He distinguishes objective life which is Metropolitan run by money compared to that of a rural or less sophisticated way of life based on emotional relationships which is more subjective and reliant on the personality and heart. Intellectuality is seen to preserve the subjective life against the power of metropolitan life (Wolff, k (Trans 1950)).
In ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ by Simmel, he describes money as the means of dealing with things and people by creating an inconsiderate hardness which rural life would never have allowed. Objective culture is defined by money which ‘reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number.’ (Simmel,G 1950)
Relationships occur with an objective balancing of service and return. Each person retains a blunt ‘matter-of-factness’ which derives from the intellect. Man reacts with his head and not his heart, ‘Metropolitan life, thus, underlies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence in metropolitan man.’(Simmel,G1950)) The objective world revolves around money which also creates the ‘blasé attitude’. This is where no action or moment is of more worth than another. No one object deserves preference over any other. This could be seen as having a ‘tragic’ dimension to society as ‘the self-preservation of certain personalities is brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one’s own personality down into a feeling of the sae worthlessness.’ (Simmel,G 1950)
Is society really this bleak? City people can escape into a more tranquil site in the countryside or by the sea free of external forces and objects created by man to humanise themselves again. Although an individual in the city could do this, others may not have the means of escape from the money economy and therefore develop the blasé attitude centred around money, turning them into autonomous beings.Surely a person’s feelings are still felt even when living in the city?As humans, we are not completely devoid of feeling.We are also emotional creatures but these have been desensitised through the blasé attitude. So a retrogression is noticed in the culture of the individual with reference to spirituality and delicacy. The individual is reduced to a quantity who cannot progress spiritually, who is stripped of his subjective form into an objective life.(Simmel,G 1950) It is the division of labour which also creates this and which Marx explains with his idea of ‘alienation’ which suppresses the personality of the individual.It is as though human identity has been split, with the ‘social’ aspect lost in the external and objective forces of metropolitan society and the ‘personal’ fleeing ever more deeply into subjectivity. (Nisbet,R.A 1980)
Modern society is the splitting of the ‘personal’ into the objective social, reflected in the impersonality and remoteness of authority, work. The subjective social side is found in man’s retreat into the purely private life. (Nisbet, R.A 1980)Simmel demonstrates this idea through his essay on, ‘The Stranger’. ‘The Stranger’ displays Simmel’s fixation on the metropolis by how every man is something of a stranger; the potential wonderer in but not of his society. His position in a group is determined by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he brings qualities into it which do not stem from the group itself.(Simmel,G 1950).
I can see how this split in society can have a ‘tragic’ dimension. It is tragic in that those in the metropolis let their intellect rule and those in a small town rural environment would be dis-orientated in a metropolis where the rural-like slower more emotional response would be dangerous and the exposure of feelings to excitation would confuse them (Nisbet, R.A 1980). The culture of the mind in the metropolis is not human as the mind may speak words or calculate reactions but the heart says nothing. It is soulless and pessimistic for mankind but nothing can change in modern society unless the capitalist system is fundamentally changed. People who chose to live comfortably find more hope of employment in the city, there is no other option.
The ‘blasé attitude’ adopted by city dwellers also causes a bleak outlook on society as the same factors that lead to a regimentation of the mind and a blunting of its sense of individuality lead also to the withdrawal from the outer world (Nisbet R.A 1980). This makes us ‘cold and heartless’(Simmel,G 1950) according to the small town people as our withdrawal from excitements that support specific and appropriate response from people is suppressed. This reserve creates an ‘indifferent’ attitude towards every person we meet. But Simmel sees this as leading to a ‘mutual strangeness and repulsion which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused’ (Simmel,G 1950) Simmel does see conflict as positive within a group too. He says that reserve has had a creative role in the development of the Western mind from Athens in the fifth century B.C. There lay the struggle ‘against the constant inner and outer pressure of a de-individualising small town’(Simmel,G 1950) which made larger, stronger personalities shine and rise above the weaker ones, creating ‘the general human character’ (Simmel,G 1950) in the intellectual development of our species. Conflict within a group creates harmony and at the same time gives vitality and change and the real structure of the group.
Simmel thinks that a degree of conflict is essential to human relations. Due to the conflict in the ‘objective’ spirit over the ‘subjective’ spirit, it becomes more difficult for the individual to know himself but sees himself as part of the external, objective culture, ‘The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organisation of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress…’(Simmel, G 1950) and it is the Metropolis that harbours this internal and external conflict of defining the individual’s role in society.Simmel sees Metropolis as collective and individual to humans in the social process and community and detachment are the two aspects to man’s external struggle. This split has a tragic dimension to it as there is no alternative to his theory and it is very true for today’s society. However, there is a chance to humanise ourselves over a period of time on holiday or on a break from the gruelling life of a city.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McLennan, G (2002) The Story of Sociology
Nisbet, R.A (1980) The Sociological Tradition Heinemann London
Wolff, K (1950) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York:Free Press
Wolff, K (Trans 1950) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York:Free Press The Metropolis and Mental Life.htm
