The on going argument of ‘The Individual vs. The Collective’ conjures questions about the relationship between the two and its affects on one another. In “The Metropolis and the Mental Life” Georg Simmel projects the significance of being an individual in a technologically run society. By interpreting a spiritual experience, it would help promote a sense of individualism. There should be a connection between technology and spiritualism to create an individual. A conscious identity within a collective, such as a city, is created by the environment in which it exists. Capitalism provides a interesting understanding on how this could be accomplished. An individual can work to create a better life.

I feel as if that shouldnt be the case. If every individual works to create a better life, doesn’t that become a collective? Society is driven on the interpretations of the collective and where it is led to next. Individualism isn’t lost in society anymore, it just isn’t openly acknowledged like it should be.

On a larger scale, we begin to see the collective being separated into individual ideas. In schivelbusch’s text he talks about the national boundaries that countries have created. Our collective is broken into individual parts, where our countries define what it is to be an individual. We are all constantly stuck in a stream of what it means to build a good life. The clashing of ideas in a technological and spiritual world often led to undesirable actions. Which in turn, leads to an input of; is it really worth being an individual in a world so driven by a collective?

In the essay, ‘The Metropolis and the Mental Life’ Georg Simmel investigate that what happens to people (a person or any individual) when they (he/she) live (lives) in cities, and how it relates to the “resistance of the individual to being demolished, absorbed in the social-technological mechanism.” And also explains how we as humans have adapted to the stimulus of the metropolitan life. He focuses more on to the interaction between people in the metropolitan life. Simmel refers this kind of theory to the deepest problem of modern life – fear in part of becoming so anonymous as to seem to have never existed. Simmel highlights city-life which develops an urban “intellectual character.” He contrasts it with small-town life. According to Simmel, small-town life is tied more to feelings and emotional relationships. Simmel argues that people in cities must be able to adapt so often to changing circumstances that their feelings are never engaged the way they are for people in more conservative settings. Thus city people react with ‘logic’ and not by emotion and tradition, and don’t engage with the depths of the personality. Life conditions in the city prevent the development of customary ways of living, hence the city people must deal with ever-shifting contexts, and therefore they must adopt a carefree attitude to protect themselves. Their relations are mediated through impersonal means—money. In the metropolitan life everything has its price, where in the small town, personal relationship is more important. For example if you do shopping in the big town you would be served well but in the standard way that is applied for every customer and this is done to make you comfortable and to increase economic activity, but on the small town the experience of the shopping would be different, and it would be more based on your relationship to seller.

The essays ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ and ‘The Railway Journey’ are both elucidating the thoughts about how a city can affect individual’s behavior and how a technologically driven city influences the living circumstances. Simmel particularly talks about the ‘resistance of the individual to being leveled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism’. He stresses on that people living in cities are more rational than the ones who come from small town with conservative feelings and thoughts. In this case where people moving from small town to larger cities have to adapt to the fast paced changing circumstances in city as city’s life is termed as ‘violent stimuli’. Simmel also points out the blasé attitude of big city individuals as they being indifferent and superficial to emotional and qualitative perceptions and things are measured at the expense of money and time. In the second essay Wolfgang delivers a concise analysis about how railroads altered human perceptions of space and time. The introduction of railroads did induce the conception of time and space as schedules and distances were simultaneously brought into place. The rails helped in reducing the long distances, connecting the economic capitals which was instrumental in progress during the 19^th century.

The human race has been engulfed by the power and beauty of technology for years now. Because of this, people have not been able to truely appreciate the organized chaos they are surrounded with. Not saying that technology has to come to a complete halt, but more of how people need to realize the beautiful dance that technology and networks create. How the different advancements can awaken different mental and inner senses. In Georg Simmel’s text, “The Metropolis and the Mental Life”, he emphasizes and analyzes urban conditions and its relation to the economics of it all. Different architectural elements all around us are constantly in the background of specific and special moments. If anything, they are the reason as to why we have these moments and experiences. Although, distance has long been an obstacle that many have not been able to conquer due to the lack of advancement. With the invention of the train, it has given people the opportunity to shorten distances between different moments. Merging and blurring the lines of different moments. In Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s excerpts from, “Railway Journey”, he discusses how the aura of a certain region is lost due to the shorten distances and how the relationship between destination/distance and identity is lost.

In the text, “The Metropolis and the Mental Life” Georg Simmel analyses the urban condition through the lens of the individual and its relation to economics. This shift in scale and our perceptions is connected through material goods and the built environment. In the beginning of the text, Simmel references historical precedent creating two types of economic systems which foster different modes of identity and expression within and in relation to them. The 18th and 19th centuries opened societal freedom of the historical cultural past and to create a identity through either capitalism or socialism. The goal, while achieved differently, is to maintain a sense of individualism in the collective of a population or mass culture. Capitalism created a unique identity using the diversification of the job market as a way to establish ones trade or speciality which would impact others perception of them. Socialism also tried to create individualism through demolishing competition allowing everyone their own opportunities to establish themselves from their peers.

Overall Simmel points out that the importance to be an individual is to not be lost in a society driven by technological advances. Also by focusing on the soul and mental sensory experiences, the metropolis support a sense of individuality. Architectural elements such as a traffic crossing give one a mental awareness of a organizational system through a sequence of flowing events or moments. When this unconscious steady equilibrium, as Simmel refers, in disrupted or disputed in the metropolis is when identity exists. Therefore, individual identity is the protection against intermittent larger impacts or changes to society in the metrpolitian environment. Simmels text explore the close relationship of economics and individualism where economic individualism is a qualitative relationship between people and the necessity to balance intellectual individualism into the city and global movement to develop a emotional connection in the future. He concludes with “when both of these forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relationships of the metropolis, i.e. individual independence and the elaboration of personal peculiarities, are examined with reference to their historical position, the metropolis attains an entirely new value and meaning in the world history of the spirit.”

In the second text by Wolfgang Schivelbusch ” Excepts from the Railway Journey”, he speaks to the railroad as a space-time deformation and how speed Speed according to Schivelbusch changed transportation economics and shirking of space over time. These causes geographic and nationality boundaries to change not due to the physical distance fluctuating, rather a new proximity was conceived by new speed methods. There is also a notion that space-time alterations from speed of new transportations (ie. railroads) is not the same as the new territory gained from these methods, rather existing space that can be reached quicker and more readily.

In this point of the text an interesting concept is created explaining how this space-time change by railroads impacted the spaces in-between. Schivelbusch states “The detaching of the remote region from its original isolation, it’s opening-up by the railroad, can well be defined as the loss of its aura.” This topic, as first addressed by Walter Benjamin, speaks to how the speed-spatial relationship of transportation removed space from perception in-between points of destinations and there is a loss of local distinction and depreciation of individual identity. This deprivation of local time and space allows for a exploitation that access allows, mass tourism. Devaluation of outlying regions and exploitation of genuineness distorts reality and further damages the unique identity and heritage of the local space-time locations. Also, Schivelbusch points out additional transportation methods such as the ship, car and airplane, all create this predicament, but the railroad for its time caused such a large shift due to its large economic and social presence. Therefore Schivelbusch finishes by explaining “means of tourism: this is merely a prelude, a preparation for making any unique thing available by means of reproductions. When spatial distance is no longer experienced, the differences between original and reproductions diminishes.”