, because we have developed into an uneducated underclass that is too busy playing video games, gambling, and too busy working all the time in order to survive, that if you even think about the idea of questioning the status quo or the government, or the system itself, you will looked upon as like some kind of weirdo. "Is that a conspiracy too?" You tell me.  

The Downward Spiral of the Times

Hello world. Here I'd like to write an improvisatory speel about the downward spiral of the times we're currently living in, in 2025. 

    First off, this isn't just hard times, this is weird. The amount of division within our society is so bad its almost like civil war in wherever you go, whatever you do, say, or think. That's a bit excessive but just look upon how the Trump administration has handled Charlie Kirk's death. Instead of simply saying prayers for the guy and saying he was cool for right-wingers, they've decided to make the man a martyr for their cause-the right wing agenda. Them doing so has sowed more division and discord, more than even the shooter simply shooting the guy. In fact, right now most people could care less about the shooter and why he did it and they're more focused on the fallout, including the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel for simply mentioning that the shooter maybe was MAGA. 

    Moving on, you'll find that the division doesn't simply stop at politics or the fallout of Charlie Kirk's death. You'll find that you maybe won't be able to get along with certain family members, friends, coworkers, managers, maybe even some stranger will look at you in public with the evil eye for no apparent reason. Now, I'm not saying that everyone hates your guts, but maybe if you're noticing that you're getting more dislike and hate from others around you, you need to realize that sometimes its not you, it's them, it's a symptom of the times that we're currently living in. 

    Next, maybe you've played the good guy so long that you know that there's no way anyone can really truly hate you, well, in this current climate of discord, you'll find that no matter how good of a person you are, you will receive hate from certain individuals around you and even from strangers. I would say you have to trust no one in this particular society and times. In a way you have to even be critical of yourself in certain moments and situations, not just others. You need to be extra critical of the people closest to you, and especially critical of people that know or knew you in the past, and even more critical of strangers, especially in public.  

    In addition, I'm a person consuming a lot of media. I'm on YouTube, video games, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, NyTimes, LAtimes, washington post, MSNBC, and a lot of the media people are consuming may not be good for you. In fact, a lot of media out there is downright brain rot. I don't want to be too critical of the news here as I think more young people need to watch/read the news, but I've noticed that a lot of the left wing news media has turned more to the right, which is a bit alarming. Especially since the Kirk incident. 

    Lastly, people that disagree with you, call you out and condemn you in super harsh ways for lightly expressing your opinions are probably the most dangerous to you. We all have a right to share our thoughts and express our opinions and if somebody doesn't like what you have to write/say, then there's plenty of other media for them to go to. But in today's age, you'll find that you personally won't really be able to fully express yourself anymore. Part of it is the fact that simply saying what you truly think or believe is dangerous, and the other part of it is that people that don't like it will hurt/harm you for doing so, if they are so inclined. 

    In conclusion, I would go so far as to say that most people out there [including friends/family/people that used to/know you now/meet in the future] will end up screwing you over and backstabbing you if you aren't watching closely and take a step away from them. Trust me, this happened to me with countless friends, family, managers/jobs, my old work union, and even newer current people in my life. I hate to say it but it's going to get worse. Try to find some peace. Peace is the way. 

Watch this space. 

Hegel: Outlines of the Philosophy of Right

I read this book directly after reading The Phenomenology of Spirit. It was a great, smooth transition. Also keep in my mind that because I've read Kant, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, and a little Fichte, this makes a lot more sense that if I had gone in not knowing much about German philosophy, particularly the style known as German Idealism. Hegel is dense reading but his ideas are truly thought provoking and exciting for those who are curious. This is truly fascinating reading during the coronavirus pandemic of January 2021. What a great way to spend quarantine. 

Anyways, Hegel would say I have a good life because I have a job under a corporation, that is under a government, that is under a nation, we as a people all are one people together, and as individuals we mere atoms, nothing. However, there is a clear and important discussion about we the people, and how important the universal will is, how important it is to see the good, and make the world a better place. But remember that is only the universal will, and that the state must act in whatever ways it may, such as by fighting wars or making peace in the world, increased taxes, and such.

Communication Breakdown

I had a good experience today. I went out for a walk when I saw an older acquaintance of mine, a neighbor. A woman that I've talked to about life, and work, with here and there. 

We got to talking about what's going on in the world and it was a great experience. One of the problems right now is that people are so divided because they aren't communicating with each other in such a way that they're understanding each other. There's a big miscommunication campaign going on right now in the media, government, social media, and even in real life with our friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. 

She's a Jewish woman. She talked about her experiences growing up Jewish but not telling people she's Jewish, and how often she saw that white people made discriminatory comments about jews. She said she's been working on herself her whole life but that the brutal murder of George Floyd really was a shock where we have to question who we are as a nation. 

I told her that police brutality isn't just a black thing and that it's actually more of a white thing because there are more white men as leading police commissioners that make or abuse police policies in their precincts. But of course, I added that it's also the human condition, that is, it's a human rights issue that everybody should talk about.  

I told her about how I'd been racially profiled in Wisconsin as a teenager. And that I was lucky no police encounter ever escalated to the point of violence.

The point is that when we communicate with people in a meaningful way, others can see you, and you can see them, for who you/they are as an individual. Not as a number, race, or religion. When everyone sees one another for who they are as an individual, we can come to a better understanding of who we are and respect each other's lives and liberty in a more meaningful way. 

There's so much division in the nation right now, it's astounding. Just because somebody isn't the same skin color as you doesn't mean that they are any less of a human being. And if you think that talking about racism doesn't help then you might be a racist. The reality is that while sometimes talk can be petty, and downright disruptive, in the long run, talk is what brings us together, where we can show solidarity towards our fellow man, where we can see that although we don't have the same skin color or the same religion, that we are all in this together and that we all deserve love, dignity, and happiness.

So I urge you to talk to your fellow friends, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, and even talk to random strangers on the streets, everybody you want. The more you talk to people the more you can get to understand them, even if it's just a little bit at a time. This is walking the Earth. 

A little bit of understanding goes a long way. Communication is the key to victory against the evils of civil unrest and police brutality. Talk to people. Ask questions. Be smart. Make your own social circles. Have a diverse group with a variety of ideas and positions. We all have to talk to each other and make ourselves loud and clear. This is how things are changed in the world. Start small, end up with big achievements. Our voices together are unmatched by any President's tweet. The power of the vote has blood on its hands, it's the most valuable power the citizen has. Use it. Through communication, voting, and protests we can make the world a better place. 

Communication breakdown, It's always the Same
Havin' Another Breakdown, Drives me Insane   

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Leviathan is an example of early social contract theory. Written by Thomas Hobbes during the English Civil War (1642-1651), Leviathan (which refers to the Biblical Leviathan), Hobbes argues for complete rule by a sovereign, arguing that civil war and the state of nature (war against all) could only be avoided by a powerful government, a monarchy. The book was published in 1651 and offended all parties, Royalists and Catholics, and supporters of monarchy mainly because his views differed from the Divine Right of Kings, for in Hobbes' monarchy system, the sovereign would rule by the consent of the people. 

The first part deals with politics and human nature. Good and evil are terms for peoples' appetites.In nature, Hobbes says:

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

He goes on to explain all these laws of nature, and how the sovereign would represent the people even when they disagree with the sovereign.

This part of the book gets the political philosophy kicking, and you get a sense of Hobbes' language, and its been said that his writing style if of a particular humor, dry humor. I didn't get that from the reading, perhaps I missed that aspect. Looking back now, I can see what these book reviewers and bloggers are saying about it.  

The second part deals with the Commonwealth, he explains how the sovereign has some twelve principal rights. Subjects can't change a form of government. The sovereign can't be put to death. To prescribe the rules of civil laws and property. To make war and peace. To reward with riches and honor or to punish with corporal or pecuniary punishment or ignominy. And more.

He rejects a separation of powers but talks in detail about Monarchy (being the best form of government), Oligarchy, and Democracy. He says Monarchy is the best form of government because it leads to peace and prosperity for the people. Oligarchies and Democracies are corrupt, and civil wars can occur. Important to note that Hobbes wrote this during the English Civil War while in exile in Paris.

In addition, Hobbes states that the sovereign has control over matters of religious doctrines, and should do so always.

Part three is Of A Christian Commonwealth. He discusses the Ten Commandments and makes so many quotes from scripture, this part of the book gets quite dense, albeit important as to the Ecclesiastical studies of the time.

He talks a lot about the Catholic Church, how the people can't obey both the Pope, and the sovereign, for a leviathan can't have two heads. Hobbes wants the preservation of a life, a world where people would be happy and live nice lives. He thinks that living in and not rebelling against a strong state is the best way to make this happen. 

He states that the Pope and Clergy don't have the ultimate say over the people, that it is the sovereign Christian Kings are the supreme Pastors of their people. He talks about which scriptures we should trust, and why. The test is done by Hobbes examining scripture and saying its very trust worthy, and because the Bible is the most trust worthy when it comes to these things.

Part 4 is called The Kingdom Of Darknesse. Hobbes doesn't refer to Hell with this, but rather ignorance and the darkness in misinterpretation of scripture. There are four causes: Misinterpretation of Scripture, Demonology of heathen poets, Vain Philosophy (of the Greeks, especially Aristotle), and by mingling with both these, false or uncertain traditions, and feigned or uncertain history.

Hobbes finishes by inquiring who benefits from the errors he diagnoses:

Cicero maketh honourable mention of one of the Cassii, a severe judge amongst the Romans, for a custom he had in criminal causes, when the testimony of the witnesses was not sufficient, to ask the accusers, cui bono; that is to say, what profit, honour, or other contentment the accused obtained or expected by the fact. For amongst presumptions, there is none that so evidently declareth the author as doth the benefit of the action.

Hobbes concludes that the beneficiaries are the churches and churchmen.

Hobbes didn't seem to like the Church or Clergymen that much. In fact, when Leviathan was published it was publicly burned. People wanted to kill him because his ideas differed from the Godly Divine Right of Kings, instead saying the sovereign reigns only in the consent of the people, and has certain obligations under the social contract. We need the sovereign monarchy because without it we are left to the Laws of Nature, in which life is nasty, brutish and short.

This was quite a read for me, over some six-hundred pages long. I started it a long time ago, but it took me a while to finish reading it. The spelling loses consistency, (dry humor perhaps), and the professorial tone over the novel is also apparent. The old archaic English can take a while to get used to. I had to look up a lot of words online on the google dictionary (my favorite Hobbes words were corporeal and incorporeal) to make sense of certain sections, which made the reading process longer. The book is incredibly dense, and can take a lot of focus to make sense of. I can't say I got the complete understanding of this text, rather I had an astounding overview from Betrand Russell, and a hands-on approach with the original text. However, I got a lot out of it, from intellectual understanding, to pervasiveness argumentation, to English civil war ideology. Its one of those important texts, and it was an accomplishment to have read it. 

There's also a certain rhythm and logical conclusiveness there too. This appears to my post-modern millennial mind to be a treatise on a particular kind of conservatism, something that relates to modern government especially now more than ever.

I already knew what Leviathan was about when I read Betrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, but reading the full text, I can see things straight from the source. Many of Hobbes' ideas have transcended time and are in use in today's governments. 

Read this if you like philosophy

Metropolis

Metropolis is a science fiction film from 1928 that's inspired by the book of the same name written by Thea von Harbou, an actress (who plays Maria, a working class prophet) in the film and also Fritz Lang's wife. Where do I start with this film? There's so much going on, much of it is open to interpretation from the viewers. Here's a basic synopsis.

The story follows Freder, the son of the city's (Metropolis) ruler and Maria, a poor worker. They try to overcome the societal differences between the poor that live beneath the city and the rich who (live above ground) wear white shirts and shorts and play tennis. The movie is said to have Communist ideas, I can see that but to me its not overtly pronounced. I see the film more for its beauty, to find that common ground between the rich and poor.

So Freder is hanging out in some sort of garden relaxing and Maria comes in with a bunch of poor kids to show them how the rich live. "Look at them. These are your brothers," Maria says. Maria and the kids get sent away but Freder follows her to a machine room. He sees an explosion that kills some workers and experiences a hallucination. In the hallucination he sees workers being fed to the Machine, a sort of Aztec sacrificial ceremony, at least that's what I thought when I saw it.

Freder tells Fredersen, his dad (and ruler of the city) but his indifference towards the treatment of the workers leaves him cold, so Freder decides to help the workers in any way he can, in an attempt to help the poor and disenfranchised. There's a lot of stuff that happens in between this as the movie is about two hours and twenty-eight minutes long but for the sake of a shorter blog post I'll summarize things more briefly.

Later, we see Maria is prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can unite the working and ruling classes together. There's a mad occult scientist who uses this machine-woman (robot) to create another version of Maria, who goes on to sow discord within the working class, creating many problems and dissent.

The workers end up destroying the Heart Machine, which the false Maria told them to do. This causes the city to flood, and all their children are left to drown unless somebody saves them. The real Maria and Freder end up saving them. The working class burn the false Maria at the stake as a witch and find out that it was just a robot, as the fire burns through to the metal. There's a fight between Freder and the mad scientist Rotwang but Rotwang ends up falling to his death. In the end Freder fulfills his role as mediator between the working class and ruling class by uniting hands with the foreman (in charge of the working class), his father, and himself, a sort of male triangular unity, perhaps even referencing the Holy Trinity, the father, son, and holy spirit.

So that's it. If you think about it and see the movie, the plot is quite simplistic. Its the ideas that go within them that's open to interpretation, which is where a lot can be said of the movie. First, I would like to point out the fact that there's a lot of science fiction based on this: the idea of a political break between the rich and poor. The poor trying to 'get whats theirs', a sort of futurist communism, although in this movie the Marxism is probably very high by today's science fiction standards, but at that time I would say its not quite as pronounced. I might be wrong on that though. So yes, the idea of social construckts, government, poor living underground, and the rich living above ground is something seen in tons of science fiction. Its quite a common trope.

Then there's the idea of love between Freder and Maria. They obviously love each other and find romance in each other. They ended up saving all the children of the underclass together, becoming surrogate parents to an entire generation. That's love for sure. One could say that Freder might have even become interested in following Maria to the Machine Room because he was interested in her, interested in a woman who wasn't from his social class. In doing this he opened up to the world around him, and found love in the process, a sense of discovery.

Then there's the ideas of science and the occult, another common idea in sci-fi. Rotwang, the mad scientist is a true screwball who planned on using the Machine-woman (named Hel) to take over Metropolis. In the scene where we first see the Machine-woman we see a giant pentagram symbol at the foot of her body. This signified a sort of luciferian procreation. Metropolis the book has more occult associations than this movie, which makes sense because its easier to do that in a book than in a movie that will be showed to thousands of people.

The science part was pretty cool. In Rotwang's lab we see all sorts of potions, tubes, lights, bells, and whistles. It was a cross between a 15th century laboratory and a science physics lab from the year 2000. Something like that. It was quite something. That was a cool scene indeed.

In the end we find that Freder has fulfilled his destiny as a mediator between the rich and poor. One could say he was swayed and perhaps even chosen by Maria to be the guy to do this. This shows us that perhaps leaders in government have to be certain kinds of people, come from certain places, have a lot of money, and perhaps be chosen for and by the people, much like the systems we have in place today for our political elections and office.

For example, if Freder wasn't the son of the guy ruling the city he wouldn't have as much power or sway over government. If he wasn't the son of the ruler Maria might not have come to him with the children. This ending gives me a lot of ideas about government and power. Can politicians come from anywhere, be anyone, and still be elected into high positions of power? I'm not so sure. I think it works in some cases and other cases it doesn't. There's a gray area for sure.

Take for example Donald Trump. He's been a media highlight for a long time and he didn't come out of nowhere. He was the son of a rich guy, thus making him rich. He started talking about government and the poor white working class of America voted him into the Presidency. It could not have happened if he didn't have those other traits: being born rich, using that money to political advantage, and using his political platform to speak to the poor white working class.

This movie makes me think about things like that, why certain politicians get elected into power. However, its probably more important to think of this movie as a great example of German expressionist art, of which it is a wonderful example.

You can watch the film here.

HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!