“For a crowd is the untruth.” – Søren Kierkegaard1
I’ve been spending more time engaging with philosophy and it reminds me that pretty much every question you can think of has already been tackled by someone. Most recently, I was struck by what Søren Kierkegaard had to say about crowds and media and how much feels relatable in our age of social media. In a nutshell, he argued that only individuals can know the truth. Crowds, he argued, in whatever form, trend toward untruth.
Here’s some of what Kierkegaard had to say. The following quotes have all been sourced from Kaufmann (2016), which you can find in the references below.
“There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there also is the truth, and that in truth itself there is need of having the crowd on its side. There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd there is untruth, so that (to consider for a moment the extreme case), even if every individual, each for himself in private, were to be in possession of the truth, yet in case they were all to get together in a crowd—a crowd to which any sort of decisive significance is attributed, a voting, noisy, audible crowd—untruth would at once be in evidence.”
“For it is not so great a trick to win the crowd. All that is needed is some talent, a certain dose of falsehood, and a little acquaintance with human passions.”
“[D]ost thou venture to maintain that men regarded as a crowd are just as quick to seize upon truth which is not always palatable as upon falsehood which always is prepared delicately to give delight?…Or dost thou venture even to maintain that “truth” can just as quickly be understood as falsehood, which requires no preliminary knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest concern about oneself, no patient labour?”
“[A] crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.”
There is a lot here, but there are two points I find most pressing. The first is that if you want to get a lot of people to believe something quickly, you make it “palatable” or even “delightful.” Second, he is noting that once information is taken up by a group, i.e. when it becomes a trend, or culturally accepted, or common wisdom, responsibility for it is diffused. No one person has to own it, which can make it easier to say.
Wellness and Social Media
When I think about what we would term wellness these days, i.e. everything from exercise to mental health, and social media a lot of what Kierkegaard says seems evident. The messages tend to be made broadly palatable and broadly applicable. You read about getting quick results, achieving body composition goals “without sacrificing the foods you love”, becoming happy simply by “reframing” your experiences, becoming grateful by having a gratefulness list, and so on.
While each of those things can work, and I have no qualms when it does, they just as frequently do not. That’s because interventions that work very well for one person can just as easily fail for the next. In personal training that might look like using a set of shoulder exercises for someone with shoulder pain, having wild success, and then finding that those same exercises don’t help at all with the next person. As a counselor it might look like teaching someone a visualization exercise to help them manage their anxiety, which it does, and then finding with the next person that the same visualization actually increases their anxiety. It can be bewildering. What I’ve learned though is that ultimately, everyone has to take their own journey towards self-improvement.
Seeking Your Own Truth
Kierkegaard, like many philosophers of his ilk, argued that you should keep your own counsel and some of them became quite solitary, but I don’t think that is absolutely necessary (I’m sure that says something about me, but I digress). You can, and I think you should, seek help from others, be they helping professionals like coaches, counselors, or personal trainers or even spiritual leaders, support groups, etc., BUT, I think it is critical to bear in mind that whatever you do is really an experiment and because it is an experiment you’ll need to be flexible.
For example, social media (Kierkegaard’s crowd) might try to convince you that a paleo diet is “correct” because it is “natural”, close to the way we used to live when we were healthy, strapping, muscular men and women of the jungle—a palatable and even delightful picture, particularly for men who’d like to see themselves as Tarzan. But in reality, a paleo diet might work well for your neighbor and not at all for you. You’ll have to try it to find out!
Part of this kind of flexibility is also being willing to fail. This can be hard, because it’s only natural to want reassurances that what you try will be worth the effort. That’s why most advertising is presented in a reassuring manner: “millions of people have seen results”, “100% money back guarantee”, and so forth. The truth though, is that it may or may not work. Essentially, you are experimenting, and that is how you can find new, effective ways to improve. That message isn’t as “delightful” as a guarantee, but it’s the truth.
References:
Kaufmann, W. (2016). Existentialism from dostoevsky to sartre. Hauraki Publishing. Retrieved January 17, 2024,