Anomie
Table of Contents:
Anomie—
Emile Durkheim’s On Suicide
The American dream is now a nightmare
Deadly Consequences
Opioid Use has skyrocketed
Suicide rates are through the roof, especially for military members
Our climate emergency will only exacerbate Anomie
Four Horsemen of the Financial Misuse Apocalypse
Drastic Increases in Wealth Inequality
“War on Terror”
The failed war on drugs and the erosion of personal sovereignty
2008 Financial Crisis
The Way Forward
Limits of Wealth
Team Human
The Long Now
Audio (2 podcasts)
Video (2 talks)
Anomie—
Abstract: “A state of hopelessness and despair due to the disintegration of social bonds that drive individuals and societies to personal and collective acts of self-destruction.”
Forewarning: This essay may be filled with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, but it is ALWAYS better to shine “light” on these issues rather than just moving on with life or sticking your head in the sand hoping things will change. To understand the importance of facing these issues head-on, listen to my podcast on the philosophy of suicide and grief with Cal Poly Pomona philosophy professor Michael Cholbi on Substack or Anchor.
If my first essays on heuristics provide possible solutions to make the world better, more ethical, and truthful, then this post focuses on an amalgamation of problems. This meta-problem is not solely American or Western, but currently where it is acutely apparent. (It is increasingly becoming an international issue.) I promise three possible helpful solutions.
What does the opioid crisis have to do with plagues of suicide?
Or the emboldening of violence and hate with the increase in gambling?
Does climate change have anything to do with humanity’s pornification of culture?
How does one understand the rise of magical thinking in the masses along with the successful corporate coup d'état of government?
One of the smoking guns, if any, is an all-encompassing word coined by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim in the late 19th century: Anomie.
Made famous in Durkheim’s book On Suicide, Anomie occurs when society lacks the regulatory constraints necessary to control the behavior of its members. This usually comes after rapid, unpredictable, and uncontrollable change. There is a breakdown of the normative structure and were once rules and norms were strong, they have weakened over time. Without norms, limits, or boundaries an individual’s life becomes meaningless and behavior becomes uncontrollable. You can see the progression quite clearly below. (We are either in the third or fourth stage depending on your level of cynicism, but one cannot deny that we are past the second stage.)
A shorter definition of Anomie is “a state of hopelessness and despair due to the disintegration of social bonds that drive individuals and societies to personal and collective acts of self-destruction.”
Sociology professor Chad Gesser says, “Sociologists see society as an organism, much the way the human body is an organism. Society, just like the human body, is a sum of its parts.” A fancier way to put it is organic specialization. Two handy graphics below help visualize.
“Staying with the human anatomy and physiology theme, I like to think of the above image as the “skeleton” of society. Below you’ll find the makeup of the “central nervous system”. These are the fundamental elements of culture,” says Gresser.
“Keep in mind that norms are the guidelines and expectations in society. They are not right or wrong, but we as members of society determine at any given moment in time or history the makeup of norms...Norms, just like culture, change. The “skeleton” of society, and the “central nervous system”, remain the same.”
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The American Dream is now a nightmare
The average American is worse off today then they were just a generation ago. Millennials, my age cohort, are poorer than previous generations, and actively losing ground in every major statistical measurement. The counter-intuitive has become the norm. We can see this personification in totality with the example that the US life expectancy is DECLINING! How is that possible in 2019?! (One could easily argue that America has always been a nightmare for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Women, and anyone not white and male.)
Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and NYT best-selling author, recognized our culture’s widespread malaise as Anomie, and recently repopularized the term, including writing a book called America, The Farewell Tour. He wrote in a summary post for TruthDig.com that our traditional social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective, and more importantly, engaging in a project larger than the self are, in fact, in disarray.
“This collective expresses itself through rituals, such as elections and democratic participation or an appeal to patriotism and shared national beliefs. The bonds provide meaning, a sense of purpose, status, and dignity. They offer psychological protection from impending mortality and the meaninglessness that comes with being isolated and alone. The shattering of these bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress that leads ultimately to acts of self-annihilation,” says Hedges, mirroring Durkheim.
The American Dream - the belief that if you, or anyone, work hard, obey the law, and get a good education can achieve social status mobility - is a lie. The great comedian George Carlin was prophetic about the subject with the final line in one of his most infamous stand-up sets, “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Mark Manson wrote in the Observer that the continued belief in something that isn’t true in reality (The American Dream) is in fact killing us, “The sad truth is that fewer people today are getting ahead than before. And they’re getting ahead not due to their hard work or their education as much as their connections, their family’s socioeconomic status, and of course, just the plain luck of not getting horribly sick or getting into a serious accident.”
This is not to say the elite are the only ones to blame. Brookings scholar Richard V. Reeves, says in his book Dream Hoarders that the middle class has enriched itself and harmed economic mobility: “Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper-middle-class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper-middle-class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.”
Manson continues that the truth is we are back to where we started before the late 18th-century revolution and standing up to monarchical powers, “Not only is this not the American Dream, it’s the antithesis of the American Dream. It’s the old feudal order where you’re born into your privilege (or lack thereof) and forced to just hope things don’t get any worse.”
This sad truth is further ingrained in our collective psyche when voting effectively no longer advances the interests of the average citizen. Professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page note in their research that the political process is not as democratic as one might think. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
Hedges comes back into the fray while also bringing down the truth hammer with what this really means to the veneer of democracy when social bonds are not just broken but are blown up, “This facade of democratic process eviscerates one of the primary social bonds in a democratic state and abolishes the vital shared belief that citizens have the power to govern themselves, that government exists to promote and protect their rights and interests.”
Hedges states, as plainly as can be, how this happened right in front of all of us, “But the capture of political and economic power by the corporate elites, along with the redirecting of all institutions toward the further consolidation of their power and wealth, has broken the social bonds that held the American society together.”
To read the rest of the essay, go to either the Substack or Medium link.
Substack: https://eclecticspacewalk.substack.com/p/eclectic-spacewalk-6-anomie
Medium: https://medium.com/eclectic-spacewalk/eclectic-spacewalk-6-anomie-b498f915c33d