The blasé outlook is uniquely a metropolitan psychic phenomenon
Evidence
There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which is so unconditionally reserved to the city as the blasé outlook. It is at first the consequence of those rapidly shifting stimulations of the nerves which are thrown together in all their contrasts and from which it seems to us the intensification of metropolitan intellectuality seems to be derived. On that account it is not likely that stupid persons who have been hitherto intellectually dead will be blasé. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 752
Categorization
- DEFINE: Core definition for the essay: blasé attitude is a city-exclusive nervous response to rapidly shifting, contradictory stimulations.
- XREF: This is the anchor concept for Julius’s flânerie—Simmel explicitly ties blasé to the city’s unique nervous economy.