The Insignificance of the Individual in the Crowd

How a person becomes a faceless unit, why the abstract idea of the state becomes more real than human life, and what could change the unenviable position of the individual in the modern world: a fragment from Carl Jung’s book “The Undiscovered Self.”

The Unenviable Position of the Individual in the Modern World

Carl Gustav Jung, The Crowd and the Individual

What does the future hold? Since time immemorial, this question has preoccupied people, though not always to the same degree. History shows that people look to the future with anxiety and hope during times of physical, political, economic, and spiritual upheaval, when many hopes, utopian ideas, and apocalyptic visions are born. For example, we recall the millenarian expectations of contemporaries of Emperor Augustus at the dawn of the Christian era, or the spiritual changes in the West that accompanied the end of the first millennium AD. In our time, as the second millennium draws to a close, we again live in a world filled with apocalyptic images of total destruction. What does the division of humanity into two camps, symbolized by the “Iron Curtain,” really mean? What will happen to our civilization and to humanity itself if hydrogen bombs start exploding, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of state absolutism engulfs all of Europe?

We have no reason to consider such outcomes unlikely. In every Western country, there are small groups of subversive elements who, exploiting our humanity and sense of justice, keep a match ready at the fuse, and only the critical thinking of a highly developed and mentally stable segment of the population can stop the spread of their ideas. We should not overestimate the “thickness” of this segment. It varies in each country, depending on the national temperament, the level of education, and powerful economic and political factors. If we use a plebiscite as a criterion, even the most optimistic estimates put this segment at forty percent of the electorate. A more pessimistic estimate is also justified, since common sense and critical thinking are not among humanity’s most characteristic traits, and even where they exist, they are not constant or unshakable, and tend to weaken as political groups grow. The masses suppress the insight and thoughtfulness that an individual can still possess, inevitably leading to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny as soon as the constitutional state shows weakness.

Rational arguments can only succeed if the emotional intensity of a situation does not exceed a certain critical level. If passions rise above this level, reason loses all influence, and slogans and illusory wishful thinking take over. This leads to a kind of collective madness, quickly turning into a psychological epidemic. In such conditions, those elements rise to the top that, in times of reason, are considered antisocial and merely tolerated by society. These individuals are by no means rare exceptions found only in prisons or psychiatric hospitals. In my estimation, for every obvious madman, there are at least ten hidden ones whose madness rarely manifests openly, and whose views and behavior, despite outward normality, are unconsciously influenced by pathological and perverse factors. For understandable reasons, there are no medical statistics on hidden psychoses. But even if their number is less than ten times that of obvious psychopaths and criminals, their small proportion is more than compensated by the extreme danger they pose. Their mental state is akin to that of a group in collective excitement, driven by biased judgments and wishful thinking. Among their own kind, they adapt to each other and feel at home. They have learned the “language” of such situations and know how to manipulate them. Their chimerical ideas, fueled by fanatical outrage, appeal to collective irrationality and find fertile ground; they express all the motives and discontent that more normal people keep hidden under a veil of prudence and insight. Thus, despite their small numbers, they are highly dangerous as sources of contagion, precisely because the so-called normal person has only a limited level of self-knowledge.

Most people confuse “self-knowledge” with knowledge of their conscious ego-personality. Anyone with some ego-consciousness is sure they know themselves. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows about themselves, not by real psychological facts, most of which are hidden from them. In this sense, the psyche is like the body, about whose physiology and anatomy the average person also knows little. Although the average person lives in and with their body, most of it is completely unknown to them, and special scientific knowledge is needed to inform consciousness about the body. Not to mention what is “unknown” about the body but still exists.

So what is commonly called “self-knowledge” is actually very limited, most of it dependent on social factors and what happens in the human psyche. That’s why people are always prejudiced, believing that certain things don’t happen “to us,” “in our family,” or to our friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, people have equally illusory beliefs about possessing certain qualities, which only conceal the true state of affairs.

In this broad zone of the unconscious, which is well protected from criticism and conscious control, we are completely defenseless, open to all kinds of psychological influences and infections. As with any other danger, we can only prevent the risk of psychological infection if we know what will attack us, as well as where, when, and how the attack will occur. Since self-knowledge is a matter of knowing concrete facts, theory is of little help. The more a theory claims universal truth, the less it can serve as a basis for correctly assessing individual facts. Any theory based on everyday experience is inevitably statistical; it derives an ideal average and rejects all exceptions at both ends of the scale, replacing them with abstract meaning. This theory is true enough, but in life, things don’t always go according to it. Nevertheless, the abstract meaning of the theory is treated as an unshakable fundamental fact. Any extreme exceptions, though just as real, are not included in the theory because they contradict each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of every pebble on a beach and get an average of five ounces, this figure tells me little about the real nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, expects to pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try will be sorely disappointed. In fact, after hours of searching, they may never find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces.

The statistical method shows us facts in terms of an ideal average, but does not give us a sense of their empirical reality. Although the average undoubtedly reflects a certain aspect of reality, it can also dangerously distort the truth. This is especially true of theories based on statistics. Meanwhile, the distinguishing feature of a fact is its individuality. Roughly speaking, the real picture consists only of exceptions to the rule, and in absolute reality, irregularity completely prevails.

This should be remembered whenever we talk about theory as a guide to self-knowledge. There can be no self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions, since the object of this knowledge is the individual—a relative exception and a phenomenon of “irregularity.” Therefore, the individual’s characteristics are not universal and correct, but rather unique. The individual should be seen not as a standard unit, but as something unique and one of a kind, which, in principle, cannot be fully known or compared to anything else. At the same time, as a member of the human race, a person can and should be described as a statistical unit; otherwise, nothing general can be said about them. For this purpose, they should be considered as a unit of comparison. The result is universally correct anthropology and psychology with an abstract figure of a person.

Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche, but also the individual and even individual events become victims of “leveling” and “erasing differences,” which distort the picture of reality, turning it into a conceptual average. We should not underestimate the psychological impact of a statistical worldview: it rejects the individual, replacing them with faceless units gathered into mass formations. Instead of a concrete individual, we have the names of organizations and, as the culmination, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. In this process, the individual’s moral responsibility is inevitably replaced by the state’s interests—raison d’etat. Instead of moral and intellectual differentiation of individuals, we have the welfare of society and the improvement of living standards. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) is no longer individual development, but the policy of the State, imposed on the individual from outside and consisting of implementing an abstract idea that tends to absorb all of life. The individual is increasingly deprived of the right to make moral decisions about how to live their own life. They are fed, clothed, educated, and disciplined as a unit of society, housed in a corresponding unit of housing, and given pleasure and satisfaction in the form perceived by the crowd. Rulers, in turn, are just as much units of society as their subjects, differing only in that they are the mouthpiece of state doctrine. They do not necessarily need common sense; they may simply be good specialists, completely useless outside their field. State policy determines what should be taught and learned.

The all-powerful doctrine of the State itself partly becomes a victim of those manipulating it for their own interests—people in the highest government positions who have concentrated all power in their hands. Anyone who, whether by honest election or by fate, ends up in such a position is no longer subordinate to anyone; they themselves are “state policy” and can follow a direction they set themselves. Like Louis XIV, they can say, “I am the State.” Thus, they are the only, or at least one of the very few, individuals who could use their individuality if only they knew how to separate themselves from the doctrine of the State. However, they are usually slaves to their own inventions. Such one-sidedness is always psychologically compensated by unconscious subversive tendencies. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable. As a result, the struggle for power and extreme suspicion permeate the entire organism from top to bottom. Moreover, in an attempt to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, the mass always produces a “leader,” who, as history teaches, inevitably becomes a victim of his own excessively inflated ego-consciousness.

This development becomes logically inevitable the moment the individual merges with the mass and ceases to be an individual. In addition to the agglomeration of huge masses, in which the individual dissolves anyway, one of the main causes of psychological mass consciousness is scientific rationalism, which deprives the personality of the foundations of its individuality and dignity. As a social unit, the personality loses its individuality and becomes a mere abstract statistical value. It can only play the role of an easily replaceable and completely insignificant “part.” Viewed from the outside and rationally, that is exactly what it is, and from this perspective, any discussion of the value or significance of the individual is completely absurd. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a person could have an individual, worthy life if the truth of the opposite is as clear as day.

From this point of view, the significance of the individual really does diminish, and anyone who tries to dispute this quickly finds themselves short of arguments. The fact that an individual feels themselves, their family, or close friends to be significant only highlights the somewhat comical subjectivity of their feelings. After all, what are a few people compared to ten thousand or a hundred thousand, not to mention a million? I recall a profound remark from a friend when we were stuck in a huge crowd. He suddenly exclaimed, “Here’s the best reason not to believe in immortality: this whole mass of people wants to be immortal!”

The larger the crowd, the more insignificant the individual. And if a person is overwhelmed by a sense of their own insignificance and powerlessness, and feels that their life has lost its meaning—which, after all, is not identical to the welfare of society or a high standard of living—they are already close to becoming a slave of the State and, without realizing it, its ardent supporter. A person who looks only outward and shrinks before the sight of “large battalions” has nothing to counter the information provided by their senses and reason. This is exactly what is happening now: we all are hypnotically in awe of statistical truths and large numbers; we are told daily about the insignificance and futility of the individual unless they are represented and personified by some mass organization. Conversely, those figures who strut across the world stage and whose voices reach everyone are seen by the uncritical public as having been elevated by some mass movement or public opinion. Therefore, the crowd either applauds or curses them. Since mass thinking dominates here, there is no certainty whether these people express their own opinions, for which they bear personal responsibility, or are merely mouthpieces for the collective opinion.

In such conditions, it is hardly surprising that it is increasingly difficult for the individual to form an opinion about themselves, and that responsibility has become maximally collective—that is, the individual has removed it from themselves and delegated it to the collective. Thus, the individual increasingly becomes a function of society, which, in turn, usurps the functions of the bearer of real life, although, in reality, society is nothing more than an abstract idea, like the idea of the State. Both ideas have become reified, that is, autonomous. The State, especially, has become a semi-animated being from which everyone expects everything. In reality, it is merely a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. So the constitutional State slides into a primitive form of society, the form of a primitive tribal communism, where everyone is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or oligarchy.