Taking Giant Steps: 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀 𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐍: 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐎𝐍𝐄’𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐁𝐎𝐀𝐑𝐃

𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙰𝚁𝙲 𝚂𝙾 𝙵𝙰𝚁: 𝙸𝙳𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝚃𝚈 & 𝙸𝚃𝚂 𝙲𝙾𝚂𝚃𝚂
Over the past two posts, we tracked how 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 get manufactured, and what they cost, in the most concrete terms: first in dollars and circulation, then in human life.

First, 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮: a man-made figure so heavily circulated and marketed that he has become a cultural emblem, an identity that’s 100% fabricated yet omnipresent. A capitalist cherry on top, it’s also wonderfully monetized: being one of the world’s most recognized faces sells.

Then 𝗛𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘄𝗮𝘆: one of a few writers canonized during his lifetime – in large part because he built a scandalous public self so successfully that what’s behind it steadily eroded. Ego liquified, until the final collapse: that of the lived self into the performed persona. An extreme case of identity as a lifelong publicity campaign: a lifelong performance with real consequences.

𝙲𝚁𝙾𝚂𝚂𝙸𝙽𝙶: 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝙴𝙻𝙵 𝙸𝙽 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙲𝚄𝚁𝚁𝙴𝙽𝚃
Today, we close that arc with 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐧, and he flips the premise by offering us an augmented vision, an interpretation of self as a forever-moving point on a 𝘶𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦-al continiium. In "𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒍𝒚𝒏 𝑭𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒚," identity is detached from the trivial, limited & limiting, exchange-based, profit-oriented and transactional. It isn’t a product or a persona as seen in Santa & Hemingway. In Whitman’s electric cosmos, the ‘self’ essentially ceases to exist as an internalized, ‘costume’ notion, and identity becomes an extension of what we are in our meat-suits — a passage into the realm of transcendental and metaphysical.

The core motion of "𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒍𝒚𝒏 𝑭𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒚" is that it is not just a poem about a place, but a meditation on shared passage. Whitman does not position himself as a fixed observer; he casts himself as a passenger, one among many, moving through the same current of time as past and future strangers alike. The “you” he addresses is not metaphorical. It is literal, delayed, inevitable. We are separated by years, histories, bodies, languages, yet bound by the same transit. We are all passengers on Earth.

From this angle, identity is no longer a sealed unit, nor a performance staged for recognition. It becomes relational, porous, in motion — a temporary configuration inside a larger, continuous human stream. The shift is from the one to the many, from the ego to the whole: an expanded angle where we view ourselves not as separate, but as part of something larger. The individual does not vanish; it extends, held within a living continuity where millions have stood before, and millions will come after.

To see oneself this way echoes existential philosophy: the 𝗺𝘆𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗶𝘀𝘆𝗽𝗵𝘂𝘀, where stone is always getting pushed to the top of the hill only to fall back down. Peace comes from accepting participation in the motion rather than expecting a final resolution. Applied to identity, the self becomes an ongoing passage: formed, shed, and re-formed in time. Coherence comes less from arrival than from consenting to the movement.

And this is precisely where Whitman reconnects us to 𝑹𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝑬𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒉, 𝑶𝒑𝒆𝒏 𝑺𝒌𝒚 as well.

𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙵𝙴𝚁𝚁𝚈 𝚃𝙾 𝚁𝙾𝙰𝙳: 𝚁𝙴𝙾𝚂 𝙸𝙽 𝙼𝙾𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽
𝗦𝗸𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗻 —the novel’s protagonist— is, quite literally, a 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙣 𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝. He moves through landscapes, encounters, identities, belief-systems, and inherited narratives as crossings. Like Whitman’s 𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆, the 𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱 in 𝑹𝑬𝑶𝑺 means travel rather than arrival. It is about shared motion through time, about what happens when a character loosens their grip on a fixed self and allows experience —people, strangers, histories— to pass through versus be filtered, categorized, resisted.

By learning to let go, shed societally & self-inflicted masks and roles —and by moving beyond presumptive, tunnel-vision categorical thinking— characters widen their frame of perception not just inward & toward the self, but also outward. In doing so, they gain a fundamentally deeper empathy, grounded in this newly broadened, more open & selfless (de-ego-fied) view of others —close ones and strangers alike— and the world. A world now recognized as an interconnected and infinite matrix, in which they are an integral particle: existing within a specific timeframe, yet simultaneously traversing beyond the concept of time.

Whitman supplies the positive ontology of this movement. Where identity elsewhere collapses into mask or spectacle, he shows what happens when ego dissolves without annihilation — when dividers fall and the self does not disappear, but joins the current. Identity becomes not something to defend or perform, but something to participate in: a temporary formation inside a shared, universal human experience. A collective phenomenon, if you will.

𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝙰𝙺𝙴𝙰𝚆𝙰𝚈: 𝚆𝙴 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙰𝙻𝙻 𝙿𝙰𝚂𝚂𝙴𝙽𝙶𝙴𝚁𝚂
In this sense, "𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒍𝒚𝒏 𝑭𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒚" is a philosophical rehearsal for the same gesture 𝑹𝑬𝑶𝑺 keeps returning to:
the courage to stop anchoring the self to rigid borders, and instead accept what
Whitman already knew—
𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘵.

𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙩’𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙞𝙧𝙘𝙡𝙚: identity sold, identity performed, identity released into the common current.