Let's toss a few verbs around. First we will call it the Civilization of the Sliver, and for those who wonder, this is possibly the first time in the existence of me I can use the word "Civilization" without sneering or cringing.
We are the back row, we are the guardians of transcendence as a verb and yet, like pornography, we don't know what it is but we know what it's not. So lets go back to the 1890's and explore Gustave le Bon's The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind (1895).
If a date is important to you the book has the provenance of being described as a "Foundational Text" in the dimly lit cathedral of social psychiatry that more recently has been swallowed by the branding ding-bats of Madison Avenue's marriage to what I think are referred to as "The Botox Obsessed Tech Bros."
It was the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war that le Bon found himself in a food riot. A relief convoy had found its way into the city, it's was protected by ill-trained national guardsmen. Le Bon knew full well that patience and trust was required from all parties. In the wider world there was a growing distrust between Citizens of Paris, the Napoleon complex of their national government which had been so soundly squashed by Prussian and German soldiers in the field of battle.
Le Bon argued that the emotions which suddenly dominated the crowd were not "New" emotions, they were Atavistic emotions. In another way for those of us who live as verbs on the slope toward nouns, these atavistic emotions were from the "Basement of the Human Foundry." They were emotions of the swamp out of which all other emotions emerged.
In the maw of this atavistic brew the Individual vanished, the back row was empty. It was a contagion that caused straight-backs to dissolve. Our back row sliver sense was gone, everyone was half baked jostling for a selfie on the front row. Gustave, a polite young man who could read and write threw himself into the smiley face of a riot.
What was it? What had happened?
In a crowd, what some call "uncertainty," what others call that holy grail of answerlessness required of us verbs, was experienced as a physical threat. The crowd wanted a Frictionless Certainty. It doesn't want to "Wrestle." It wanted to Strike. And if you want a simple answer call it the fear of answerlessness?
The Fear of the Void, the argument continues, is a fear that predates reasonableness. But, brothers and sisters, to be an individual is to be "Answerless." To be an individual is to stand alone in the Void of Potential. It's a cold, thick weight, and not far away in a warm crowd is the Lure of a Noun that offers an escape from the burden of becoming.
It’s not that people are "Wrong!" They are Terrified of being Un-collapsed and nounless.
