"The Metropolis"

What is difficult about studying conformity and individuality within our society and culture is that it creates a circular feeling of thoughts and unanswered questions. A question that comes to my mind quite often is what is individuality? It is a question that could be discussed for hours, yet remains unanswered. in the essay, Ambiguous Individuality, Olli Pyyhtinen writes about the social theorist, Georg Simmel and his ideas on the "who" and the "what" of an individual. Simmel looked at the individual within the context of the metropolis life. In his essay, The Metropolis and Mental Life, he begins by saying, "the deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life" (Spillman 20o2). Simmel paints a picture for us of the Metropolis life and the individuals who occupy such a life. There is a loss of individuality within a life like that where the relationships between people is that of seller and buyer and the interactions between the two consist of some sort of transaction. He refers to this as an "intellectual relationship" which deals with people in the same way as numbers, as opposed to an "emotional relationship" which relies on the individuality of the peoples (Spillman 2002). The "intellectual relationship" is part of the "economic-psychological aspect" of the metropolis. They are not personal, but business oriented. No deep connection between the buyer and the seller or producer exists, other than the money that sits between them, connecting them in this transaction. Simmel mentions that "the modern city, however, is supplied almost exclusively by production for the market, that is, for ENTIRELY UNKNOWN PURCHASEERS who never appear in the actual field of vision of the producers themselves" (Spillman 2002).



I work as a cashier at a retial sporting goods store and at the end of a long day at work customer looks the same and is the same to me. I ring up the items they set before me, tell them how much they owe me, take their money, and say have a nice day as politely as I can. At the beginning of the day or a year and a half ago when I started working there, I had excitement and genuine greetings for those who walked through the door. But the repetition of that stimuli (customers walking through the door and buying products) and the constant occurrences of the same thing, decrease my reaction to it. This is, in my opinion, similar to what Simmel writes when he mentions the "blase outlook" within the metropolis. He explains that "the essence of the blase attitude is an indifference towards the distinction between things. Not in the sense that they are not perceived, as is the case of mental dullness, but rather that the meaning and the value of the distinctions between things, and therewith of the things themselves are experienced as meaningless. They appear to the blase person in a homogeneous, flat and gray color with no one of them worthy of being preferred to another. This psychic mood is the correct subjective reflection of a complete money economy to the extent that money takes the place of all the manifoldness of things and expresses all qualitative distinctions between them in the distinction of 'how much'" (Spillman 2002).



But then, amongst the 8 hours of faceless figures passing by me, a face appears. it is within the rare occasion, when a customer comes in and engages in conversation with me, that his or her face is remembered. They are no longer figures but people with stories, lives, and interests. They become individuals. My relationship between them is still within the context of a transaction, however, once meaning and emotion are brought into the picture, the relationship changes ever so slightly, and the dehumanizing effect of the "blase attitude" diminishes.



Now for the "who" and the "what of an individual...



___________________________________________________________


Spillman, Lyn. Cultural Sociology: Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and Mental Life. Blackwell Publishing (2002) p. 28-38.