Pathologies for the Next Millennium

In the first series of writing I shall try to look at the obsessions that marked not so old history of the people how some people have looked at its change. My reason for doing that is simply to try to put this change into continuum and see what freakishness marked each period or has been considered normal at the time. The funny thing is that I can now see around myself processes i Gasset saw in his native Western Europe some seventy - eighty years ago. It is impossible to make the review fit in a single issue, and it shall be continued in the next one, and the one after that.

Prior to midst 19th century pathology meant not much beyond physical, either visibly seen or unseen distortion. An easy life that was: people are pretty much the same in respective parts of the society. Children were basically the same as adults (look what poor creatures have been forced to wear in those old pictures), only "slow in the head". Surely, women were deemed to be different from men, hysteric. Still, a simple surgery - such as removal of a womb - was a cure-all for such a case. A brave old world. No subconscious, no Oedipus complex or low self esteem.

But then came he - Freud with his cigars. Today it is somewhat passé to discuss Freud's ideas - sure he was there, at the beginning. Maybe even the one. He made society look at itself from a different angle: was great in revealing the narcissistic pathologies of the day. He sliced through the fears and sexual insecurities of the man of the day, who fell victim to early capital formation and obsession with work. Today anyone who had an introductory course in psychology feels confident enough to be opinionated on Freud, therefore let us take him as the starting point and skip the beginning.

Following the First World War and the reconstruction in Europe, the introduction of mass production, empowerment of different social strata brought along things earlier unseen, or as one acute Spaniard has put it, Europe was "suffering from the greatest crisis that can afflict peoples, nations, and civilisations". The capital formation during the war and post war rebuilding of the continent has brought along something later named "the middle class". The mass has received means to access what previously has been an exclusive privilege of elites: would that be bathrooms or the levers to determine the future of their states, their children. Surely, it is a bit irritating when everyone and their dog are trying to get a drink in a suddenly not so classy bar, and when everyone suddenly "discovers" their natural rights to be opinionated one each and every topic. What was more disturbing, according to the same i Gasset, was the fact of the nature, that "masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence and still less rule society in general".

The masses, they did not spring out of nowhere: they were around all along. But the growth in towns brought their agglomeration, thus, higher visibility. It brought together chorus which overshadowed the protagonists. These are not plain vanilla working masses, proletariat, but rather people who have nothing special that characterises them: all are pretty much the same and happy about it. The defining trait of a mass is that its members have no exceptional traits, aims or aspirations: they demand nothing of themselves. As United States are often a frontrunner of pop-culture, so it was also a part of the vogue in those days: Americans have coined a notion that it is indecent to be different. Elites were left on the sidewalks, as the mass agglomerated and took over the rule. The rule over everything.

It is interesting that the territories occupied by Soviets have not experienced similar development. Mass, as defined above, was non-existent due to lack of capital formation, social movement through societal strata, whatever. We had the "intelligent people", writers, scientists, poets, artists - those anyone would call elites. Our political liberation, curiously enough, did not bring them forward to lead the newly independent nations, as one could have expected. The people embodied creative energy of occupied nations, they, through silent or vocal resistance to oppression, have accumulated moral authority. But here too, the morals and talent have been swept aside. Today our advancement is often judged by the size of the super (hyper?) markets, vibrant and omnipresent symbols of multitude, agglomeration, similarity - symbols of and magnets to the mass. Everything was much faster in our countries - as we needed to catch up for the century lost. We are now seeing more and more people that want to be "special". The American dream, a symbol of being above thy neighbour, richer and more famous than her, is taking over. But that shall be the next time: revolt of the elites.

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