The Metropolis and Mental Life

The Metropolis and Mental Life is a 1903 essay published by the sociologist Georg Simmel, with this laid the foundations of urban sociology.

According to Georg Simmel, the individual to being leveled and consumed in a social engineering mechanism refuses. In particular, the emerging since industrialization division of labor seems to be harmful to the individual at first glance. Georg Simmel is equipped with the intensification of nervous stimulation as a psychological basis of the metropolitan individuality. The man is affected by external, different impressions. He Crosses eg a road at Piccadilly Circus in London, we obtain for him a different picture than in the country in a 3000 - strong village as Schöftland. Thus, man is almost raped at Piccadilly Circus by dozens of different impressions. Simmel sees this fact as the cause, as the soul of life, respectively the intellectualist character is forming. The small-town can face him so well known, not large changes in the underlying environment with the mind and emotional ties. When city dwellers has to lie on the form of the mind of the mind, almost as a protective device against their own uprooting.

As the mind is essential, as the cash economy, the people (Ex. restructuring: In order to achieve a cost reduction of Y, X employees being laid off ) and things treated purely factual. Therefore, the money economy has its roots in the city and not in the country. The practicality is evident in the production of goods, where a mostly completely unknown buyer - is produced - for money. As a result, Simmel speaks of how modern man has become an increasingly expect Direction. The character of a big city like Berlin or Tokyo is evident in the dependency of the art of the inhabitants. Without punctuality of the apparatus might not work. Predictability, accuracy, etc. are stained from the people. Simmel sees this in the blasé attitude that puts the city dwellers to days. To return to the aforementioned nervous life, so in the big city life the nerve is stimulated to the utmost. The man is unable to process all appropriate. However, this truncation is necessary for their own protection. This even goes up to a certain aversion to ( long-term ) neighbors, which you can then hardly greets.

This property of the city are the city dwellers, the liberty which it would not have in the country. Simmel explains this with the social circle. Earliest bonds consist of a relatively small group in which the group meticulously monitors the compliance of their members. This can be seen at parties, religions which to secure its existence against the outside ( enemies ) in the initial stage. This tightness loosens the larger the group then.

Further, the division of labor also shows the character of the individual. In order to survive in the market, the individual is forced to specialize more and more. This fact leads according to Simmel to the fact that in large urban life your own personality and appearance will be much more brought to bear. This justifies the many city originals ( eg Mr Z in Geneva, who would never leave his house without a parrot on the back), and the caprice of some contemporaries. Because the meetings also are always so short, will the individual specifically, pointedly, give.

Statement

Is the deepest problem of modern life by Georg Simmel, the claim of the individual after the independence and individuality of his existence against the superior powers of the Company to preserve the history of the Ancestral external culture and technique of life.

The city dweller is - in contrast to the small-town - an " intensification of nervous stimulation " exposed. That is the basis for the type of urban individuality.

The need and simultaneous inability to handle the steady stream of city stimuli, leading to increased " intellectual character " of the city dweller and the ascribed " blasé attitude ". Recognizable is the blasé attitude in the blunting compared with the distinguishing things. By temporal precision, the intellectual character and blase it comes to the reserve and a " structure highest impersonality ."

However, the functional size of the city allows freedom of movement and asks to bring his personality to bear.

The preponderance of the objective over the subjective mind is the cause that just the city suggests the drive for most individual personal existence, for the simultaneous development of the subjects follows development objective ( in language, art, science, etc. ) only with distance.