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I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
--
"I Am the People, the Mob" (1916)

 

Carl Sandburg

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Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture — but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.

 

Kenneth Rexroth

 

The esthete says: Without work life finally becomes boring. “One’s work nevertheless ought not to be work in the strict sense but should be able to be continually defined as pleasure. A person discovers some aristocratic talent in himself that distinguishes him from the crowd. He does not develop this recklessly, because then he would soon be bored with it, but with all the esthetic earnestness possible. Life then has a new meaning for him, since he has his work, a work that nevertheless is really his pleasure. In his independence, he shelters it so that it can develop in all its luxuriance, undismayed by life. He does not, however, make this talent into a plank on which one manages to squeeze through life but into wings on which one soars over the world; he does not make it into a drudging hack but into a parade horse.” But our hero has no such aristocratic talent; his is like most people. The esthete knows no other way out for him than that “he has to resign himself to falling into the crowd’s hackneyed category of a person who works. Do not lose heart, this too, has its meaning, is decent and respectable; become a handy industrious fellow, a useful member of society. I already look forward to seeing you, for the more varied life is, the more interesting for the observer. That is why I and all esthetes abhor a national costume, for it would be so tiresome to see everyone going around dressed alike. Let every individual take up his occupation in life that way; the more beautiful it will be for me and my kind, who make a profession of observing life.” I hope that our hero will be somewhat impatient over such treatment and be indignant at the insolence of such a classification of people. Furthermore, independence played a role in this esthete’s consideration also, and independent he certainly is not. ** Either/Or Part II p. 290

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all.

 

V. S. Naipaul

 

We're working to overcome the overly macho nature of the current online console game world, where a handful of the high testosterone crowd fight for supremacy, while the mass of casual game players stay away.

 

Reggie Fils-Aime

 

Once again the hopes of people of two nations are being smashed by weapons in the name of eliminating weapons. Let us abolish weapons of mass destruction at home. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Dennis Kucinich