Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
Georg SimmelRead
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that living in a bustling city enhances individual sensitivity due to constant changes and stimuli.
Georg Simmel highlights how urban life affects individuality by heightening nervous sensitivities through the rapid and continuous shifts in both external and internal stimuli. This environment of perpetual change can lead to a more acute awareness and responsiveness to the surrounding world, shaping oneβs identity and experiences uniquely in a metropolitan context.
Themes
IndividualityMetropolitanNervous StimulationChangeUrban LifePsychology
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on urban psychology, discussing how city life affects individual behavior.
More from Georg Simmel
All quotes βSecrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
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Music and love are the only accomplishments of humanity which do not, in an absolute sense, have to be called attempts with unsuitable means.
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Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.
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In the immediate as well as the symbolic sense, in the physical as well as the intellectual sense, we are at any moment those who separate the connected, or connect the separate.
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For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.
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