Reflection on "The Metropolis and Mental Life"

                               

        Georg Simmel’s essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903) is a compilation of lectures once spoken by Simmel in regards to social life in the 19th century. These first 9 pages illustrate some aspects of urban culture at the turn of the century. Although Simmel discusses an urban society in a time when cities were so different from today, his knowledge on metropolises remains relevant to modern urban culture.

 
This essay defines the individual’s role and position in city life and their coping mechanisms with the existence of the rise of urbanization. Human interactions in the metropolis are vital in defining the person, due to the short yet instrumental involvement in these small yet dense communities. Simmel states that due to this lack of human interaction, the metropolis mentality is essentially intellectual, not emotional. Everything in urban society is measurable and reduced to what Simmel calls, “blasé”, defined as indifference and alienation from a group. 

In a town or village there is a sense of emotional investment where as in the city there is that lack of emotion in person to person contact.  One must invent an individual personality in order to stand out and become socially mobile. Thus this separates people on both a social and emotional level leading to socially defined wanderers and or strangers. 

Lastly, a metropolis in Simmel’s terms, is a sanction in which liberation occurs due to the lack of binding mentality therefore, one can defines themselves independently. Humans in this case are only worthy to others in measures of external objects such as money and time.