Why we feel powerless and all our options seem dumb
The mass man lives
The Book:
The Revolt of the Masses
By José Ortega y Gasset
W. W. Norton & Company
1932
The Talk:
The worst shopping experience of my life was buying a car seat.
I have never spent so long in such agony making such a simple decision, in which there were so many variables and none of it mattered.
I assess the problem as this: When you are a first-time parent, there is no limit to how much you will spend on your child’s safety. How much money you have is how much you are willing to spend. As a result, a market is formed in which you can spend as little as $40 or much as $800.
Keep in mind: All of the car seats available to purchase have been approved as safe by the federal government.
But, oh, oh, how safe do you really want to be? Do you want to be $40 safe or $800 safe? How much is your baby worth to you? If you’re willing to spend $200, why not $230? If $230 is a possibility, you could probably sacrifice and get $275. Why quibble? —Let’s just get the $300. This is insane, we said we would only spend $200!
From frames and materials to convertible systems to strollers to colors to accessories—every option changed the price just a little bit, up or down. Every option set off a flurry of hopes, dreams, expectations, questions about our future. Are we really going to jog with our kid? We’ve never jogged before. But maybe we will become better people when we become parents. Can we imagine ourselves with a car seat snapped into a jogging stroller? Maybe that’s us?
Like I said. So many choices. None of it mattered. We were drowning in a flood of abundance. We were consumers, like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden sizing up the fruit buffet. Our only purpose was to decide what to buy—in a way that expressed our identity, our values, our dreams, the meaning of our lives.
Which brings me to José Ortega y Gasset’s 1932 anti-fascist essay The Revolt of the Masses.
Who is the mass man?
In The Revolt of the Masses Ortega describes the type of person modern life produces, the “mass man.”
The mass man emerges in a world where the population has grown enormously and in which modern governance, industry, and innovation has led to a remarkable age of safety and consumer options. The mass man knows no other world than this one and approaches it naively.
He is like an aristocratic heir who lives off the past accomplishments of others. He has only ever been served and waited on, making him a perpetual child. At his most benign, he is consumed with self-care (exercise) and recreation (sports).
In a complex world, he has many opinions about everything. He has no qualifications or expertise or erudition; but he thinks he’s got some interesting ideas that are as worthy as anyone else’s. (e.g. Let’s Talk Books) He pontificates endlessly about law and science and economics, while knowing basically nothing about them.
He is a passive actor, except when he demands. When he is afraid, he pushes the “government” button to do something. When he is bored, he pushes the “entertainment” button, and is treated to endless distractions. He eagerly awaits the next generation of “motor-car,” which will roll out next year, bigger and better than ever, as naturally as the turn of seasons.
He is the dominant force, the director of society, the colossus of the age; and yet he is most like a spoiled child. He hates to be told what to do. He hates anyone in authority over him. He hates being obligated to anyone. He demands the right to be vulgar, the right to joke, the right to offend. He only thinks about his own wellbeing.
Waiting on the world to change
Democracy, capitalism, and technology—primarily due to their successes—converge in creating people who live essentially as demanders.
Democracy places the citizen at the center. We don’t have to deal with the details, the implementation; we simply have to demand what we want.
Capitalism places customers at the center. We simply have to want and choose. The businesses have to figure out the logistical details to make it all work.
Technology places users at the center. We don’t have to know how any of it works. We don’t have to understand it, be grateful for it, or even believe in it. We simply receive its benefits. And we rest assured that every year, it will simply get better and better.
The world is enormously complex. It takes a lifetime of effort to truly understand one small little aspect of it. It is challenging to have an informed opinion about any one of the multitude of things that happens in the world on a single day. In a world vastly beyond our ability to comprehend, we smash the “VOTE” button, smash the “BUY” button, smash the “UPGRADE” button whenever we feel uncomfortable. And, like a child, we are very proud of our efforts. We are tickled at how well we’ve done.
And the solution to every remaining problem in the world is simply to demand it. It’s not like, as a collective society, we are all working on AI or self-driving cars or virtual reality. The majority of us are merely sitting in the highchair, waiting for the processes of society (which we don’t comprehend) to hand us another scoop of spaghetti to squish with our hands. Yay!
How the mass man rules
COVID-19 was a perfect expression of Ortega’s “mass man.” There was a brief time, a few months into the pandemic when leaders said, “OK. Let’s all sacrifice together. Let’s buck up for the common good. Let’s protect others around us. Let’s follow our experts. We’re all in this together.”
But the muscles that got society through events like World War II were completely atrophied. We’ve lived too long without gravity. It quickly devolved into my right—my right to listen to my gut over science, my right to disagree with leaders or experts, my right to care only about myself, my right to be a jerk if I want to.
Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody is the boss of me. Nobody is above me. Nobody can obligate me. Nobody can make me care about anybody else. I have the right to do and say and act however I want.
And then we just waited for the system to plop out a vaccine. And we weren’t involved in the effort. And you didn’t have to be grateful. You didn’t even have to take the vaccine to enjoy its benefits, as long as strangers around you did.
Leaders lost. The mass man won. The system plopped out a lollipop. Life goes on.
Staggering gods
Stunning 8K-resolution meditation app
In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap~Bo Burnham, “That Funny Feeling”
The mass man situation—seemingly as real a phenomenon today as it was in the 1920s—is a universal one. Take, for example, an issue I think is important: The climate crisis.
In the face of an enormously complex, chaotic, and uncertain global situation, what can an average individual do?
Smash the VOTE button.
Smash the BUY button.
Smash the UPGRADE button.
As a society, we are very much sitting around, expecting that a technological solution is going to pop out of the system. A technological solution that, preferably, (a) requires no effort or discomfort of us, (b) doesn’t require me to care about others, and (c) won’t require skeptics to change their beliefs at all. I think that’s unconsciously what we all expect will happen. We are, in fact, betting everything on this.
But imagine for a moment that you’re someone who really cares about this issue. You want to be a hero. You want to save the world. And society is like, “OK. Be a hero: Want stuff. Demand stuff. Vote stuff. Buy stuff. Make different consumer choices. Upgrade to more efficient appliances. Be an early adopter.”
And now I’m back in the baby store, deciding on car seats. I’m a big baby buying for the next baby, driving home in my safe car with my safe car seat, thinking, “What a good father I am!” for picking the right car seat to buy.
It feels like the primary purpose and function of the individual in the modern world is to demand things. That’s the best you can do. The challenges are too big and too complex. You are a smart person. You are an educated person. You are a full-grown adult. And yet you sit in this nexus of democracy-capitalism-technology with the crudest of tools, the fattest of fingers.
As a collective, the mass man lurches and looms, like a giant toddler, knowing only wants, fully dependent on a system it cannot comprehend. Demanding this at one moment, demanding that at another. It knows no other life.
The system protects the baby. Pray the system survives.
Related:
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This is the review I think I most disagree with, not because of your thoughts, but because of the thoughts of Ortega y Gasset. Like, yes, I make demands to be fed and entertained, but I make those demands because I have money, and I have money because I have a job. I can't be involved in all the great achievements of humanity, but I can play my own small part. (I'm lucky that I'm a teacher, so my own small part does feel meaningful.) Who besides the Newtons and Einsteins can claim otherwise? That said, ugh, car seats. I must admit there is something demoralizing about the modern condition. It's not that there's suffering: it's that the suffering has no dignity.