The Idea

There were contrasting visions

of how to make their parts

individually into a collective

they shared a yearning to

dissolve the egotistical person

into an ideal community they

desired to be anonymous medieval

mansions building a cathedral or

social insects, like ants, sacrificing

themselves for the good of the hive

there must be a common understanding

unlike a dream to which the individual

humbly submits in diametrical opposition

to the romance of the solitary genius

working in splendid isolation:  even

phenomena that could be grasped by a

single observer, like clouds, were to

be viewed globally:  such was the ideal idea.