Comprehensivist Wednesdays: The Crowd and the Individual

In this meetup, we will explore Søren Kierkegaard’s idea that “the crowd is untruth.” This session provides a brief overview of a lecture by Gregory Sadler, drawing on Kierkegaard’s essay linked in the video description and examining a central tension: whether truth comes from collective agreement or from the responsibility of the individual.

Sadler explains that reliance on the crowd can weaken both judgment and accountability. When people act as part of a group, they may feel less personally responsible for what they think, say, or do. As a result, they become more likely to follow consensus rather than examine matters for themselves. This creates both moral and intellectual dangers.
By contrast, Kierkegaard emphasizes the “single individual” as the true bearer of truth. In ethical, spiritual, and existential matters especially, truth is not something one simply inherits from public opinion or majority agreement. It must be personally confronted, inwardly appropriated, and genuinely lived.

The lecture also shows that truth has a practical dimension. It affects how we regard and treat other people. To treat human beings as individuals, rather than as mere members of a crowd, is essential to real responsibility, seriousness, and equality.

Overall, the lecture presents a clear Kierkegaardian claim: truth does not properly belong to the crowd, but to individuals willing to stand apart, think seriously, and take responsibility for what they affirm.

The Crowd is Untruth
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EakKUJJ4J6smYewfTb2_0Gqa7Z50h94S/view?usp=sharing

The Crowd and the Individual
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUF-A_lHogU
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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays". Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”

See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/

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