The burdensome excellence of living in a city: A review of Georg Simmel’s “The Metropolis and the Mental Life” In the “Metropolis and the Mental Life”, Georg Simmel aims to explicate the confines and conventions of modern life. Simmel accomplishes this as he compares modern life in a metropolis with that of the countryside, noting the behaviours and characteristics of people in response to external factors. Simmel explains this by explicitly detailing how social structures affect certain personal connections. Several prominent themes of urban living are investigated and considered by Simmel in his article, the main points, harshness of the metropolis, modernity and subjective and objective cultures, are discussed in this essay. Harshness of the metropolis Simmel starts “Metropolis and the Mental Life” …show more content…
Even in the first sentence Simmel takes note of our greatest problem as individuals to illuminate and cultivate our personalities: ‘The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.’ Simmel’s argumentation here is supported by Michael and Deena Weinstein, co-authors of the book ‘Postmodern(ised) Simmel.’ They offer the supportive argument that one’s mental imagination of the metropolis is a device adopted by people to maintain their identity. They write: ‘The mental life of the metropolis is a series of compensations for the inadequacy of the objective culture to the individuals subjective demand for an integral personality.’ Thus, adopting traits like carelessness and disregard, rationality and skepticism are methods in which ones uses to embrace one’s individualism, detaching themselves from others in an ever-increasing objective culture found in a
Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
The significance in this scene can be defined by the different dynamic happening in the psyches of Freder. Unlike Maria, who goes from having a balanced mind to a mechanical mind, Freder goes from only paying attention to the id, to actually rationalizing with the id and the ego, and realizing that his society has been mistreating those in the working class. J.P. Tellote argues that “The sequence in which Freder takes the worker's place, for example, only displays the horrors of being chained to a mechanism, reduced to a function of a machine, after first illustrating the seductive power that helps keep the classes separated, each in its place” (Telotte 53). Further on in the movie, in minute 40:52 Freder yells in an exhausted manner “Father-! Father-! Will ten hours never-end--??!!”, finally empathizing with the hardships the working class has to endure in the current stratification of their society, the ego and the id finally coming to consensus.
In the article The Practice of Everyday Life, Michele de Certeau he brings insight from sociology and cultural studies. Certeau analyzes how the ordinary person lives. He examines the way people cope with different cultures, laws and language. His essay made me feel like if I were talking a walk in New York. “A sea in the middle of the sea, lifts up the skyscrapers over Wall Street, sinks down at Greenwich.” I never been to New York, but the way the author describes it makes you want to go. I imagine New York as very fast paste life style. With tall skyscrapers, and shopping center in every corner. Don’t let me forget their famous hotdog stands in every busy street of downtown New York. “Memories tie us to that place” This quote is nothing
I am black, I am a woman, growing up I was called “white girl.” As a black woman from sin city (Las Vegas, NV) the term urban did not describe my reality. Perception can be the only reality that you see in examining the lens of what is “urban”. What is urban? When the word urban comes to mind does it elicit emotions of privilege, pride or fear? Hunter; & Leonardo (2007) look at the term “urban” (particularly in the ghetto) they define it as both a “real” and “imaginary place” and divides the urban perspective into three distinctive categories of “space”: Urban is sophisticated, Urban is authentic, and Urban is a Jungle. Furthermore, from the text the author(s) argue, “daily constructions
‘Society makes and remakes people, but society is also made and remade by the multiple connections and disconnections between people, and between people, places and things’ (Havard, 2014, p.67).
Metropolis and Nineteen Eighty-Four shows dehumanization as a product of the progress of a society, both technologically and socially. The significance of these two texts is that they serve as a didactic warning for the future, hence are immensely reflective of the rising issues of the day. Hence, elements of dehumanization originate from the respective contexts of each text. Fritz Lang constructed Metropolis with the influence of the advancing military technology in WWI. During the plight of the war, the advantage of having powerful weaponry quickly boomeranged on the battleground when both sides had equally as lethal artillery. Causing more deaths that the Black plague, the promise and faith in new technology quickly spiraled. Lang represents this through the dehumanising effect of
...diversity through her narrative in Chapter 12-13. She argues that diversity is intrinsically responsible for allowing city life to flourish in a productive manner, and as well provides the foundation for the perpetuation of urban environments. I strongly agree with Jacobs’ insights as to the urban planning techniques that maintain diversity in the city.
Pythia Peay explains that for everywhere that she has resided, each place had a unique effect on her character. Each of the five cities in which she has lived contributed in some part to who she is today. She goes on to point out that each city or town has its own unique sense of soul. Peay believes that in our present day people are beginning to lose their sense of place. A city’s inhabitants lay blind to the fact that in some way their own character is shaped “within the city’s larger reality” (4). The body of her essay consists of six methods to help anyone discover the soul of their hometown.
“However, to develop our sociological vision we must do just that: We must be willing to look at our own society with cool detachment, careful observation, and scientific analysis. We must examine the groups we live in- our family, our neighbours, our classmates, our nation- as if we had just set foot in a new and strange land.” (Goode, 1977, P. 3)
The city life can be full of things to see and do. There is always something going on but how much is only a slightly different version then than the one before. Most people in the city or in the United States for that matter live a reasonably safe life with limited introduction to new culture. David Sedaris in his short storyessay, "Remembering My Childhood On The Continent Of Africa", compares his safe, limited excitement life to his childhood friend's exotic life. The advantages of an exotic life could expose the mind to new culture, vacation in places not seen by most, and meet famous people.
Wirth, L. (1938). Urban as a Way of Life. In R.T. Legates, & F. Stout (Eds.). The City Reader (pp. 90-97). New York, NY: Routledge
...lay in societal change. However it was only until the works of Durkheim and Simmel that the role of individual interaction and society is brought to the forefront. Durkheim largely viewed the individual as needing society as a mechanism of constraint to the aspirations of an eternal goal. Finally, Simmel was able to expand on Durkheim’s dualism by noting that society could be viewed as more than a mechanism of constraint rather as an accumulation of individual interaction. Either through a combination or as individuals each theorist distinct view of the relationship between the individual and society demonstrates a new understanding towards the nature of social reality.
Theorists working in the fields of sociology focus on society as a whole. Georg Simmel differs from classic theorists such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim, stressing the importance of the individual as a separate society and the way they deal with the development of modern society. ‘The Stranger,’ as defined by Simmel is “an element of the group itself...whose membership within the group involves both being outside it and confronting it.” (Simmel, 1908, p.144). This essay will explore Georg Simmel’s writing on ‘Individuality and Social Forms (1908)’ by focusing on one of his social types, the notion of ‘The Stranger.’ Furthermore, it will attempt to identify the theoretical points of ‘the stranger,’ relating it to the concept of fashion and individuality
“There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.” Mediation and reconciliation serves as the central narrational and visual theme of Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. As a commentary on the changing modern world, the film juxtaposes the image of the city against an idyllic conception of the medieval world. Lang’s manipulation of mise-en-scène creates a complex understanding of the future––one that blurs the line between the past, present, and future. Metropolis is set in the distant future, yet narratively and thematically addresses the state of the present world through medieval Christian themes and doctrines. In its attempt to come to terms with the social landscape of post-World War