Sociologyspeaking topic
Simmel on the metropolis and mental life: why does the big city push people toward a cold, distant, blasé attitude? Why do crowds make us lonely?
— Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Gossip looks like idle malice, yet anthropologists call it the very glue of society. Without gossip, how would we ever learn who is trustworthy and who is selfish?
- Does a college degree still matter when you can prove your skills without one?
- Merton's self-fulfilling prophecy: how does a false belief become true once people act on it? Can a rumor that a bank will fail actually make the bank fail?
- Debord's society of the spectacle: have we started collecting images instead of living? Has experience itself turned into a show staged for the sake of sharing it?
- The more 'useless' and expensive a gift is, the more it is appreciated; a useful but cheap gift is looked down on. Why does inefficiency itself sometimes become proof of love?