The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

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Goodreads (забравила съм кой, така че това ще му спести срама) се оплака, че "Психология на тълпите" била доста повърхностна книга - в смъсъл казвала само базови неща и нищо по-сложно. Идеше ми веднага да го разпердушиня, но отчетох, че е редно преди това да се запозная с текста... в крайна сметка никой не е безгрешен, а и вижданията в науката се изменят с времето. И се захванах. И я завърших 2 години по-късно*. И всъщност май не съжалявам за това, защото при втория опит за прочитане бях по-добре хуманитарно подготвена. Firstly, affirmation must be concise and compelling, and should avoid reasoning and arguing. Affirmation is one of the most effective ways to make a certain idea take root in the minds of the crowd. It can even make rigorous reasonings and arguments seem feeble. The author gave an example of a speech given by the leader of an assembly. He said: “That land is haunted by fever, and has jails, but this is exactly where the vessel will bear off. That place imprisons notorious politicians and murderers who disregard the government, the two can eventually have their heart-to-heart conversation!” This leader created a vivid image using vivid words. This image constantly emerged in the minds of the audience, in which the country was suffering from fever, and where there was a vessel that could take them away. Such words can not only strongly stimulate the supporters, but also make the opponents feel threatened and intimidated, as they might be regarded as “notorious politicians” and sent to prison. Therefore, affirmation like this often makes people surrender. Fierce affirmation and sworn pledges are the most effective ways to intimidate the crowds. The effects are even more evident in times of crisis. For example, when giving speeches, the orators during the French Revolution usually first condemned the evil and vigorously propagated the virtues. They then cursed the tyrants, after which they finally declared that they would rather die than live without liberty. All the people hearing this would stand up, applaud, and cheer. In this way, affirmation can greatly stir up emotion in a crowd, and it is the persuasion method most commonly used by crowd leaders. The sixth psychological characteristic of crowds is that they are incapable of reasoning, and only capable of imagination. If this work had been characterized with more consideration for objectivity and more of Enlightenment and thought-unconstrained thoughts, its fatal effects would have been substantially reduced, if not made more constructive. The knowledge of the mechanisms of action could also be used for particular concerns, instead of always serving only the instrumentalization of selfish motives.

As was mentioned earlier, Le Bon maintained that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and propels them to act towards a common goal. These influential ideas, however, are never created by members of the crowd. Instead, they are brought into the world by the minds of great individuals. In 1884, he was commissioned by the French government to travel around Asia and report on the civilisations there. [11] The results of his journeys were a number of books, and a development in Le Bon's thinking to also view culture to be influenced chiefly by hereditary factors such as the unique racial features of the people. [17] [18] The first book, entitled La Civilisation des Arabes, was released in 1884. In this, Le Bon praised Arabs highly for their contributions to civilisation, but criticised Islamism as an agent of stagnation. [19] [20] He also described their culture as superior to that of the Turks who governed them, and translations of this work were inspirational to early Arab nationalists. [21] [22] He followed this with a trip to Nepal, becoming the first Frenchman to visit the country, and released Voyage au Népal in 1886. [23] By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images — which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd — and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.if people crowd together and form a mob, then the dynamisms of the collective man are let loose – beasts or demons that lie dormant in every person until he is part of a mob. Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass.” (Carl Jung) Psychologische Faktoren konzentrieren sich unausgewogen stark auf das Unterbewusste und andere, bis heute weitgehend unerforschte Bereiche der Neurologie, so dass die daraus resultierenden Schlussfolgerungen über die zugrunde legenden Denkmuster Raterei sind. Dafür treffen die beschriebenen Handlungsmuster ins Schwarze.

How numerous are the crowds that have heroically faced death for beliefs, ideas, and phrases that they scarcely understood!”( The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon)

He then released Psychologie des Temps Nouveaux (1920) before resigning from his position as Professor of Psychology and Allied Sciences at the University of Paris and retiring to his home. the most important events in the history of civilisation. 2. THE MEANS OF ACTION OF THE LEADERS: AFFIRMATION, REPETITION, CONTAGION The third remote factor affecting psychological characteristics of crowds is time. Time is one of the most powerful factors affecting society; it is the true creator, as well as the great destroyer. Without time, the great influence of ‘race’ could not have been formed. The birth, growth, and death of all beliefs depend on time. M. Lavisse once said, “no form of government is founded in a day. Political and social organisations are works that demand centuries.” Therefore, time is another important factor affecting the psychological characteristics of a crowd.

Kedourie, Sylvia (1962). Arab Nationalism: An Anthology. Cambridge University Press. p. 182. ISBN 9780520026452.All our political economists are highly educated, being for the most part professors or academicians, yet is there a single general question — protection, bimetallism — on which they have succeeded in agreeing? The explanation is that their science is only a very attenuated form of our universal ignorance. With regard to social problems, owing to the number of unknown quantities they offer, men are substantially, equally ignorant. In consequence, were the electorate solely composed of persons stuffed with sciences their votes would be no better than those emitted at present. They would be guided in the main by their sentiments and by party spirit. We should be spared none of the difficulties we now have to contend with, and we should certainly be subjected to the oppressive tyranny of castes. religious faith, patriotism, and the love of glory. CHAPTER III THE LEADERS OF CROWDS AND THEIR MEANS OF PERSUASION Approaching these simplified, and therefore gravely misunderstood, ideas as mysterious divinities, a crowd always forms a religious relationship to the ideas which motivate them to action. This being the case even when the ideas have no explicitly religious component: “A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.” In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.”( The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon)