Concept
the metropolis and mental life
Simmel’s 1903 thesis that the metropolis, through its rapid flow of impressions, intensifies nervous life and gives rise to a blasé and a reserved attitude.
Simmel’s essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903) deals with the psychological effects of the city. In his account the metropolis “intensifies nervous life” through rapid and uninterrupted change of impressions; the city dweller answers this flow with the intellect rather than with feeling. The money economy and punctuality are parts of this rule of the intellect and of calculability.
Two attitudes stand out. In the blasé attitude differences between things are dulled: they are perceived but felt to be meaningless; Simmel traces this both to the exhaustion of the nerves and to the money economy. The reserved attitude (Reserviertheit) spares us from responding inwardly to countless people; it produces personal freedom, but its price can be loneliness. Simmel writes that nowhere does one feel so lonely as in the metropolitan crowd.
Simmel’s writings reached the Chicago tradition through channels such as the translations in Park and Burgess’s 1921 textbook; in media research the essay can be read as one root of debates on anonymity, overstimulation and crowds (this last link is our interpretation).
Example
Simmel’s thought experiment: if all the clocks in Berlin ran an hour wrong, the city’s economic traffic would be disrupted for a long time.