Peculiarity in a psychological crowd - Le Bon

* Collective mind->It makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.

*Certain ideas and feelings do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd.

Now this right here,

*The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly.

I wonder what I(or my cells) would have turned out to be if these living cells that constitute my being today decided never to unite.

This very fact that crowds possess, in common, ordinary qualities
explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a
high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of
general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction,
but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior
to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles.
The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the
work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright
of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not
mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so
often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly
Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world"
crowds are to be understood.

The causes

1. The invincible power

The individual forming part of a crowd
acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of
invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which,
had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint.
He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration
that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence
irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls
individuals disappears entirely

2. The contagion
Contagion also intervenes to
determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics,
and at the same time the trend they are to take.

3. Disappearance of the conscious personality and the appearance of suggestibility

"Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more
irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotised
subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all
the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity.

However, there are those individuals who we call "schizoids" who do not forget their "essential selves", and thus live their lives as guilt filled empty ghosts. But at least they don't forget.

*so far the vibe I'm getting from this book "the crowd" is that whilst Le Bon would have been "original", "intelligent" at his time. In this year of 2009, his ideas sound rather simple-minded and casual.

For instance, his remarks like "the disappearance of the conscious personality,
the predominance of the unconscious personality" suggests that he doesn't hold a deep understanding of what's conscious and what's not conscious. Neither is he aware of the concept of "pre-consciousness". However, if I were to interpret his words and say what he meant was "the disappearance of the ontological personality and the predominance of the overly-compliant personality, then AGAIN he should be whipped(unless he's a masoquist) for abusing the words "consciousness" and "unconsciousness."


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.

but from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these
feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be
better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature
of the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed.