Sounds Like Folly

Looking down at my watch and seeing that my break is almost over, I head to the bathroom to relieve myself. My eyes wander up and down the common graffiti until I notice a quote written in charcoal black that I haven’t seen before. “The Crowd is Untruth.” With a jiggle and a shake I gave a little laugh.

While washing my hands I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Thick black glasses, five o’clock shadow, a white collared shirt covered by a blue and white striped sweater.

How many other men look likes this?

I dried my hands and left the café.

Walking along the street I glance at the passerby’s, the clean-cut suits, the popped collars, the lulu lemons, and the long brightly colored scarves. Yet, over and over again I keep repeating the quote from the stall in my head.

“The Crowd is Untruth.”

Arriving at the office I walk by that cute secretary Louise, with her pink hair in buns and reading the newest issue of Vice, and give her a smile and head down the hall to my cubicle. I’ve always wondered why she works in our office, for she doesn’t seem the type.

Passing Mark I get the common reaction.
“Ben, oh my god man, they are coming out with Street Fighter four for PS3 and XBOX. Dude we are so getting a case and I’m kicking your digital ass.”
“Hahaha, no shit. You can try but I’m sure you’ll lose like you always do.”
“We’ll see soon enough.”

Back at my desk I settle in for another 6 hours of punching in the numbers, crunching the spreadsheets, and being a regular Excel wizard.

“The Crowd is Untruth.”
“What was that Ben?”
“Nothing Mark. Just something I read earlier.”

Google search brings up the author of the quote in seconds, Soren Kierkegaard. The article is titled “That Individual” from Kierkegaard’s book On Himself.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth, so that (to consider for a moment the extreme case), even if every individual, each for himself in private, were to be in possession of the truth, yet in case they were all to get together in a crowd – a crowd to which any sort of decisive significance is attributed, a voting, noisy, audible crowd – untruth would at once be in evidence.

This hit me at once as an insight I’ve known but never been able to place into words. We can’t all be in the right with our own goals and ethics towards how others run their lives. I read on to see how he states how man is akin to a deity when one attains the truth through God. I am no man of God but I see the concept of man being God. Even Kierkegaard was concerned with the growing importance of earthly and material goods within people’s lives and he says how this moves man away from his kinship with God as the helper.

It does away with it or transforms it into a fable, and puts it in place the modern (or, we might rather say, the old pagan) notion that to be a man is to belong to a race endowed with reason, to belong to it as a specimen, so that the race or species is higher than the individual, which is to say that there are no more individuals but only specimens.

That makes no sense to me. We are a species aren’t we? Darwin and evolution taught us that. Humanism and all that. I reflect upon something that had been hidden deep in my mind since my college days. That we are single threads within a tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole? I look around the office and everyone is busy with something, each thread working within the pattern. Kierkegaard goes on to state how the crowd provides a blanket of blamelessness and cover from their cowardice from being an individual. Such an example being that even in a crowd against Christ no one would step up and spit upon him. Obviously Kierkegaard lived in a less atheistic era, for I know of a few who would pay for the chance to spit upon Christ given the opportunity. Yet thinking about it, even with that act I believe, they would use as a means of social advantage and bragging rights to gain more respect within their crowd. “The Crowd is Untruth.”

If… there were an assemblage of thousands or more and the truth was to be decided by ballot, then this is what one should do…: one should in godly fear give expression to the fact that the crowd, regarded as a judge over ethical and religious matters, is untruth, whereas it is eternally true that every man can be the one. This is truth.

I cannot agree to this. It sounds too fascist to me. If the crowd is untruth when voting and deciding on these ethical, religious and political matters then does this imply that only one who knows the truth should act upon it regardless of public opinion, or fool the crowd into believing that what they are doing is following one’s inspired truth. Hitler did this and that truth he followed killed millions because of fear and hatred towards the Jewish people, he caused a world war over power and domination to spread the word of “One People, One Leader, One Reich, GERMANY!” I must finish this and see what it leads to.

Kierkegaard leads on to how the way for an individual witness of the truth to spread it in a grass roots fashion by talking personally with others in the act of not educating them, but allowing them to decided for themselves on how to be their own individual. He bashes the anonymous authors who peddle their untruth opinions on the moral, ethical, and religions matters that they would not have the courage to state as an individual. This is rampant in our Information Age full of Internet news, blogs, message boards and forums. Everyone has an avatar to hide behind. I am guilty of this myself. I post my comments and insults behind a mask of identity, joining the crowd with confidence of no retaliation.

The communicator of the truth can only be a single individual. And again the communication of it can only be addressed to the individual; for the truth consists precisely in that conception of life which is expressed precisely by the individual.

What truth is this? I see it now as it unravels. All those major changes in my life and thoughts have always been achieved through conversations with those closest, those persuasive souls for imposing their ideas upon me and allowing me to choose which path I should follow. It’s how I fell into this career path, how I choose to live my life of common entertainment and earthly pleasures. These days I have no moral goals to achieve. Even my idea of politics is what I feel to be the common consensus of what is right and just. I assumed that the past men and women who have thought and fought for these rights must have been driven by the truths that they held.

Yet, these individuals change the mindset of the crowd by treating them as a crowd and not as individuals allowed to choose for themselves. For the political will within those advocates assume that they must persuade the crowd as if they were full weak and impotent individuals. Now I must finish this reading before lunch break starts.

“The individual” is the category through which, in a religious respect, this age, all history, the human race as a whole must pass… My task is one which at least does not expose me to any such danger of being trampled underfoot, for my task was as a humble servant… to provoke, if possible, to invite, to stir up the many to press through this defile of “the individual,” through which, however, no one can pass except by becoming the individual – the contrary being a categorical impossibility. And yet, if I were to desire an inscription for my tombstone, I should desire none other than “That Individual” – if that is not now understood, it surely will be.

Like a wall of bricks falling upon my head, like a hot coal on my seat, I jump up and look around, heads all focused upon their screens busy typing away and following the corporate mandate of obeying the crowd of our customers and fulfilling their orders and commissions efficiently.

“Ben you okay? You look a little out of it. Taking off for lunch early?”
“Mark, I just got some bad news, tell the boss I’m off home and will be back tomorrow.”
“Okay, feel better man.”

I walk towards the door and pass by Louise.

“Hey there Ben, you look like you just had a kick to the soul. You wanna talk about it over lunch? I can ditch early, no problem.”
“You’re right I have. If you’d like to join me you can. I was just going to head home early and take some time to think. But talking about it might help.”
“Ok, let’s go.”

Walking down the street I couldn’t say much, I felt as if surrounded by a herd, I just kept walking in step with those in front of me and beside Louise. We passed by many decent places to stop and eat but I was so lost in thought that I couldn’t direct my feet towards their doors.

Finally Louise grabs my arm and says,

“Ben, stop for a second would you. You look like a zombie in fear. If they feel fear that is, I always thought of them as just simple cowards.”
“Why did you say that?”
“Say what? Zombies are cowards? I don’t know just came into my head.”
“Well that’s kind of related to what got me all stirred up. Lets stop here and grab a coffee and go head to that bench over there and I’ll tell you.”

We went into the café and I bought a coffee for Louise and myself. We walked over to the bench and sat down. I recounted my experience with the quote earlier that morning and how when I got back to work I looked it up and read that article. How I never really thought about things such as that and how I’ve always been content with being part of the crowd, a normal and productive member of society.

“Hahaha, Ben I never thought reading some philosophy would stir you up so much. It makes me happy to hear this. I’ve been working on my degree for 5 years now and still am surprised and excited when I get inspired emotionally and mentally by the writings of some past philosopher. Maybe what you need is a change of perspective. A little more elaboration of the ideas and a chance to talk about with others, allow you to make up your own mind about your life and choices. Here’s my number and if you want to talk just give me a call, I need to head back to work. Thanks for the coffee Ben.”

With those words she got up and left. I was left their alone, thinking to myself. And it hit me again.

I am a single biological linguistic individual with no value within a crowd, but the choices I make, the life I lead as an individual I should aspire to and find value in. Knowing that I can make a choice and be content in those choices is my own eternal truth.

I walked home with a smile. Once home I slept.

The next morning at work I asked Louise for suggested classes, I told Mike to be ready for a night of digital battles, and I sat down to a new world with faith in my choices.