The Shaping of the "Second Europe," 1914 - Present

Mass Man and the Revolt Against Europe

Outline of Lecture

I. Introduction
II. Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) and Mass Man
III. Mass Man and Mass Culture
IV. Mass Man and the Revolt Against Europe

Introduction--The Impact of Science and Technology

The scientific-technological revolution of the last century has worked to shape much that has happened in those hundred years. Motivated by the optimism of the Enlightenment and its confidence that man could remake his environment, the scientific-technological revolution has also helped create the tension, anxiety, insecurity and strife of the last century. In so doing it has challenged the most significant of Enlightenment ideas, the idea of progress. Basic to all the complexity of the last century, then, is this revolution. It did not create the wars of the last century, the political changes, the social tensions and problems--these things have always been part of human history. But it gave them unique international proportions and made them possible on a scale unparalleled in history.

Some of the effects of the scientific-technological revolution:

(1) Two World Wars. In what sense are the world wars of the 20^th century different from earlier wars? Not in frequency or duration, but different in nature. Total warfare became the pattern when nations clashed. Technology made this possible, even necessary.

(2) A shift of political power away from Europe to the United States, Russia, and Asia. This has clearly occurred because of the scientific-technological revolution. Europe having exported her knowledge to the rest of the world during the late 19^th century saw that with that knowledge went power. Perhaps the most far-reaching effect of that shift has been to elevate the power of non-European peoples in economic and political affairs. And the end of that story is not yet apparent.

(3) The triumph of capitalism (even though modified) as an economic model. Capitalism, though existing for hundreds of years as a theory, came into its own with the Industrial Revolution of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. And it swept the world in the 20^th century because of science and technology. Forms of rigid planning and regimentation such as Fascism and Communism seemed at certain points to be superior. Yet Capitalism won out, and now all the world, it seems, wants a market-driven economy.

(4) Totalitarianism. Science and technology did not directly produce totalitarianism, but they did make it possible. Absolute government has been known before. But not until the last century has a government been able to exert almost total control over all areas and all people of a society. Technology and science have provided the means by which governments could exercise control. And produced the situation in which some of them could become totalitarian by creating an urban, industrial society with unresolved tensions, insecurity, boredom, and a lack of a sense of purpose. In short, the revolution produced, or helped produce, modern "Mass Man" whom totalitarian dictators have been able to sway to their purposes.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) and Mass Man

"Mass Man" is the term coined by Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher, writer, and statesman in a book entitled The Revolt of the Masses (1930). Writing just as Fascism and Communism were showing the appeal of totalitarianism, Revolt described a new kind of totalitarianism, that of the masses. The growth of liberal democracy, along with the scientific-technological revolution had produced, he said, a new type of personality, Mass Man. John Stuart Mill had foreseen Mass Man when he warned of the tyranny of the majority and the danger of imposing homogeneity on human thought and behavior. Ortega y Gasset filled in the details. Keep in mind that Ortega y Gasset was an elitist who believed that the Mass Man of whom he wrote was a danger to himself and to civilization with his new found power. But at the same time ask yourself whether he was right that a new kind of personality had appeared in the 20^th century.

Some quotations from The Revolt of the Masses:

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment. This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power....

...the most radical division that is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection...

I believe that the political innovations of recent times signify nothing less than the political domination of the masses. The old democracy was tempered by a generous dose of liberalism and enthusiasm for law.... Today we are witnessing the triumphs of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure....

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself.... Hence the strange combination of a sense of power and a sense of insecurity....

The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting along. Consequently, though his possibilities and his powers be enormous, he constructs nothing. And it is this type of man who decides in our time....

In the schools, which were such a source of pride to the last century, it has been impossible to do more than instruct the masses in the technique of modern life; it has been found impossible to educate them

Now it turns out--and this is most important--that this world of the 19th and early 20th centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase.... This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child....

They are only concerned with their well-being, and at the same time they remain alien to the cause of that well-being. As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction which can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights.

The world as organized by the 19th century, when automatically producing a new man, has infused into him formidable appetites and powerful means of every kind for satisfying them.... After having supplied him with all these powers, the 19th century has abandoned him to himself, and the average man, following his natural disposition, has withdrawn into himself.... The masses are incapable of submitting to direction of any kind.... It is illusory to imagine that the mass-man of today, however superior his vital level may be compared with that of other times, will be able to control, by himself, the process of civilization. I say process, and not progress. The simple process of preserving our present civilization is supremely complex, and demands incalculably subtle powers.

It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, today he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period.... This is what in my first chapter I laid down as the characteristic of our time; not that the vulgar believes itself super-excellent and not vulgar, but that the vulgar proclaims and imposes the rights of vulgarity, or vulgarity as a right.

The type of man dominant today is a primitive one... he does not see the civilization of the world around him, but he uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man wants his motor-car, and enjoys it, but he believes that it is the spontaneous fruit of an Edenic tree. In the depths of his soul he is unaware of the artificial, almost incredible, character of civilization, and does not extend his enthusiasm for the instruments to the principles which make them possible.

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Comment on Ortega y Gasset's statements above.

Mass Man and Mass Culture

With Ortega y Gasset in mind, who is Mass Man at the turn of the century, 70 years after he published Revolt of the Masses?

(1) Mass Man is middle class (bourgeois) in his aspirations and values. That is to say, Mass Man has aspirations and values which take quite tangible forms: successful career, material possessions, respectable standing (you get the picture).

(2) Mass Man has been made middle class by the growth of science and technology which have freed him from the grinding toil faced by his pre-20th century forebears. He no longer has to worry about survival. He now has leisure and the means to employ it for his own wants. In many respects, he is free. He can make thousands of choices which those who came before him could not make. Career, spouse, education (or not), entertainment: all these are possibilities from which he can choose. But with freedom to choose come expectations. And these lead to

(3) Insecurity. Mass Man has freedom. But he has to make enough money to meet his needs. And these needs are not simple needs. Clothing, food, and shelter are givens. Few have to worry about having them. Or transportation. No, the problem is that the status of Mass Man, his standing in society, determines his needs. The higher the status, the higher the needs. So Mass Man has to worry about his income and increasing it. He has to make more than he does and worries and spends energy trying to do so, or at least protecting what he makes, always driven by insecurity.

(4) The higher the status the greater the insecurity. The higher Mass Man is on the social ladder, the more he has to worry. For lower income Mass Man there is still insecurity because he is dependent on others for his well-being. The union, his employer, the government: he relies on others to provide work, keep paying him and pension him when he is too old to work. For lower Mass Man dependency is the reason for insecurity. For higher Mass Man the problem and insecurity is even greater. He depends on his own personal skills and on favorable circumstances to make it. He has much more to lose if he fails, farther to fall, with no safety net. He has greater needs because the expectations are higher for him than for lower Mass Man.

(5) Neither low nor high income Mass Man is as free as he appears to be. Both have a need for greater and greater income which has been imposed on them by Mass Culture. Both feel they must agree: the doctrine of progress for Mass Man is the doctrine of success (worth is success). So Mass Man is driven like the medieval serf, without the serf's psychological and spiritual support. Without independent income, Mass Man is dependent. He gets income from Mass Society. So there is no breaking free.

(6) Mass Man's one area of freedom is the use of leisure time. Even this area is limited. To forget his dependency and insecurity Mass Man uses leisure to drug his mind against the time when he has to go back to earning enough income to live the life society expects of him.

(7) So Mass Man sinks into mindlessness. It is easier than thinking. Why should he develop his potential as a human being. Better to think of himself as a product of circumstances, even a victim. Better to think himself driven by forces over which he has no control. Better to satisfy his desires in the enjoyment of the products and services society gives him through science and technology. Freedom from drudgery; painless entertainment; medicine that cures depression and pain; psychology that relieves frustrations; education to make more money and become a bigger consumer; popular entertainment that diverts: all these Mass Society provides.

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1. You aren't Mass Man, are you? You are not driven to make more money and consume more, are you? Is Ortega y Gasset right?

2. Is this passage from Ecclesiastes relevant: "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. ... As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?" (Ecclesiastes 5:10-11)

Your reaction may be that this is too pessimistic a picture and not true of you. Perhaps. After all there seem to have been a lot of rebels and non-conformists in the late 20^th century. But a recent study suggests that these may also have become Mass Man as well. David Brooks, BoBos in Paradise (2000) suggests that the bohemian, the rebel against society and all its standards, has become in our century the bourgeois bohemian, the figure who flourishes while rebelling. He calls this person a "BoBo". They have the rebel's stance but the bourgeois's tastes and desires. Here are some selections:

Millionaire movie makers tend to be merciless when depicting millionaire businessmen and lawyers.

This is an elite that has been raised to oppose elites. They are affluent yet opposed to materialism. They may spend their lives selling yet worry about selling out. They are by instinct anti-establishmentarian yet somehow sense they have become a new establishment.

They are prosperous without seeming greedy; they have pleased their elders without seeming conformist; they have risen toward the top without too obviously looking down on those below.

Hip lawyers were wearing those teeny tiny steel-framed glasses because now it was apparently more prestigious to look like Franz Kafka than Paul Newman. . . . The bohemian and the bourgeois were all mixed up . . . rebel attitudes and social-climbing attitudes all scrambled together. . . . people seemed to have combined the countercultural 60's and the achieving 80's into one social ethos.

This is a morality . . . that doesn't try to perch atop the high ground of divine revelation. [BoBos] like spiritual participation but are cautious of moral crusades and religious enthusiasms. . . . They tolerate a little lifestyle experimentation, so long as it is done safely and moderately. They are offended by concrete wrongs, like cruelty and racial injustice, but are relatively unmoved by lies or transgressions that don't seem to do anyone obvious harm. . . . This is a good morality for building a decent society.

People in this class like to see themselves and their friends as balancing opposites. . . . Selecting music, you need Patsy Cline songs mixed in with the Mendelssohn.

The companies that sell to us have developed careful marketing strategies for people who disdain marketing. They help make shopping seem a bit like an honors project at Bennington College.

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1. Does David Brooks hit it on the head? Why? Why not?
2. "They are offended by concrete wrongs, like cruelty and racial injustice, but are relatively unmoved by lies or transgressions that don't seem to do anyone obvious harm. . . . This is a good morality for building a decent society." Does this explain the lack of outrage among most Americans at President Clinton's lying about his sexual affairs? Or any politician’s lying for that matter?

Mass Man and the Revolt Against Europe

Where does Mass Man fit into Enlightenment theory about the nature of man? Is Mass Man, empty of identity, the kind of man envisioned by the Enlightenment thinkers as man as he could be if freed from prejudices and superstitions? Is Mass Man the reasoning, basically good man of the Enlightenment? And what would Enlightenment thinkers say about Mass Society and Culture? These dominate man. What did the Enlightenment say about the proper relationship between society and the individual? Would they think Mass Society and Culture less tyrannical than an absolute king? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal [to be Mass Men or BoBos]? What about the future? Is Mass Man the best the modern age can do? The ideal human being to be produced by science, reason, enlightenment? I don't think so.

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1. Do you agree? Why? Why not?

If Mass Man did not exist, 20^th century writers thought he did. He is a central theme in poetry and novels of the last century.

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