Scan barcode
A review by noadifferentchad
The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon
2.0
The author’s use of sexism and racism has been pointed out in other reviews - he has a peculiar dislike of Latin influence. But it does reveal some hypocrisy in that, like most people who invoke these frameworks, he uses them to galvanize the reader much like various charlatans galvanize crowds for their own ends - the very subject at which the author takes aim.
Although his polemic meanders and repeats itself, there is gold here, despite having to sift through muddy waters to find it, which would suggest there is even more to be mined by someone with more rigor, less zeal.
After all, it’s a curious idea that people joining in common cause would unwittingly form a new organism that is at once ‘of them’ and distinct ‘from them’. And that this larger, more powerful organism would have survival instincts of its own compelling it to absorb the energy of its constituents and harness that energy for different intentions - to essentially program all the people it comprises into little reproductive agents of itself, like a virus would do.
One of my favorite quotes:
“Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardour of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.”
And we’re all cultists now.
Although his polemic meanders and repeats itself, there is gold here, despite having to sift through muddy waters to find it, which would suggest there is even more to be mined by someone with more rigor, less zeal.
After all, it’s a curious idea that people joining in common cause would unwittingly form a new organism that is at once ‘of them’ and distinct ‘from them’. And that this larger, more powerful organism would have survival instincts of its own compelling it to absorb the energy of its constituents and harness that energy for different intentions - to essentially program all the people it comprises into little reproductive agents of itself, like a virus would do.
One of my favorite quotes:
“Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardour of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.”
And we’re all cultists now.