Confessions of a "Lookerson"

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Steve,

At 09:42 PM 2/11/2008, you wrote:

>--
>"The masses have never thirsted after truth.  Whoever can supply 
>them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to 
>destroy their illusions is always their victim."  Gustave Le Bon 
>from his 1896 book "The Crowd"

Most interesting...most folks these days haven't read Le Bon.   I 
like the above, which seems to be a distillation of sorts of the following:

"With the progressive perishing of its ideal the race loses more and 
more the qualities that lent it its cohesion, its unity, and its 
strength. The personality and intelligence of the individual may 
increase, but at the same time this collective egoism of the race is 
replaced by an excessive development of the egoism of the individual, 
accompanied by a weakening of character and a lessening of the 
capacity for action. What constituted a people, a unity, a whole, 
becomes in the end an agglomeration of individualities lacking 
cohesion, and artificially held together for a time by its traditions 
and institutions. It is at this stage that men, divided by their 
interests and aspirations, and incapable any longer of 
self-government, require directing in their pettiest acts, and
that the State exerts an absorbing influence."  Le Bon, "The Crowd", p. 229

...rather reads like Mass, Class and Bureaucracy, by Benson and Rosenberg

Anyway, not exactly an upper, but, perhaps the points are worth 
considering during an election year.

Best.

Horace