Summary
Richard Sennet: The Disappearance of the Public Man
"Public" life once meant that crucial part of life outside the circle of family and close friends. Connecting emotionally with strangers for mutual satisfaction and yet remaining at a distance was considered the way a human being becomes a social being - a civilized being. Sennett shows how today we are deprived of the pleasures of that vanished life exchange with our fellow citizens; the stranger becomes a threatening apparition; silence and observation become the only way to experience and survive the public, especially street life; everyone believes that they have the right to be left alone in public. Thus, it becomes clear that due to changes in public life, our private life has suffered, in which we fail to develop our own personality: we lack the lightness, playfulness, discretion that would enable us to have realistic and pleasant relationships with those we may never get to know intimately.
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