"THE CROWD IS UNTRUTH"

A crowd in Ferguson, Missouri

by Andy Nowicki

At the age of 41, in the middle of what would prove to be his last year on earth, Danish writer and theologian Soren Kierkegaard shook off all subterfuge, dispensed with his coterie of coy pseudonyms, rejected his heretofore treasured "indirect approach" to polemics, and became for a time a hyper-conspicuous figure in Danish society, passing out homemade literature on street corners and railing against church authorities in a succession of scathingly-worded newspaper columns.

Kierkegaard's antics made a generally negative impression upon the Copenhagen cognoscenti, who mostly regarded him as a nuttering nuisance, or at best an eccentric monomaniac publicly flogging an increasingly woebegone spiritual hobbyhorse in a most unseemly manner. Yet the Kierkegaardian critique of the state-funded Danish Lutheran church, if severe, was in fact quite astute, and his approach, while brazen, avoided overt self-indulgence.

CROWDS, CONTAGION, AND CONFORMITY

Lunatic, poet, purveyor of "cruelty": Antonin Artaud

by Andy Nowicki

In my previous post, I attempted to draw attention to the inevitable discord between one's individual willingness to struggle for the sake of the truth – however raw and lacerating be the resultant strain on his psyche – and his simultaneous desire to wrap himself in the sort of deliciously comfy cocoon of collective "struggle" provided by mass movements, through which he is provided the opportunity to remove his autonomy and subordinate his will to that of whichever "Party" he has opted to join.