Gasset's "La Rebelión de las Masas"

My first impression is that Gasset is extremely and comically arrogant and unlikable. He acknowledges some might disagree with him, but that's only because they haven't put any thought into the topic. Despite all of that, I think the book presents an interesting view of the world that is relevant to today.

The masses in the title are people born into a liberal democracy and disconnected from its history. They take their rights as natural and not fought for, they are learned but uncultured, and believe expertise in some form of technique or science gives them the authority to talk on topics they know nothing about.

It's easy to agree with this based on the political ascent of technocrats like Thiel and Musk, the growing anti-science sentiment, or just twitter as a whole. I can imagine someone reading this book and quickly pointing to whoever it is they dislike: "Here are the masses".

My take is to take this definition as a call to self-reflect. How can I avoid being a "Señorito satisfecho", put in the work to learn and understand our historic context, and defer to experts on the areas where I simply haven't spent the time to understand.

Once the masses are defined, Gasset talks about who rules the world. For starters it's never whoever needs to use power or violence, but it's based on public opinion or the spirit of the times. When he's writing, it's a transition from Europe ruling to an unknown and chaotic time. When I'm reading, I feel it's not so different: The United States ruled, and this might no longer be true. Maybe industrialization did it to Europe in the early 20th century, and the internet did it to the US in the early 21st.

We have the hallmarks of a period without a clear ruler: a feeling of uncertainty and not knowing what the future will look like, the use of power and force to try to be the next ruler. Who does Gasset think will rule next? It will be whoever can offer a distinct vision of the future, one that matches the spirit of the times. As of 2025, I haven't seen this materialize. I don't believe any of the big political parties and movements acknowledge what has become painfully evident thanks to the rise of computing, the internet, and more recently large language models: Our existing frameworks for belonging based on geography, protections on intellectual property based on scarcity, or labor in the face of widespread automation are no longer enough.

I heard the book described as "conservative", but I don't think this is true. If anything, the book paints conservatism as a type of defeat, nationalism as retrograde and ignorant. In fact, he sees history pointing to an ever-expanding on what the unit of state is. Spain, France, Germany, the UK are all examples of this. Gasset thinks the European state is inevitable. I tend to agree.

The future is uncertain, sometimes scary, sometimes exciting. I believe, ultimately, we will arrive at something better, but not without a lot of chaos and damage in the interim.