Kierkegaard’s Warning: If You Feel Lost...

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Starting off my philosopher series, I thought it best to start with the figure who was regarded as the “anti-philosopher”, the man who dismantled the elitist intellectualism that was polluting the culture at the time (and still is to an extent). Unless you’re here by accident, you already know I’m talking about the 19^th Century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

Although he’s often cited as ‘the father of existentialism’, he’s more than this posthumous label; what his legacy should include is his prophetic warning to not give up your individualism in favour of the crowd.

To Kierkegaard, being part of ‘the crowd’ is at odds with becoming an individual where you can blend in and take comfort in numbers. Bear in mind he was saying this before we could argue online with a random guy from Mozambique; if he saw how online discourse amplifies the crowd to dizzying numbers and how modern politics plays into it I think he’d have a meltdown.

However, even without this context, his insight into the dangers is prophetic for the times we’re in despite being born well before the hula hoop and just before the bicycle. (I mean I can’t even predict what I’m eating tomorrow). Anyway, if I can have a few minutes of your time, I’ll explain Kierkegaard’s best concept that I think is relevant now more than ever.

The Levelling Process

In Kierkegaard’s view, there is an inner battle the individual has with what he calls ‘the levelling process’ which seeks to ‘destroy the individual’.

The levelling process is the attempt to put everything on the same level where individuality is sacrificed through equating all values as the same. When we identify with the collective masses of whatever culture we’re in, it dehumanises us as we become an impersonal entity that encourages the evasion of personal choice through the ease of blending in. In his words:

“a crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction”.

To Kierkegaard, this levelling process is intentional as a hive-mind is the perfect mix of being easy to control and not being able to be held accountable. He began to entertain this thought when he realised that there must be a greater power at play because there must be a source of the ‘destruction of the individual’. In his words, when we join the crowd, we are ‘in the hands of an abstract power’, a ‘levelling-master’ which is a ‘monstrous abstraction’ that can never be held to account due to their ambiguous nature.

This is because when we say ‘the public’, we are not talking about a specific set of individuals, with all participants acting as onlookers, a ‘mirage’ and a ‘phantom’, an illusion of power.

This tactic of speaking for ‘the people’ is everywhere in mainstream media, with it appearing in the press and uttered by politicians left, right and centre, to assert the importance of their points. When they refer to ‘the public’, they are presenting a narrative in which they speak in the name of all people, adding gravitas and weight to their statements as it suggests they have a hidden authority with people being on their side.

So the ‘destruction of the individual’ is only possible in the hands of a spreading power. They infect people with the offer of refuge, where members can hide accountability through safety in numbers; as Kierkegaard put it, we take solitude ‘en masse’ and this is what the notion of ‘the public’ offers us .

The Passionless Age

In his book “The Present Age”, Kierkegaard claims that we live in a passionless age, living in a world with no values where only monetary desires are sought. Now, this is not to say that you can’t generate meaningful values yourself, you just have to disconnect from the crowd and think for yourself. To Kierkegaard, if you dismiss his warning and join ‘the crowd’, you are inevitably ‘signing the warrant for [your] own doom’.

People who subscribe to becoming ‘the public’ are convinced that the main desire in life is money and this unquenchable desire can cloud an individual, causing the once individual, to live a dishonest life choosing chatter over self-development and fulfilment. I used the word ‘unquenchable’ as there will always be someone who has more money than you and, if you’re in this world, surrounded by these people every day, once you reach a certain milestone of riches you’ll always divert your attention to a person richer than you and want more than him.

This ‘chase’ might provide the individual with an initial ‘selfish kind of enjoyment’, but it will always get out of hand when you lose your individuality and have no productive principles to direct your life. This is because, when you join the crowd, you become a passive entity who is afraid to think of yourself in isolation, where standing up for your own views feels alien and a life of no accountability, appealing, and before you know it, no values remain.

This is how the perceived safety of the crowd destroys the individual; living a life consumed by chatter, the distinctions between the important (i.e. your values) and the crowd’s wishes become blurred and so you favour the noise. However, it’s not all doom and gloom and if you heed Kierkegaard’s warning and be honest with yourself, dispelling the illusions that stand in the way and become aware of life’s existential tasks, you can avoid this fate. As Kierkegaard puts it, “Silence is the essence of inwardness of the inner life” and this is what the levelling process makes us forget.

To finish with a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein who was heavily influenced by Kierkegaard:

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“You can’t change the world you can only change yourself”.

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Thanks for Reading,

Brandon

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