Mass consciousness (as a philosophical problem) manifested itself at the end of the 19th century. Nietzsche also wrote that in a crowd of one hundred people each instead of his own receives some other consciousness.
If we are talking about the mass of people, then we do not mean any class or class. A class is a stable system, united by some ideals and interests, a common culture and (or) ideology. The mass does not meet any of these criteria. Although it creates some kind of collectives, it is not part of society, because it has neither stable cultural ties, nor a specific structure. The crowd becomes an extreme, even more unstable, form of mass.
Features of mass consciousness
Hypnotic influence of the crowd. Le Bon believed that a “collective soul” was forming in the crowd, because individual feelings and thoughts began to take the same direction. This “collective soul”, of course, does not live long, but quickly acquires certain features characteristic of it (only now and here). A man in a crowd quickly succumbs to the hypnotic influence of the masses, losing his personality.
Disclaimer. Moreover, the mass consciousness, reinforced by the thoughts and ideas of individuals who begin to think the same way, returns to these same individuals many times strengthened. A man in a crowd is capable of such acts that he would never have allowed himself to commit alone. The crowd gives strength and relieves responsibility, making each individual feel anonymous.
Sacrifice in the name of the crowd. In addition, making up a small particle of the crowd, a person can perform actions that are generally unusual for his nature, compromising his interests, sacrificing them to the collective. This is possible only when a strong mass consciousness acts on the individual, whose suggestion is difficult to resist.
The crowd is characterized by extremes . A mass of people gathered in a crowd can only accept any idea or opinion entirely or completely or reject it unconditionally. Mass consciousness does not recognize halftones. There is no individual mind, therefore, what is conveyed by suggestion is welcome. And whether it will be absolute truth or absolute error does not matter. And it doesn’t matter what color the feelings of the crowd have - negative or positive. In any case, these feelings will be one-sided and exaggerated, which is exacerbated by the fact that any responsibility is removed from a particular person.
Le Bon believes that the crowd does not want to know the truth , she turns away from obvious things that she does not like, preferring to them delusions that are to their taste. Therefore, in order to control the crowd, one does not have to try to reason with it; one has to skillfully mislead it.
Mass consciousness and mass action
There are several forms of mass action. All of them are mostly negative in color and flow from the state in which the mass consciousness is at the moment. This can be a panic or just rumors, pogrom, riot or mass hysteria. In any case, mass action implies a protest. It can take the following forms.
Passive protest:
- open (direct actions aimed at any disobedience, failure to comply with orders, etc.);
- hidden (various conspiracies, incitement to overt resistance, putting up leaflets, ignoring work).
Active protest:
- open (any meetings, demonstrations, rallies, strikes);
- hidden (preparation of military operations, terrorist acts, etc.).
Mass consciousness is of interest to many, especially in power structures, from the point of view of finding the most perfect way to manage it. However, now the media is successfully coping with this . But they are also losing ground to mass opinion polls, which are unlikely to truly reflect it. Rather, on the contrary, they successfully influence the mass consciousness of people.