"In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events"
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Modern life doesn not just move fast; it sorts people by how they metabolize speed. Simmel is drawing a line between two kinds of minds in the face of urban modernity: the intellect that can adapt through continuous recalibration, and the "more conservative" mind that needs a jolt - a crisis, an emotional tremor, a forced break in habit - before it can adjust.
The intent is quietly polemical. Simmel isn not praising cold rationality as a virtue in the abstract; he is describing a survival skill demanded by the metropolis. The city bombards you with "contrast of phenomena": strangers, commodities, news, class differences, sensory overload. For the flexible intellect, change is processed as information. No "shocks and inner upheavals" are required because the self is already organized around quick comparison, classification, and emotional economy.
The subtext is that modernity produces its own psychology. The metropolitan "rhythm of events" is not merely external; it rewires what counts as normal. That rewiring favors a certain kind of person: less anchored to tradition, less dependent on stable meanings, more comfortable with surface difference. The conservative mind isn not condemned as stupid so much as exposed as structurally mismatched to the citys tempo, needing dramatic ruptures to catch up with what others handle as routine.
Context matters: Simmel is writing at the turn of the 20th century, when Berlin and other European cities were becoming laboratories for mass culture, money economies, and anonymity. His sharpest move is to treat adaptation not as moral progress but as a new, urban form of composure - one that can look like sophistication, and feel like numbness.
The intent is quietly polemical. Simmel isn not praising cold rationality as a virtue in the abstract; he is describing a survival skill demanded by the metropolis. The city bombards you with "contrast of phenomena": strangers, commodities, news, class differences, sensory overload. For the flexible intellect, change is processed as information. No "shocks and inner upheavals" are required because the self is already organized around quick comparison, classification, and emotional economy.
The subtext is that modernity produces its own psychology. The metropolitan "rhythm of events" is not merely external; it rewires what counts as normal. That rewiring favors a certain kind of person: less anchored to tradition, less dependent on stable meanings, more comfortable with surface difference. The conservative mind isn not condemned as stupid so much as exposed as structurally mismatched to the citys tempo, needing dramatic ruptures to catch up with what others handle as routine.
Context matters: Simmel is writing at the turn of the 20th century, when Berlin and other European cities were becoming laboratories for mass culture, money economies, and anonymity. His sharpest move is to treat adaptation not as moral progress but as a new, urban form of composure - one that can look like sophistication, and feel like numbness.
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