In 1905, Simmel wrote: "the psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli . . . Thus the metropolitan type of man . . . develops an organ protecting him against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external environment which would uproot him" (Simmel 1905:48).

An individual in the city is subject to sensory inputs at levels which threaten "overload" and system collapse. Consequently, adaptive mechanisms are developed to divert or filter information, mechanisms which amount to metropolitan man's "protective organ," and which estrange him from others.

Is this the persona that i am talking about, the defensive system that seems to develop from having to deal with so much in so little time, the overload of information that drives us and develops us into the social characters. Definitive to others because they are over-processed and flawed through the lack of development. Through this simplification of definition there develops, what may be the strongest absence of individuality.