"Masses is a herd term - unacceptable, insulting, degrading. When I see a crowd, I see a collection of free individuals: each a unique person; each a king or queen; each a story that would fill a book; each an island of human dignity."
- Frank Capra
I wish I could believe you, Mr. Capra. What a beautiful representation of a crowd. But what I see, living in a place like this, is far from your romantic vision of society. I don't really know if we're really free because we are constantly fed with that kind of statements. Maybe freedom and individualism are really vague terms, open to an infinite number of interpretations. Definitely, for me, they are lost values absorbed by late postmodernist trends. I wish I could see a collection of free conscious individuals, but the only things I see are blind masses.
Who knows? Maybe the blind one, after all, is just me...
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ReplyDeleteThe Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell may give you a fresh perspective and expose contributing factors in free-thinking societies.
ReplyDeleteIn what context is he implying that it is wrong to use the word, 'masses?' Could it have been the masses that bought into his pro-war propaganda films? It is very offensive that he assumes we accept the word as having a negative connotation. Secondly, the word masses also hints at class status which again is not negative only fact. We are far more superior than a swarm of flies clinging to a pile of shit, but not so far apart from a collection of mammals. No doubt we are unique individuals but a collection of kings and queens? Poetic but it doesn't have any meaning.
Masses Definition
10. the masses, the ordinary or common people as a whole; the working classes or the lower social classes http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mass
Herd Definition
1. a number of animals kept, feeding, or traveling together; drove; flock: a herd of cattle; a herd of sheep; a herd of zebras.
2. Sometimes Disparaging. a large group of people: The star was mobbed by a herd of autograph seekers. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/herd