Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis

by Robert D. Kaplan

It is only within the crowd that he can escape the innate human “fear of being touched” by a stranger. Because he can’t exert dominance on his own, he exerts it through a crowd that speaks with one voice. He was nothing before the creation of this crowd and now he is everything. The crowd’s urge is always to grow, rescuing others from their loneliness, and consuming all hierarchies, since the goal of a lonely individual is always to be noticed and to dominate his betters. “Within the crowd there is equality,” Canetti emphasizes.[46] Yet the crowd feels persecuted and demands retribution, because lonely individuals are always bitter about something. Thus, the crowd sees itself as entirely pure, having attained the highest virtue. After all, the lonely individual, in his own thoughts at least, can do no wrong. And he receives justification of this inside the crowd, where for the first time he feels he has power. This is how tyranny begins.