The Individual and the Mass
Chiaromonte, Nicola
If it is true that we live in a mass society, we must immediately admit one fact: there are some individuals who are more affected by it than others, but there are not, nor can there be,...
...It is an elementary rationality, which has the quality both of natural necessity and constriction from above...
...In what sense, then, may one say that the intellectual is superior to the man of the masses...
...From the point of view of the uniqueness of the individual as from that of the universal quality of "values," the situation appears to them very nearly the worst possible...
...But actually the crisis concerns more fundamental facts...
...Indeed, such an action is characterized by rationality, in the sense in which one considers it rational for the individual to submit to circumstances independent of his will...
...In this way we experience a brutal sense of the ephemeral, material, dreary, overwhelming...
...One could indeed say that, given the situation in which we find ourselves, we can communicate only by remaining external to each other as much as possible...
...But to recognize this does not wipe out the feeling any more than it calms the anxiety to "find room": it only represses and muffles the feeling, which continues to lie, intact, at the bottom...
...From the tolerance that is intrinsic in such a situation comes the optimistic attitude in looking at "modern times...
...Even on occasions of little weight (like those given as examples) , the experience of the crowd is not limited to the feeling of anonymity...
...Before developing his famous analysis of the "revolt of the masses" Ortega y Gasset "places" the phenomenon of the "mass" by drawing the reader's attention to what he calls a "visual experience" —"the fact of agglomeration, of plenitude...
...idealistic because it assumed the existence (at the bottom and on the fringes of the common conditions of existence) of a soul, a consciousness, that was impervious to the quality of the relations which could be established between individuals who live together in a determined social situation...
...To think in this way was both grossly materialistic and irredeemably idealistic—materialistic because it was imagined that in a society relations between individuals could remain purely external, physical, economic, material...
...In daily experience, the mass situation is presented as an accomplished fact, that is neither just nor unjust...
...no one has created it, but everybody is forced to use it...
...Such a man, granted that he exists, would be an intellectual sophist, not a mass man...
...The most obvious example is the language of propaganda, advertising, and what are called, not by chance, "media of mass communication...
...We feel a contrast between our individual beings and a social situation in which necessity, automatism, and collective servitude are especially refractory both to the individual's personal demands and to the "aristocratic values" which (at least at times) the individual seeks and by which he sometimes feels himself inspired...
...Simplifying greatly, one can say that it is a social situation in which the experience of collective necessity is very strong...
...Who is he—this being who is both an intimate and a stranger...
...The expression of complex ideas, subtle evaluations, the communication of delicate feelings must evidently be left for other occasions...
...At the very least it will be a mixture of the selected and of the vulgar...
...And the fact remains that we do not leave the cave in a mass, but only one by one...
...This is an extreme situation...
...If he wishes to talk to others, he is obliged to use their language...
...So corrupt a situation does not change by virtue of pure ideas, nor by violence, but uniquely, "according to the order of Time," through our suffering the common lot in common, seeking to understand it...
...and one also begins to perceive what is effectively the relation between a mass situation and aristocratic values—a relation of externality and suspension...
...he seeks, not freedom, but the organization of a force capable of assuring the satisfaction of his needs...
...This already sets him in bondage...
...For this reason the mass situation is a morally extreme one...
...Even according to Ortega y Gasset's definition, the mass man, the "man in the street," homo communis, is not someone who refuses to give reasons or does not care about being in the right: he has not reasons to give and, as for being in the right, he cannot care about it...
...Thus, keeping to the obvious, it is natural and inevitable that, in the crowd on a subway, everyone has his share of discomfort...
...One is in a crowd on the street, on public conveyances, in a movie, in a stadium, not because one has decided to mix with the crowd, but because one cannot help it...
...All is momentary, there is no durable meaning either in our acts or in our thoughts...
...The mass and the few are inextricably mixed...
...Of truth, as of liberty, the individual feels only the privation, and only when he is face to face with himself —in the lack of reason and of sense which he discovers in his existence...
...Equating the needs of the body and relations with our fellows is in itself a serious fact...
...Such ties do not appear bad in themselves, just as being crushed in a mob does not seem degrading in itself...
...The simple mixing of such a conventional language with the more or less I76 authentic language of private life and of significant exchanges between individuals creates a situation without precedent...
...Now, if one speaks of the relationship between the mass situation and spiritual and cultural "values," the first point to clear up is that of the language which is appropriate to the relationship, of the meanings which it allows to be communicated...
...And it is also clear that the others have the same right as we do...
...inevitable and "natural," but unjustifiable and artificial...
...solitary and unanimous...
...One must, however, keep two things in mind...
...We have naturally assumed that, while on the one hand there was the common people (the "mass") which got more and more common, there remained on the other hand, in some circles or privileged classes (the youth, or the people, or the proletariat, or even the elite) the cult of authentic feelings and of "aristocratic values"—a human "nature" more or less intact...
...From this, along with the inevitable passivity, comes an experience of privation and of painful tension...
...The language of the mass, based as it is on ready-made notions, consists of cut and dried formulas in which words have a fixed value, purely indicative and only slightly expressive...
...We can exchange only the most conventional words...
...GIVEN THE EXISTENCE on the fringes of the crowd, of an elite (or of a chosen class) what will be the relations between them...
...The trouble is that a great enough number of unimportant moments and indifferent acts gives us the precise image of the perfect mass-man—the man whose existence has a minimum of importance and who passively submits to this fact without even recognizing it...
...his closeness weighs on me, but so does mine on him...
...The intellectual can distinguish himself from the mass only by his greater consciousness of their common situation...
...The situation is extreme not so much as regards culture as its raison d'être, which is truth lived and participated in...
...Obviously not, and normally one would not even have such an idea...
...IV One can at this point return to what, according to Ortega y Gasset, distinguishes the mentality of the mass-man: the fact that "to have an idea does not mean to have reasons for having it...
...For the single individual this can be more or less painful...
...In which case, the spiritual privilege of the elite has already been rather trimmed down...
...In that situation„ I am reduced to the minimum and I know it—just as I know that a panic in the crowd would be enough to crush me...
...The crucial fact, however, escapes both optimists and pessimists...
...How will the elite make itself understood without adapting its language (that is, its values) to the mass...
...When one deals with a worker in a shop, or with an individual in a subway crowd, the mass situation is much more indifferent and, at the same time, much more rigid than any other social occasion...
...But this is also a grave constriction, because an individual can appear as a simple physical unit only when seen from outside...
...Now the conditions of mass society have this in common: the individual's own point of view is regularly driven down to the bottom...
...I1 One outlines in this fashion a rather wretched image of individual destiny...
...Oi Brotoi...
...Optimism seems groundless...
...But no one, except I71 perhaps technical specialists, could say whether that was inevitable in an absolute sense or "just"—whether one could not do something better...
...nI The individual, in his work, in politics, in the circumstances of social Iife, may submit to acting in a given way because "he can't help it...
...At certain times we feel ourselves to be individuals endowed with feelings, needs, and spiritual demands which are not those of the anonymous crowd...
...essentially unstable and dangerous, but yet reassuring...
...One cannot avoid submitting to the numerous bondages of organization and bureaucracy which life in common imposes...
...This appears clearly enough when one realizes that communication between individuals in a crowd is reduced to conventional signs, or, in any event, to a very impoverished language...
...My relations with my neighbor then assume a rather peculiar quality: the person next to me is a stranger and, at the same time, reflects at every point my own condition...
...In the case of the great number, even an arithmetically unexceptionable division is always imposed from outside: it can appear materially equal, but we can never be sure that it is justified...
...Or else one must submit, adapt oneself, maneuver, manage things cleverly, and wait for the propitious occasion which permits everyone to have a little more space, ease, and freedom...
...Truth appears only in lived experience, in feeling oneself in harmony with the nature of things and the world...
...Since the modern situation is presented as a simple state of fact, in itself neutral as to the more complex demands of the individual, one deduces that, whatever its imperfections and present evils, it is always possible to "christianize" them, let us say, or "humanize" them—to make them evolve towards the "better...
...To the extent to which he preserves some freedom, however, the intellectual cannot accept a situation and the language it involves simply because "he cannot help it...
...Existence is literally "unbelievable," and an unbelievable existence means an existence which drags on in a state of continual bad faith...
...What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely to find room," he observes...
...It would be absurd to maintain that a given social situation hinders liberty of thought or the possibility, for the individual, of behaving honestly and delicately to the man next to him...
...But such an assumption is not legitimate...
...And common truth is found and lived in common: it is a vital harmony which no idea or cultural form, no single individual, can ever really express, much less create...
...Its modes depend, of course, on the ability and good will of those in charge...
...Now, if he had dwelt upon this experience of agglomeration, of the crowd, of not finding room, he would perhaps havq led us to the heart of the "mass situation...
...One can, of course, make the hypothesis of a radical withdrawal of the elite from the mass...
...And yet the situation is obscure and troubling...
...But neither does one accept it...
...Indeed, to be precise, it is not we who feel anonymous in the crowd, it is the others who are anonymous to us...
...But he knows one thing for certain: he exists and works in a situation in which he himself has only an equivocal and doubtful relation to tradition, to the "aristocratic values," to reasons and intelligible truths...
...If in the society in which we live mass conditions and mass relationships predominate, this cannot fail to affect our vision of the world and of human relations...
...he would have compunctions about doing wrong and his situation would change...
...Such a tongue resembles the language of cybernetics which the experts themselves call a dead language—incapable of transmitting information about new facts...
...This becomes clear once we recognize it as a fact in the life of the individual consciousness, rather than as an external fact...
...In such a situation one is infinitely distant from any sense of security...
...as if, in addition, I know that my relation with him is purely occasional and transient...
...it is neutral as regards any distinction of race, color, or nationality...
...As a matter of fact, the question is not majority and minority, the mob and the elite...
...above all, it must be freely sought and desired...
...doing what one does, not because it is natural, and not even because one considers it positively useful, but because one wishes to avoid the complications and bad results which would come (to oneself and to others) from acting differently...
...That is, the advantages which one derives from yielding to collective demands instead of resisting them can be more or less great...
...If one assumes that such a man thinks capriciously...
...The question of doing right or wrong, whatever sense it has, is present and disturbing just because it is avoided, or better, repressed...
...The mass situation involves everybody...
...The Christian, humanistic, or other "values" are reserved for different, more "suitable" occasions...
...But, on the other hand, he cannot ignore a state of things and a language to which, since he is only an individual among others, he yields like the others...
...No one can help it...
...Indeed, since it is a question of material conditions, the "better" will always seem possible, but also doubtful, since the way of obtaining the "better" remains obscure...
...Still, when these general facts are enumerated in the usual way— working conditions, relations between the individual and the State, forms of technical and economic organization—one will still not have an image of the situation as it takes shape in the individual consciousness...
...we are all forced to use the current language, especially those who strongly desire to communicate with their fellows and to address the community as such...
...Translated by PAUL ALPERS...
...But it is as if I do not know him...
...Furthermore, the experience of the crowd is not freely chosen...
...whether indeed he has the right to retain such an idea and whether, by being too sure of it, he does not risk forming an idea of himself which is too favorable, too vaporous and idealistic...
...The struggle is not a struggle for life in general...
...In reality, no one is anonymous, but we all find ourselves in a situation of anonymity...
...But no one guarantees it to us, apparently, since the simple presence of others in a crowd obstructs and prevents it...
...In the second place, it is evident that the mass situation is not limited to daily and occasional relations of the individual with the crowd...
...But if one speaks of "values" in a purely spiritual sense, then, certainly, no state of fact can contradict them...
...as if I have in common with him only a humanity which is both very much reduced and rather general...
...that, good reasons being clear to him because they are written in the heaven of intelligible Ideas, he arbitrarily chooses, against them, the idea which suits him...
...This is the prime fact...
...Culture, in fact, is the ground not of truth, but of the search for it...
...In no sense...
...No matter how refined, sensitive, and aware he may be, he can define his ideas only in relation to the ideas of the mass...
...But existence is deprived of meaning when it is reduced to a long series of obligatory and indifferent acts...
...The difference is that, in this last case, even an unequal division could be just, provided that all agreed to it...
...contact with my fellows is inchoate and transitory, but I never cease being with them...
...Even when a mass is carried along by "collective feeling," the characteristic fact is that the individual I72 who lets himself be carried along can no longer distinguish his own feeling from those of the others, while the passion of all of them feeds his...
...But in any event, if instead of looking at these moments from the outside, as unimportant intervals of time, we try to think of them from the inside, as moments of life and of consciousness, these, let us say, passive moments will no longer seem so indifferent...
...What is most ambiguous and obscure is the relation between the individual and his fellow...
...But when we reason as if the indistinct communication with others, imposed on us by our daily life, injures in no way our individuality or the quality of our "values," our reasoning implies an assumption which is not so simple: that those moments have no importance, are moments effectively indifferent...
...It is an experience of disorder maintained by laws of iron...
...It is stripped of value, not so much with respect to the "values" of culture and of tradition (which can always be in some way maintained and cultivated privately), but in itself...
...In his family and the circle of his friends and acquaintances, the individual never feels himself a mere unit...
...Even if we treat it in his terms, as extremely simple and commonplace, this experience is not, in the first place, purely "visual": it is also spiritual...
...It would be almost as easy to imagine what the first men were like in the dawn of time...
...In order for this to happen, it is necessary—it is important to insist upon this—that material or, at any rate "objective," conditions be bad...
...And we, speak of the mass situation in so far as we experience the confusion between, and the mutual involvement of, the anonymous and the personal...
...We are mortal...
...The necessity of daily relations, which not even the most privileged can avoid, makes us all part of the mass...
...The way in which he enjoys his advantages depends, in fact, on the way in which others must seek to satisfy their needs...
...or for a citizen to claim the privilege of individual liberty as against bondage to the collective organization...
...or that an individual's noble behavior represents not a private and exceptional fact, but a norm to which all ought to conform...
...This is the only fact which explains how, in the modern situation, the "aristocratic values" have, in their turn, "lost power...
...The mass man has literally lost true reasons...
...It is regularly repeated in hundreds of instances, whenever, in fact, we come into contact with collective existence, instead of remaining in the circle of private relations between individuals...
...Not even the economically privileged individual escapes...
...one is obliged to make room for oneself...
...The first is that the nature of a society consists wholly in the manner of being together which it offers to the individuals who compose it—the way in which they can experience that fundamental bond which, Aristotle calls philia...
...But intrinsic in the very form of collective life is "necessity...
...ACTUALLY, it is always possible to avoid to some extent the material bondage imposed by collective life...
...It means to feel oneself shut out, or at least to risk that...
...The example used here, of the situation of the individual in a crowd, may seem frivolous...
...But he feels forced to put aside the question of good and evil...
...it is democratic in the extreme...
...This hostility, then, is unreasonable and has no right to show itself...
...The language of the street is ineluctable...
...it is simply there...
...This—to return to the commonplace examples which we have pur posely chosen—is a little like asking oneself if it is possible to read Kant in a packed train, or to practice epicurean wisdom in the middle of a mass of peasants on strike...
...The condition of the individual in the mass is completely ambiguous and obscure: caused by all and willed by no one...
...This inquiry may seem idle...
...This experience of suspension, of obscurity, of doubt, is the severe test to which the modern situation puts "values"—not only traditional beliefs, but the idea itself that it is necessary to believe in something, and that the difference between believing in what one does and what one is, and not believing in them, is a real difference...
...Daily participation in "mass" life can seem occasional and transient— limited to certain moments and therefore analogous to the automatic way in which we obey the needs of the body...
...There are, instead, many reasons to submit to it...
...The collective demands from which the phenomenon of the "mass" is born are all prosaic: so prosaic that they appear indisputable and indisputably rational...
...To find room, an effort is necessary...
...The individual next to me is nothing to me, and yet he is a man like me...
...Conscience (in the sense of willing assent to what one does) is suspended...
...Otherwise, the relation between individuals in a mass is material, external, and provisional, and the next fellow appears as a profoundly alien being, or even as an obstacle and an enemy...
...loaded with violence and hostility, but yet fraternal...
...he is completely subjected to the occasion...
...Not finding room is an agonizing experience...
...whether he has the same ideas of himself and of his own ineffable quality as he had...
...It is enough for the individual to find himself in an ambiguous situation respecting his own action, to do what he does without conviction —to act without violating any deeply felt belief, but also without clearly observing one...
...These ideas are not false...
...the others are already there, they occupy all, or almost all, the available space...
...EXCEPT WHEN HE RECOGNIZES common necessity, the individual who is part of a mass feels that every individual reaction (or attempted reaction) is affective...
...To live in a mass society means to automatically perform acts that are not free...
...Besides, it is all very well to think that once having left the crowd, one regains all one's individuality, whole and differentiated...
...From his point of view, he cannot help feeling himself the free and mobile center of a network of vital relations which concern not only his fellows, but also the world as a whole and the meaning of his own existence...
...The pessimists, on the other hand, see in the simplicity and in the wretchedness of the mass a virulent and active negation of complex and "noble" demands...
...The cities are full of inhabitants, the houses full of tenants, the hotels full of guests, the cafes full of customers, the parks full of strolling people, the waiting rooms of famous doctors full of patients, the theaters full of spectators, and the beaches full of bathers...
...Thus, it hardly seems reasonable for a worker to oppose the technical demands of the factory on the grounds of conscience...
...The meaningless conversations consisting of commonplaces which people exchange when they meet have already been the subject of irony...
...It signifies for us the essential way in which the individual comes in contact with the life of others—or rather, of everybody...
...On the plane of discourse, "values" remain eternally valid, for one can validly talk about them in any situation...
...To speak of "values" regarding a concrete situation means to speak of modes of being, not of ideal pure relations...
...All you need is sufficient power of concentration and self-control...
...The intellectuals' pessimism refers to the discursive efficacy of moral and cultural "values" on the mass...
...How does one treat him, and speak of him...
...This experience does not occur merely on certain intermittent and rare occasions...
...even if it is to oppose them...
...It i' an absolutely typical and fundamental experience, more fundamental than the situations themselves in which we undergo it (work, search for material necessities, relations with bureaucratic machinery, participation in political life, amusements) —since one repeats substantially the same experience in each one of these instances...
...Only if we recognize this necessity, this common subjection, does the other person impress himself on our consciousness as a "fellow man...
...The ambiguous character of the situation is revealed by the fact that there seems to be no reason at all to oppose it...
...But why not...
...But one cannot escape the predicament of collective living in its spiritual aspect...
...This hostility, on the other hand, is immediately contradicted by the evident fact that the others are not there to keep us from being ourselves, but because they are looking for what we are looking, and are equally hindered and impeded by the crowd...
...Ever since 'great cities have come into existence, we have been familiar with the image of next-door neighbors who meet every day without ever knowing each other, with the singular freedom and the grave solitude involved therein...
...It is evident that there is no room for a genuine exchange of feelings and thoughts between us...
...There is no reason to be opposed to them...
...But what one does because one cannot do otherwise does not appear as a moral choice, does not openly contradict any "value...
...Naturally, if the necessity to which he submitted seemed to be in absolute contradiction to his firm religious or moral convictions, he would not act as he does...
...On the other hand, if he truly seeks lost reasons and truths, if he wishes to communicate meanings and not merely to use formulas, if he feels himself the more or less worthy heir of a tradition, the intellectual must wish to be free...
...But in the meanwhile, one has been aware of an elementary identity with the others which overcomes and wipes out every personal difference as well as every shade of individual thought...
...Truth—like man himself—does not merely need to be left at liberty, not to be oppressed...
...rather, they are neither false nor true...
...From the point of view of conscience, however, what matters is that one feels oneself subjected to an overpowering force which comes neither from a moral norm nor from the sum of individual demands, but simply from the fact of collective existence...
...There cannot he, on the one hand, the anonymous and vulgar mass which lacks idealistic motives, and on the other a few individuals who succeed in keeping intact their nobility and the cult of the highest values...
...Obviously, we are dealing in absurdities...
...What a factual condition can hinder is the natural translation of thoughts into acts...
...We have a picture of human relations reduced to elementary proportions, to the point where their value is negative...
...It is enough to say, "finding room becomes a problem" to become aware that this implies a spiritual situation, and, precisely, a situation of preliminary hostility towards the others, those who take up the space and threaten not to let us have even the indispensable minimum of it...
...It is not that I cannot have a conversation with the next fellow...
...It therefore seems legitimate to inquire whether he who leaves the crowd after feeling himself confused in it is, in truth, the same individual as before...
...And this, if you think about it, is already the beginning of a dissociation which does not stop here...
...The crowd is neither a prime fact nor an occasional phenomenon: it is the ultimate form, the form most evident and striking, of other facts that are more weighty and serious...
...and the affective reactions are out of place there...
...everything is precarious...
...So that the situation of the intellectual, or of the Platonic philosopher who, having returned to the cave, seeks to communicate to his fellows the truths which he has glimpsed, is paradoxical...
...What is normally required of us is a certain rationality of behavior— a certain apathy, at least in the sense of not brusquely opposing one's own demands to those of others...
...and thereby, the efficacy of aristocratic values in collective life...
...However, the ques tion would be: If in similar situations, the individual could think and act so "aristocratically" would he conceivably communicate to his neigh bor the fruits of his reflections, or persuade him to imitate his conduct...
...What is a "mass situation...
...Not having room also means not having room for the spirit...
...Everyone knows that the other person is constrained by the same necessity which has compelled one's self...
...By its very nature, it admits both the Buddhist and the Christian, the humanist and the sectarian, the crudest and the most sensitive person...
...But he can show this consciousness in only one way —by speaking the truth without presuming that he is the sole owner of it...
...Thus reflected by him, my condi tion is not the "human condition" in general, my "nature" is not the human nature of the novelists and philosophers, but, so to speak, what is left over of it...
...To escape, a violent wrench is required, a decision to separate himself from others, a desire to be heretical...
...The situation which follows from this concerns everyone, the most refined intellectual as well as the most humble worker...
...or assert that, in the last analysis, the only possible relation between the two is that of violence...
...We did not ask ourselves if that were possible: if one could in fact imagine a society in which spiritually privileged individuals (or groups, or classes) could exist with others who were subjected to an obscure commonness, without the quality of the one being influenced by the material and spiritual way of life of the others...
...It is natural that the individual in a crowd should count for what he has most externally in common with others...
...But they are reasons of convenience, more than of conscience...
...Such a subjugation can be accepted as "natural...
...and that then, even knowing the place of truth, he "does not care in the least to be in the right," then, certainly, his will appears as wicked as it is obstinate...
...But the question of language will not be clarified...
...It only concerns, in fact, the most obvious aspect of the "mass situation...
...if he were removed our situation would be easier, we would be more comfortable, there would be more room...
...But it can never be "just" in the sense in which one says, for example, that among friends it is just that everything be shared equally...
...In a situation in which the most obvious reasons are reasons of fact and of necessity, he can receive only conventional, stereotyped ideas...
...Here is, one could say, the normative fact of the "mass situation," its justification, and even the foundation of its humanity...
...Similar images have been considered comic when opposed to the ideal fullness of authentic human expressions among beings who love each other or who have an ideal in common, a noble interest, a heroic destiny...
...on an astoundingly humble level, we must fight to occupy the little space which we need, which in some sense belongs to us, since we have the same right to it as others do...
...In behaving this way, however, he does not deny that it would be better to be able to do what he does with the conviction of doing something good and useful...
...The course of events, in fact, does not change...
...It is because of this fact (given the very ordinary necessity which has brought us together) that we can speak of ourselves as all equal, as units that are undifferentiated and interchangeable...
...Now, to the extent to which the individual's experience of his social existence is an experience of non-truth and of non-free acts, he does not seek the truth: he wants ready-made ideas, quickly reassuring...
...In sum, it is what we mean by nihilism: to live by setting aside the question of whether what one does day by day has any meaning, to know that one sets aside the question, and to recognize, at the same time, that this does not change the course of events...
...We are together because "we can't help it...
...WHAT CAN BE the relation between such an experience and "aristocratic" demands...
...He has only the ideas that his situation provides—no more than that...
...However, we know that the same thing happens to us in the eyes of others...
...But it is also exclusive, special, and demanding: obviously there is not a Christian way to work a lathe or a humanistic way of being on a train...
...Immersed in the crowd, the individual feels himself a unit among many interchangeable units...
...Nor is this a purely physical fact (and even less is it completely "visual") concerning space and material necessities...
...What, in other words, will be their common language...
...If it is true that we live in a mass society, we must immediately admit one fact: there are some individuals who are more affected by it than others, but there are not, nor can there be, privileged persons...
...Now, it is as modes of being that Christian or humanistic "values" are found to be suspended, reduced to suitable proportions (that is, to some form of private cult) , and therefore inoperative...
...one cannot escape even during leisure...
Vol. 4 • April 1957 • No. 2
