TERMINOLOGY — canonical slugs (Gustave Le Bon)
Canonical slug table for this KB. Concept notes in concepts/ are named by these
slugs (English, hyphenated), following the Crowd vocabulary. The «do not
flatten to» column guards against collapsing Le Bon's clinical terms into the
loose modern «mob psychology» / «hive mind» pop-usage that now flattens him.
French is the term arbiter (Le Bon wrote Psychologie des foules, 1895); the
English 1896 translation is the ingested evidence pool.
| EN term (The Crowd) | FR (Le Bon) | canonical slug | RU working form | do not flatten to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The psychological crowd / mental unity | foule psychologique; unité mentale | psychological-crowd |
психологическая толпа | «толпа» (любое скопление людей) |
| The unconscious / genius of the race | l'inconscient; génie de la race | collective-unconscious |
коллективное бессознательное | «коллективный разум», «hive mind» |
| Disappearance of conscious personality | disparition de la personnalité | disappearance-of-personality |
исчезновение личности | «потеря себя» (метафора) |
| Contagion | contagion | contagion |
заражение | «вирусность» (маркетинг) |
| Suggestibility / credulity | suggestibilité | suggestibility |
внушаемость | «доверчивость» (общее) |
| Impulsiveness, mobility, irritability | impulsivité, mobilité | impulsiveness-and-irritability |
импульсивность | «эмоциональность толпы» |
| Crowds think in images | penser par images | thinking-in-images |
мышление образами | «наглядность», «визуализация» |
| Exaggeration and simplicity of sentiment | exagération et simplisme | exaggeration-and-simplicity |
преувеличение и простота | «эмоции зашкаливают» |
| Intolerance, dictatorialness, conservatism | conservatisme des foules | conservatism-of-crowds |
консерватизм толпы | «ригидность» (психол.) |
| Religious shape of convictions | forme religieuse | religious-form-of-conviction |
религиозная форма убеждений | «культ» (разговорное) |
| Leaders and their means | meneurs; affirmation, répétition, contagion | leaders-and-their-means |
вожди и их средства | «лидерство» (менеджмент) |
| Prestige | prestige | prestige |
престиж | «статус», «личный бренд» |
Notes on flattening
- psychological-crowd is not any large gathering. For Le Bon it is a
specific state — «their conscious personality vanishes … subjected to the LAW
OF THE MENTAL UNITY OF CROWDS» — that half a dozen men can enter and a
scattered nation can enter without gathering at all. - collective-unconscious here is the hereditary «genius of a race», not
Jung's later archetypal unconscious and not a flattering «wisdom of crowds»;
for Le Bon «in crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated». - contagion is a clinical, quasi-hypnotic mechanism («as intense as that of
microbes»), not marketing «virality». - prestige «entirely paralyses our critical faculty» — it is a domination
independent of truth or merit, not a synonym for status or reputation. - leaders-and-their-means (affirmation, repetition, contagion) is described
as a technique of power, expressly likened to advertising — the KB holds it
as an object of analysis, not as a norm (seeQUOTE_AUTHENTICITY, MOC).
Voice tag for every unit: voice: lebon (see sources/SOURCE_MANIFEST.md).
Period: Le Bon is fin-de-siècle French; The Crowd is 1895 (FR) / 1896 (EN).