by Carl Jung
(This is the most forceful "indictment" against the coersive power of the mass.)
It is a notorious fact that the morality of society as a whole is in inverse ratio to its size; for the greater the aggregation of individuals, the more the individual factors are blotted out, and with them morality, which rests entirely on the moral sense of the individual and the freedom necessary for this. Hence, every man is, in a certain sense, unconsciously a worse man when he is in society than when acting alone; for he is carried by society and to that extent relieved of his individual responsibility. . . . Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity. Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representatives, puts a premium on mediocrity, on everything that settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible way. Individuality will inevitable be driven to the wall. This process begins in school, continues at the university, and rules all departments in which the State has a hand. In a small social body, the individuality of its members is better safeguarded; and the greater is their relative freedom and the possibility of conscious responsibility. Without freedom there can be no morality. p169 (from The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious)
The idiosyncrasy of an individual is not to be understood as any strangeness in his substance or in his components, but rather as a unique combination, or gradual differentiation, of functions and faculties which in themselves are universal. p182 (from The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious)
With more foreboding than real knowledge most people feel afraid of the manacing power that lies fettered in each of us, only waiting for the magic word to release it from the spell. The magic word, which always ends in "ism", works most successfully with those who have the least access to their instinctual roots into the truly chaotic world of collective consciousness. p96 (from On the nature of psyche).
