The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

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Sills, David L. (1968). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Macmillan. p. 82. ISBN 9780028661520.

the most important events in the history of civilisation. 2. THE MEANS OF ACTION OF THE LEADERS: AFFIRMATION, REPETITION, CONTAGION He became a Grand-Croix of the Legion of Honour in 1929. He published his last work, entitled Bases scientifiques d'une philosophie de l'histoire, in 1931 and on 13 December, died in Marnes-la-Coquette, Île-de-France at the age of ninety. [42] Crowds either accept opinions, ideas, and beliefs entirely, or reject them as a whole; they may even consider them as falsehoods. They don’t accept any transitional or neutral opinions, and they won’t allow contradictions and arguments. Therefore, crowds will appear to be domineering and intolerant. For example, at public meetings, the slightest countering speech from an orator may cause the harshest reaction from the crowd. At this point, if the orator still insists on his point or position, he will soon be defeated. Being domineering and intolerant are common characteristics of all crowds. Nevertheless, their degrees vary across different ethnic groups. Le Bon believed that the Latin race in ancient Rome was the most domineering and intolerant of all. They believed that those who disagreed with them must immediately denounce their own beliefs strongly. The development of these two attitudes in the Latin crowd completely destroyed the strong sentiment of individual independence among the Anglo-Saxons. XIX век, когато психологията и социологията все още напускат полето на философията!? Разбира се, че няма да ти звучи като модерно изледване, структурата на писане, а и на езика е съвсем различна. Струвало ти се базово!? Ама, разбира се, нали това е едно от първите съчинения по въпроса - ако не започне с базовите неща как ще бъде надградено след него!? Строиш ли къща без основи - е, къщата до нашата бе построена именно така и след малко разкопаване около стените половината от нея падна като отрязана с нож. Човекът сам го е написал - това е само началото; на механизмите им трябва време, за да се усложнят. Преди да се появяват сложните витиевати фрази, е имало прости думи. Точно тук му е достойнството - сътворил е книга, която всеки може да прочете, дори днес, в която са казани уж много прости неща, за които обаче няма да се сетиш САМ! Извинен си само при положение, че се занимаваш сериозно с някоя от гореспоменатите дисциплини и си прочел доста повече от средностатистическия умник по въпроса, но пак ще си останеш виновен в един от основните грехове в науката - да извадиш нещото от контекста му. We’ve said before that crowds have characteristics of being impulsive, readily influenced by suggestions from others, emotional, unable to reason but only imagine. Therefore, leaders of crowds will take many specific measures to stimulate the enthusiasm and mobilize the force of the crowds, of which the three most important persuasion methods are: affirmation, repetition, and contagion. These three means will not take effect immediately, but once they really start to play their roles, the results will be very evident and long-lasting.Firstly, affirmation must be concise and compelling, and should avoid reasoning and arguing. Affirmation is one of the most effective ways to make a certain idea take root in the minds of the crowd. It can even make rigorous reasonings and arguments seem feeble. The author gave an example of a speech given by the leader of an assembly. He said: “That land is haunted by fever, and has jails, but this is exactly where the vessel will bear off. That place imprisons notorious politicians and murderers who disregard the government, the two can eventually have their heart-to-heart conversation!” This leader created a vivid image using vivid words. This image constantly emerged in the minds of the audience, in which the country was suffering from fever, and where there was a vessel that could take them away. Such words can not only strongly stimulate the supporters, but also make the opponents feel threatened and intimidated, as they might be regarded as “notorious politicians” and sent to prison. Therefore, affirmation like this often makes people surrender. Fierce affirmation and sworn pledges are the most effective ways to intimidate the crowds. The effects are even more evident in times of crisis. For example, when giving speeches, the orators during the French Revolution usually first condemned the evil and vigorously propagated the virtues. They then cursed the tyrants, after which they finally declared that they would rather die than live without liberty. All the people hearing this would stand up, applaud, and cheer. In this way, affirmation can greatly stir up emotion in a crowd, and it is the persuasion method most commonly used by crowd leaders. So it remains a frightening multiplication table of manipulation and control on sinister grounds and the sobering realization that individuals, relatively limited in their capabilities, are forming states like insects, guided in their performance by the collective intelligence. As current as the problem is, so narrow-minded appear some of the author's remarks, which allows his subjective opinion to flow slowly into various passages, which is an unforgivable mistake for serious non-fiction. The mediated concept of history should be treated with caution since aspects such as the dynamics of the rise and fall of high cultures are indeed correctly explained. Le Bon's behavioural study of horses also sparked a long-standing interest in psychology, and in 1894 he released Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples. This work was dedicated to his friend Charles Richet though it drew much from the theories of Théodule-Armand Ribot, to whom Le Bon dedicated Psychologie des Foules (1895). [29] Psychologie des Foules was in part a summation of Le Bon's 1881 work, L'Homme et les sociétés, to which Émile Durkheim referred in his doctoral dissertation, De la division du travail social. [30]

In the 1890s, he turned to psychology and sociology, in which fields he released his most successful works. Le Bon developed the view that crowds are not the sum of their individual parts, proposing that within crowds there forms a new psychological entity, the characteristics of which are determined by the " racial unconscious" of the crowd. At the same time he created his psychological and sociological theories, he performed experiments in physics and published popular books on the subject, anticipating the mass–energy equivalence and prophesising the Atomic Age. Le Bon maintained his eclectic interests up until his death in 1931. In this video we will provide a summary of Le Bon’s classic work. In particular, we will investigate his insights into the nature of crowds, look at the role ideas play in influencing crowds, examine the religious sentiment of crowds, and discuss the psychological and emotional benefits one derives from joining a crowd.

Kramer, Martin Seth (2011). Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East. Transaction Publishers. p.63. ISBN 9781412817394. Staum, Martin S. (2011), Nature and Nurture in French Social Sciences, 1859–1914 and Beyond, McGill-Queen's Press In 1884, he was commissioned by the French government to travel around Asia and report on the civilisations there. [11] The results of his journeys were a number of books, and a development in Le Bon's thinking to also view culture to be influenced chiefly by hereditary factors such as the unique racial features of the people. [17] [18] The first book, entitled La Civilisation des Arabes, was released in 1884. In this, Le Bon praised Arabs highly for their contributions to civilisation, but criticised Islamism as an agent of stagnation. [19] [20] He also described their culture as superior to that of the Turks who governed them, and translations of this work were inspirational to early Arab nationalists. [21] [22] He followed this with a trip to Nepal, becoming the first Frenchman to visit the country, and released Voyage au Népal in 1886. [23]

Kayman, Martin A. (1986). Modernism Of Ezra Pound: The Science Of Poetry. Springer. p.83. ISBN 9781349182473.A native of Nogent-le-Rotrou, Le Bon qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Paris in 1866. He opted against the formal practice of medicine as a physician, instead beginning his writing career the same year of his graduation. He published a number of medical articles and books before joining the French Army after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Defeat in the war coupled with being a first-hand witness to the Paris Commune of 1871 strongly shaped Le Bon's worldview. He then travelled widely, touring Europe, Asia and North Africa. He analysed the peoples and the civilisations he encountered under the umbrella of the nascent field of anthropology, developing an essentialist view of humanity, and invented a portable cephalometer during his travels. Recherches anatomiques et mathématiques sur les variations de volume du cerveau et sur leurs relations avec l'intelligence (1879); ("Anatomical and mathematical research on the changes in brain volume and its relationships with intelligence") Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture — all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising. In consequence of the purely destructive nature of their power crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall. The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men’s minds is the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.”( The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon)

Just prior to World War I, Wilfred Trotter introduced Wilfred Bion to Le Bon's writings and Sigmund Freud's work Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Trotter's book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1919) forms the basis for the research of both Wilfred Bion and Ernest Jones who established what would be called group dynamics. During the first half of the twentieth century, Le Bon's writings were used by media researchers such as Hadley Cantril and Herbert Blumer to describe the reactions of subordinate groups to media.

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Mitunter werden wahre Kritikpunkte wie die Tatsache, dass das Bildungssystem durch stumpfe Repetition nur als großer Trichter fungiert, ohne anwendbares Wissen zu vermitteln, dadurch disqualifiziert, dass die Schulen als Brutstätten für Radikale, Anarchisten und subversive Elemente dargestellt werden. Das konservative und elitäre Weltbild zeigt sich auch in einer Verachtung für gewöhnliche Menschen und einer Herabwürdigung für Demokratie und Sozialismus, die in krassem Widerspruch zu den anderen, weitreichenden Erkenntnissen des Buches stehen.