Believe it or not, this was written in 1955...........

      Like the machines which delight and enthrall them, the masses are neither good not bad.  Machines have made our lives complicated and intellect has made our minds restless.  Poise, assurance and serenity seem to be beyond our grasp, and to gain a false sense of security the individual blends with others in a new entity, the mass.  The spectre of the mass hovers over public affairs, industry, business, social life and manners.  The great danger with the mass is not right thought or wrong thought but the utter absence of thought.   The immense impact of mass media on our lives encourages passivity, acquiescence, conformity.  The mind is benumbed and the will paralysed.   Instead of courageous independent thinking, there is a susceptibility to words, to symbols of crude emotion.  The collective wisdom of the masses is a misnomer for surrender to emotionalism.  Those who manipulate the people acquire great influence.  Politics has become a gamble in mass psychology.   It was the masses that stoned the Bastille; it was the masses that responded by collective rapture to Hitler-in-the-brewery.  It is the masses who are being exploited today for ideological crusades.  The leaders of public opinion use the techniques of propaganda for controlling public opinion.

-Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,  Recovery of Faith