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The Metropolitan Man
In Georg Simmel’s essay, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” he states, “the psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift and external and internal stimuli” (Highmore 41). In essence Simmel is suggesting that the continuous activity of the metropolis creates a shield protecting him from outer stimuli that would exhaust his emotions. But in doing so, his sense of emotional expression becomes unresponsive. Upon examining the metropolitan man Simmel deduces that “metropolitan life, thus, underlies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence” (Simmel 2). But also leaves the individual less responsive to his or her own emotions. He is so often trying to protect himself from the environment of the city that his emotions become very distraught and out of place.
In today’s fast-paced society, the metropolitan man is expected to have a keen knowledge of the world around him. Intellectual conversation is not only common, but also expected in the upper rungs of society. The media provides an outlet in which an individual can receive up to date news around the globe. Although helpful in increasing an individual’s global conscience, the media has assisted in deadening the senses of the metropolitan individual. On a daily basis the news is littered with images of war, hate and violence, the newscasters report these horrific instances with such a calm air and apathetic tone that they portray no emotions at all. Mass society is teaching the common man that emotions are not needed in reacting to devastating events that do not directly affect the person. Emotion becomes deadened by th...
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...ne to comfort him. He knows he can find this sanctuary in a stripper.
Georg Simmel created his theories on the metropolitan man by observing him in his habitat. Everyday individuals are comforted with the reality that life is inevitable. It is often hard for people to step back and examine their lives for what they are. By pointing out the psychological effects of the city on the man other we able to look at the metropolitan life in a way outside the norms of society.
Works Cited
- Highmore, Ben. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. Routledge publishing. New York,
New York. Copyright 2002.
- Simmel, Georg. The Conflict in Modern Culture and other Essays. Teachers College
press. New York, New York. Copyright 1968.
- Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and Mental Life. Free Press. New York, New York.
Copyright 1950.
Wang’s studies have shown that news industries are now tabloidizing news because it elicits the attention of their viewers. Now the only thing considered as “entertainment” in the news is “crimes, accidents, and disasters”. Wangs writes “News that bleeds seem to still lead the primary broadcasts” (Wang 722). People nowaday only tune in when a disaster has occurred and anything other that is not “interesting”. Unfortunately, people would rather watch Isis in action then heard about Obama releasing innocent victims from prison. The reporter in “Gray Noise” proves Wang’s words true when he records on his lens about a mother who had just lost her
According to Park Dixon Goist (1977). “city Planning emerged as a movement and then a profession in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century“ which was formed by a number of related interests such as included landscape architects, architects, progressive politics, housing reform, the city beautiful movement, the Garden city or the new towns idea, regionalism and zoning. (Goist, 1977, page 121). The idea of city planning therefore emerged at the time when the industrial revolution was at its peak and people were flocking from the villages into cities for better jobs and pay. This was the time when the Chicago Exposition had just hit the exhibition forum and the Garden City concept by Ebenezer Howard and others were in competition.
Naked City adequately captures the change in cities due to gentrification. Zukin illustrates the cultural uniqueness of iconic New York neighborhoods. Her examination of these neighborhoods in the past and how they are today gives incite on how they might look in the future if society continues on the path that it is on. Neighborhoods have been renovated; several facades have been modernized, but the area still has an old-fashioned feel (106). Zukin proves that in society today we strive to modernize cities yet we still try to maintain the authentic feel. Reading this book my knowledge on gentrification and how it has affect communities have broadened. Zukin’s reference to movies and music artists made me realize that people might determine certain neighborhoods as a desirable place to live based on how they are depicted in movies or books. I also learned it’s important to consider the trends that are going on around the world. Shops reflect the “class world” that dominates the East Village now: both elegant and derelict, hippie and yuppie, distinctive and diverse (106). The current hipster trend can be a factor of this reflection of East Village. Zukin understands that there are many factors that result in gentrification of an area. It is crucial to look at the tastes ad lifestyles of the upper middle class, for these dominate the cultural representations of cities today (223). Zukin provides a brief history of different New
From the beginning of the story, a dreary gray New York is painted in one's mind with a depressing saddened tone of the bustling metropolis. It is a city flooded with immigrant workers hoping to better their lives and their c...
...ermarry, his interaction with Parisians, and because of his religious background. The city provides him with an atmosphere of comfort because he doesn’t have to make his own decisions, the mass public does that for him. In the city he has the comfort of direction. Therefore, he looks to the public and Parisian society to help define and construct one simple mass identity.
Octavio Paz’s “Identical Time” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” have, in common, a theme of aliveness. They each feature certain individuals as particularly alive in their cities: the old man is alive in the busy dawn of Paz’s Mexico City, and Mr. Mead is alive in the silent night of a future Los Angeles envisioned by Bradbury. The individuals’ aliveness manifests as stillness in “Identical Time” and motion in “The Pedestrian” against the urban backgrounds - signifying, in both, living a human life freely, in the present and nature. Furthermore, in portraying the urban backgrounds as, in contrast to the individuals, dull and lifeless, the two pieces speak together to how cities may diminish and hinder our aliveness and humanity.
Rose, J. K. (1997, November 8). The city beautiful movement. University of Virginia. Retrieved December 28, 2010, from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/citybeautiful/city.html
Ray Bradbury in his story “The Pedestrian” highlights isolation, technology occupation, and no crime in the city; ultimately, becoming an insipid world. Isolation is a key component in this short story because it shapes how society is. For instance, when Mr. Mead, the main character, takes a walk, he would pass by “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them” (Bradbury 1). This shows that even at eight o’clock pm, people are still inside and connected well into their television, then they are to each other. Secondly, technology occupation also comes into this ongoing problem. For example, a cop car stops Mr. Mead he reflects back
Very few people would want to live in a place where they don’t have security. Whether it be in cities or subdivisions, Jacobs, if alive, would ascertain that there needs to be a sense of connectedness to maintain communal safety. Public living “bring[s] together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion” (Jacobs 55). Now that families typically center themselves around suburban lifestyles, residents should understand that the same connections that Jacobs says were to be made in cities need to now be made in subdivisions. Jacobs was scared that with houses being spread out in the suburbs, little interaction between neighbors would take place. In order to avoid this, neighborhoods need to promote a sidewalk lifestyle that they currently do not (Jacobs 70). With Kotkin stressing how urban areas are no longer preferable places to raise a family, saying only seven percent of their populations are children, he lacks compassion for the transients that now inhabit cities. Undoubtedly, those who now inhabit the city should also feel safe in their environments. Nowadays, members of a city isolate themselves from interactions with other citizens making it difficult to establish a social
Simmel combines ideas from all of the three major classical writers and was influenced by Hegel and Kant. When Simmel discusses social structures, the city, money, and modern society, his analysis has some similarities to the analyses of Durkheim (problem of individual and society), Weber (effects of rationalization), and Marx (alienation). Simmel considered society to be an association of free individuals, and said that it could not be studied in the same way as the physical world, i.e. sociology is more than the discovery of natural laws that govern human interaction. "For Simmel, society is made up of the interactions between and among individuals, and the sociologist should study the patterns and forms of these associations, rather than quest after social laws." (Farganis, p. 133). This emphasis on social interaction at the individual and small group level, and viewing the study of these interactions as the primary task of sociology makes Simmel's approach different from that of the classical writers, espe...
Introduction One of the mainly electrifying essentials of contemporary times is the urbanisation of the globe. For sociological reasons, a city is a relatively great, crowded and lasting community of diverse individuals. In metropolitan areas, urban sociology is the sociological research of life, human interaction and their role in the growth of society. Modern urban sociology is created from the work of sociologists such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel who put forward the economic, social and intellectual development of urbanisation and its consequences. The aim of this essay is to explain what life is like in the ‘big metropolis’, both objectively and subjectively.
In Ernest W. Burgess’s “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project,” (1925), the author delves deep into the processes that go into the construction of a modern city or urban environment. Burgess lists its following qualities: skyscrapers, the department store, the newspaper, shopping malls, etc. (p. 154). Burgess also includes social work as being part of a modern urban environment. This is supported by his construction model based on concentric circles that divided Chicago into five zones. The first was called a center loop meant for a business district. Secondly, there was an area for business and light manufacture. Third, there was a “zone for working men’s homes” (p. 156). The fourth is the residential area of high-class apartment buildings. The fifth is where suburban houses are located.
Sociologist … explained that open pattern of suburb is because of seeking environment free noise, dirt and overcrowding that are in the centre of cities. He gave examples of these cities as St. John’s wood, Richmond, Hampstead in London. Chestnut Hill and Germantown in Philadelphia. He added that suburban are only for the rich and high class. This plays into the hands of the critical perspectives that, “Cities are not so much the product of a quasi-natural “ecological” unfolding of social differentiation and succession, but of a dynamic of capital investment and disinvestment. City space is acted on primarily as a commodity that is bought and sold for profit, “(Little & McGivern, 2013, p.616).
To him, culture comes out as the most essential expression of sociability which grossly involves all humans. Modernity is a cultural system based on an advanced, capitalist monetary economy which brings about a false consciousness of stability, serenity of mind, order and security and action. However, there is a still larger and more devastating impact: if all that modernity brings forth is an illusion, it also means that collective forces withdrawal and new borders and boundaries are set which in a progressive confine and eventually cripple the spirit. It appears then that in modernity psyches, the stranger is a condition that will come up and respite within all individuals (Elster, 2009). Under modernity, the all-embracing sense of disintegration creates and enables strangeness and isolation if social is the basis of belonging. Simmel writes that life in the metropolis demand more mental energy than ever before (Simmel,
...om humble and non-violent to harsh and violent. It can also may lead to a person awareness of one’s environment and taking responsibility for one's actions which is what the world requires(Rosengren, 2000). Society is able to transition from the past to the future through real-time information on the present (Hiebert & Gibbons, 2000). Society therefore becomes a living organization, complete with a feedback loop provided by the media, well equipped to sense oncoming danger and learn from its mistakes in readiness for tomorrow (Preiss, 2007). However, caution needs to be put in place to prevent the youth and children from participating in actions they do not have a clue on but do them on the justifications of the actions watched over the media (Wells & Hakanen, 1997). Mass media will remain beautiful but when precautionary measures are not in place, it becomes ugly.