The power and the glory of crowds | thearticle

Cast your minds back, if you can, to the last time you were in a crowd. What strikes you? Is it the apparent swelling of fellow feeling, of general interest, or of collective emotion at the

events you have come to participate in? The rush of adrenaline as the thoughts of those around you match with yours, or as these thoughts are roughly and swiftly translated into the most

obvious of screams, wails, groans, or splatters of applause? Surrounded by others, we can so easily lose the sense of self, and become but one of many, all sharing some purpose or thought

towards what we are watching, however juvenile, however banal. I could be talking here of a football match, or a theatre visit, or a large street protest. Something where the human desire

for uniformity, or at least transient hegemony, is satisfied, where it seems the whole populace is united for one small time under the same banner, making the same noise. It must be one of

the most primeval instincts; to want to see vicarious excitement or desire in a swathe of others, to capture the _vox populi_ in its clearest form, and to cast off any of the shackles of

turgid daily life in a hunt for something that goes beyond the quotidian.  All of this is, of course, lost to the world of the glare of Matt Hancock, the graphs of Patrick Vallance, and the

notion that any public engagement must result in private loss. Much of the industry that maintains such mass spectacles – clubs, theatres, musicians of all genres – face financial collapse.

Support for them, after such a long break, may be waning. Much has been written, and will continue to be written, about the importance of local organisations to the “community” who use it,

but this misses the point slightly. To enjoy something, to have it as just a past-time or an obsession, needs participation, whether it’s booking the cheap seats at the opera house or the

football ground, or round the edges for the annual panto. It was no coincidence that “virtual” events have not carried the same popular force as the real thing, despite the many extra hours

left over for people to indulge their passions. The essential essence of a crowd event lies in its force of numbers; no football team plays the same with 10,000 supporters roaring behind the

back, no opera singer waits so long after an aria without the cries of praise from the audience.  Lockdown, with its many perils, may have engendered another form of crowd mentality, yet

one which has far more pernicious influences. Reduced to our screens for the chances of expressing any feeling, the meretricious attraction of social media stood as a replacement for the

mass gatherings. For within all of our own “echo chambers” can come the incessant feeling of vindication, the idea that everyone else is somehow feeling the same, or, as is now more often

the case, hating the same thing. The internet, with its binary “likes” and “retweets”, offers us a version of life, or at least a crowd, reduced to its bare fragments. Only in real life can

we realise some semblance of complete humanity.  This may sound obtuse and pretentious. William Hazlitt, basking in his place as one of the few English intellectuals left after Waterloo to

praise the French Revolution, cried in 1817 that “_Vox populi vox dei,_ is the rule of all good Government” as “in that voice … we have all the sincerity and all the wisdom of the

community”. It was the Romantic image of the great mass of the people screaming out against their oppressors which he saw as the only source of resistance to the prevailing monarchies of

Europe. Almost paradoxically, he says that it is the power of the power to think independently that can overturn the norm for the popular good.  Besotted by claims to carry the majority with

them, the drive for a binary worldview, one shaped around identity and not ideas themselves, is the scourge which plagues modern discourse. Deprived of our usual societal interactions, we

have driven society to a desire for instant vindication and notions of what is acceptable which would have gone against the freedom Hazlitt saw in the voice of the people and his own radical

dissent. In being made to hide away, the search for agreement and gratification becomes even greater.  In a less highfalutin way, we need to get crowds back. Not simply for the social

cohesion they bring, or for the sense that a sports fixture can mean anything more to people than the energy released by a few shouts, or a performance worth anything else than the clapping

of an audience, but for the emotional importance of such moments. Just as the face or voice of a friend can never be fully appreciated down the phone line or by a Zoom call, so the moment of

ecstasy shared with others can never be realised via a screen. The Greeks called it _kathairein_: release. Crowds have their dangers, but their value in the calculus of human happiness is

inestimable. We need their power and their glory. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make,

one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._