What You Can Learn from Just Seven Pages by Hannah Arendt

“Terror can only rule over men who are isolated against each other,” Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

The submersion of an individual’s identity into the mass, into a group identity, is the main thrust of Hoffer’s thesis. He repeatedly makes the point that people do not turn to mass movements because they are inspired or because they are stupid, but because they are bored, searching for a way to exist that allows them to escape an unsatisfactory or... See more

Communities with low levels of trust engage in what he calls “hunkering” or withdrawing from social life, which, he argued, reduces their ability to engage in collective action to address problems in their communities. But it can have even more dire consequences. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, philosopher Hannah Arendt saw social isolation from... See more

humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.

In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote presciently about the danger of a society of lonely individuals. She defined loneliness not as solitude—since solitude is where one can reflect on their connection to themselves and others and really prepare themselves for encountering others. She described loneliness as isolation and even alienation from others ... See more

Moreover, for Arendt, it is when everyday people lose their capacity for internal dialogue and deliberation, and find themselves only able to regurgitate slogans and contradictory platitudes, that great evil occurs. So, too, when people lose the ability to imagine the perspectives of others, or as she put it in her essay “Truth and Politics,” “maki

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