The Crowd – Sunday, January 25, 1942
There is a persistent trait of human nature which causes most of us to seek refuge in the crowd. This is easily understandable because we have long since learned to know that few if any of us can enjoy security alone.
Physical protection has long since been secured on a collective basis, and civilization itself has been achieved collectively and be maintained that way. But the fact that we achieve things by cooperation with others of our own kind must not make us lose sight of the fact that every crowd, every community, every people, is composed of individuals, each of whom is individually responsible for his own conduct, his own thinking, his own life.
Crowds sometimes do strange things to people. For example, a gangster with his own crowd, surrounded by his own gunmen—may acquire a false sense of bravery—when, in reality, alone he is a cringing coward. Crowds sometimes make a boy rush unwisely into things he wouldn’t have done except for the crowd, because as one of a crowd he may forget that something which he wouldn’t do alone doesn’t become right just because a gang does it. A crime that three accomplish isn’t just one-third as bad as if one had done it. More properly it could be described as three times as bad—because, while there may have been only one offense under the law there are three who are guilty.
A crowd can’t think; crowds don’t change the fundamental nature of things. Crowd action doesn’t convert wrong into right. It may make an action seem impersonal, but still that crowd is composed of individuals and our individual responsibility for our own conduct is everlastingly upon us whether we are alone or with a dozen or a million, for that matter. And so, being fully mindful of all we have achieved collectively, and being mindful of all that group cooperation has done and must continue to do for us by way of maintaining physical security, and civilization itself, and all of the institutions of society—yet it remains also true that these things cannot endure without individual integrity and individual freedom of action.
Every man who walks the earth is an eternal personality, everlastingly distinct from all others, and we do not lose our identity nor our responsibility, nor our accountability to the laws of the land or to the laws of God, when we merge ourselves with any crowd of any size or description.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, January 25, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the Nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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January 25, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,649