Crowds arouse sub-individual instincts while organized groups transcend individuals

Evidence

Both are characterized by the suspension of individual-personal differences. But in the first case, this suspension causes features to come to the fore which lie, as it were, above the individual character; whereas, in the second case, those are activated which lie below. For within a mass of people in sensory contact, innumerable suggestions and nervous influences play back and forth; they deprive the individual of the calmness and autonomy of reflection and action. In a crowd, therefore, the most ephemeral incitations often grow, like avalanches, into the most disproportionate impulses, and thus appear to eliminate the higher, differentiated and critical functions of the individual. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 345

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the legal-person plurality (supra-individual) from the physically-present mass (sub-individual), a foundational distinction for crowd theory.
• XREF: connects to: In social games players perform the very structure of society itself — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 379; Classes-in-themselves become forces-for-themselves through conscious organization.; Natural selection and rational foresight jointly produce group cohesion though proportions are unknown (+12 more)

Related

• Classes-in-themselves become forces-for-themselves through conscious organization. (similarity 0.85)
• Crowd phenomena reduce to regressions in individual psyches, not group minds (similarity 0.82)
• Freud explains crowd phenomena as individual regressions, not a group mind (similarity 0.82)
• Any social group can act as individual or aggregate depending on its relational frame. (similarity 0.80)
• Crowd psychology lowers individual responsibility and boosts influence susceptibility (similarity 0.80)
• In social games players perform the very structure of society itself (similarity 0.79)
• Crowds turn psychological when members share perceived antagonism. (similarity 0.78)