"Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses"
About this Quote
Bernanos stakes a bold claim about the purpose of civilization: not to accumulate wealth, comforts, or grand institutions, but to form persons who remain awake in mind and conscience. The contrast he draws between masses and men pivots on attentiveness. A mass is not simply a lot of people; it is an aggregate in which individuality dissolves, judgment is outsourced, and emotions are orchestrated by slogans and spectacle. By speaking of men alert enough never to constitute masses, he points to vigilance as the essential civic and spiritual capacity, the inner resistance that refuses to be swept along by herd impulses.
The line fits the broader arc of Bernanos’s work, especially his wartime and postwar essays that attacked the mechanization of life and the seductions of propaganda. Witness to the rise of totalitarian regimes and the mobilization of crowds, he distrusted both the technocratic state and mass party politics that reduce persons to units. His Catholic personalism insists on the primacy of conscience and dignity. Civilization, then, is not a veneer of manners; it is an education of the heart and mind that breeds responsibility, courage, and the habit of saying no when the crowd says yes.
The stress on alertness is crucial. Being informed is not enough if it dulls discernment rather than sharpening it. Alertness means holding oneself at a slight distance from fashion, official narratives, and the intoxicating immediacy of collective emotion. It resists the comfort of anonymity and the moral outsourcing that comes with it. A society that fails to cultivate such vigilance, however advanced its machinery, drifts toward barbarism in modern dress.
Read today, the sentence challenges democracies to measure their health not by turnout numbers or media noise but by the quality of attention citizens bring to public life. Civilization succeeds when it produces persons who cannot be mobilized as a mass because they are too awake to be absorbed.
The line fits the broader arc of Bernanos’s work, especially his wartime and postwar essays that attacked the mechanization of life and the seductions of propaganda. Witness to the rise of totalitarian regimes and the mobilization of crowds, he distrusted both the technocratic state and mass party politics that reduce persons to units. His Catholic personalism insists on the primacy of conscience and dignity. Civilization, then, is not a veneer of manners; it is an education of the heart and mind that breeds responsibility, courage, and the habit of saying no when the crowd says yes.
The stress on alertness is crucial. Being informed is not enough if it dulls discernment rather than sharpening it. Alertness means holding oneself at a slight distance from fashion, official narratives, and the intoxicating immediacy of collective emotion. It resists the comfort of anonymity and the moral outsourcing that comes with it. A society that fails to cultivate such vigilance, however advanced its machinery, drifts toward barbarism in modern dress.
Read today, the sentence challenges democracies to measure their health not by turnout numbers or media noise but by the quality of attention citizens bring to public life. Civilization succeeds when it produces persons who cannot be mobilized as a mass because they are too awake to be absorbed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Georges
Add to List
