A Nobody

You are insignificant and so am I. I’m sorry to say. We don’t contribute. Each one of us does not add his tiny piece to the total; an individual does not have a share in the mass; a whole is not the sum of its parts.

The ocean doesn’t consist of drops of water. It’s an entire mass; a single organism.

A crowd is like an ocean. There is no individuality in it. It flows and moves as a single force and everything in it must run along. You cannot resist a mighty river.

Have you ever tried to go against the flow? Maybe you have. You grab a root on the bank of the river and hold on to it. At that moment you are an individual. But the water rushes past you; crowds of people trample by and they utterly ignore you.

Have you tried to resist fashion? Have you defied public opinion? Maybe you have, some people do, but at that moment you are outside the flow and cannot contribute to it. When you are inside it (most of the time we all are), you also don’t contribute since you are not an individual at that time. Either way you are nothing for the crowd.

True, political leaders may sway the masses; the odd youtube video goes viral; a celebrity becomes the talk of the town. That, however, are examples of individuals who accidentally work on the masses; they are not themselves inside them.

We don’t contribute when following. You don’t even add our microscopic force for the river of the crowd would have flowed with equal power without you in it. You can vote or not; the outcome will be the same and the pollsters know where it’s going without asking you. You can follow the trend or be an outsider; sociologists don’t include you anyway.

Do you find this discouraging? You shouldn’t. You are nothing inside the crowd, but outside of it you are yourself.