Numbered memberships let leaders act with greater indifference to individuals

Evidence

Leadership can proceed with much greater inconsiderateness and indifference to individual wishes and capacities of persons who appear only as numbers and who may not be known by their personal names even to the other members (which at least occurred in groups similar to the Clan-na-gael), than it can if the group includes each member as a personal entity. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 8994

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the dehumanizing anonymity in Kafka’s The Trial and in modern bureaucratic administration; also connects to Zamyatin’s We and the reader’s triad analysis of depersonalization eroding individual standing.

Related

• Anonymized members receive harsher treatment from leaders (similarity 0.89)