Man Against Mass Society

At roughly the mid-point of the last century, Gabriel Marcel published Man Against Mass Society, a "neo-Socratic" (Marcel rejected the label "Existentialist") social critique.

For Marcel, the indifference of the masses to the present state of endless war--recall that, in 1951, the endless war du jour was the Cold War--is made possible by what he termed a "spirit of abstraction." This spirit has been sent abroad in the land by the propaganda machines of the ruling class (the fourth estate, public education) which effectively de-humanize the enemy through rhetorical demonization and minimize the public's exposure to any accurate information that might make the consequences of its government's military actions concrete.

This same spirit of abstraction reflects the public's lack of connection to any sort of effective politics: the ballot box offers a simulacrum of democracy, not actual democracy; elected officials work to maintain the status quo, not disrupt it. The resulting sense of impotence undermines any individual sense of self-worth or collective sense of community.

Aimless, alienated, and bored, people become subject to fanaticism for they are lost in the spirit of abstraction and lack "ground."

Clearly, nothing has changed in sixty years.

It remains to be seen if the present "Occupy X" fad will effect any real change whatsoever. So far, it appears to be little more than a kind of "acting out" of genuine frustration. But no one has come forward with any concrete solutions designed to effect the radical change that is needed. It is difficult to understand how people who have been systematically indoctrinated to believe that the simulacrum of democracy is actual democracy could be capable of taking concrete steps towards the dissipation of the ruling spirit of abstraction. How could they know where to begin?