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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses

CHAPTER IV: THE INCREASE OF LIFE

        THE rule of the masses and the raising of the level, the height of the time which this indicates, are in their turn only symptoms of a more complete and more general fact. This fact is almost grotesque and incredible in its stark and simple truth. It is just this, that the world has suddenly grown larger, and with it and in it, life itself. To start with, life has become, in actual fact, world-wide in character; I mean that the content of existence for the average man of to-day includes the whole planet; that each individual habitually lives the life of the whole world. Something more than a year ago the people of Seville could follow, hour by hour, in the newspapers, what was happening to a few men near the North Pole; that is to say, that icebergs passed drifting against the burning background of the Andalusian landscape. Each portion of the earth is no longer shut up in its own geometrical position, but for many of the purposes of human life acts upon other portions of the planet. In accordance with the physical principle that things are wherever their effects are felt, we can attribute to-day to any point on the globe the most effective ubiquity. This nearness of the far-off, this presence of the absent, has extended in fabulous proportions the horizon of each individual existence.  And the world has also increased from the view-point of time. Prehistory and archaeology have discovered historical periods of fantastic duration. Whole civilisations and empires of which till recently not even the name was suspected, have been annexed to our knowledge like new continents. The illustrated paper and the film have brought these far-off portions of the universe before the immediate vision of the crowd.  But this spatio-temporal increase of the world would of itself signify nothing. Physical space and time are the absolutely stupid aspects of the universe. Hence, there is more reason than is generally ahowed in that worship of mere speed which is at present being indulged in by our contemporaries. Speed, which is made up of space and time, is no less stupid than its constituents, but it serves to nullify them. One stupidity can only be overcome by another. It was a question of honour for man to triumph over cosmic space and time,[1] which are entirely devoid of meaning, and there is no reason for surprise at the fact that we get a childish pleasure out of the indulgence in mere speed, by means of which we kill space and strangle time. By annulling them, we give them life, we make them serve vital purposes, we can be in more places than we could before, enjoy more comings and goings, consume more cosmic time in less vital time.

[1]It is precisely because man's vital time is limited, precisely because he is mortal, that he needs to triumph over distance and delay. For an immortal being, the motor-car would have no meaning.

 

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