The big idea: When you hear 'the masses', you probably picture poor or ordinary people — a social class.
Ortega's stranger meaning: The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset means something different and stranger. For him the 'mass' isn't about money or status at all. It's a kind of person — an attitude — and you can find it in a factory or a palace, in a labourer or a professor.
So the mass man is defined by how someone thinks about themselves, not by their job or wealth. Ortega calls the opposite kind the 'select minority' — again, a type, not a rank.
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Ortega paints the mass man with three linked traits.
Three marks of the mass man
Self-satisfied
He's pleased with himself exactly as he is. He doesn't feel he's missing anything or has anywhere to grow.
Makes no demands on himself
He sets himself no hard task, no discipline, no standard to live up to. Life just drifts along, easy.
Feels 'just like everybody'
He doesn't want to stand out or be different. Feeling exactly like everyone else feels comfortable and right to him.
Satisfied ▸ No demands ▸ Just like everyone
The 'spoilt child' picture: Ortega compares the mass man to a pampered child who grew up with every comfort handed to him. Because he never had to earn or fight for anything, he assumes the world will always just provide.
What the spoilt child forgets: He feels no gratitude and no duty toward the people and history that built that comfort. He enjoys the results of civilization without any sense that it had to be made, or must be kept up.
Checkpoint — the mass man: In one line: the mass man is self-satisfied, demands nothing of himself, and is happy to be 'just like everybody'. Hold that — the next step shows why Ortega thinks this is even a problem.
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On its own, 'a contented, ordinary person' sounds harmless — even nice. Ortega's worry is subtler.
The danger isn't being ordinary — it's being closed: Ortega's point isn't that ordinary people are bad. It's that the mass man is closed. His real fault is a kind of comfortable complacency that shuts the door on growth.
The mass man
- Satisfied with himself
- Stops listening and stops learning
- Assumes his own untested opinions are simply correct
The 'select' person
- Never quite satisfied
- Keeps demanding more of himself
- Stays open to being wrong
Go further — higher-level insight: Notice how much rides on the word 'demand'. Ortega defines the good life as one where you constantly demand more of yourself. A critic can ask: says who?
Use it in part (b): Maybe a calm, contented life that demands nothing extra is perfectly good, and Ortega has just smuggled his own restless, striving values into the definition of a proper human being. Naming that he's loaded the terms is a strong part (b) move.