As I read my newspaper the other evening, Emile Durkheim and his information came to mind as I wondered to myself – what in the world is happening to the world I used to know?
Emile Durkheim, a French scholar of the Victorian era popularized this sociological term: Anomie, (French), Anomy (English). Used to describe the destructive consequences to a society upon the collapse of its “guiding social institutions.” Such institutions as: government, military, financial, economic, education, religious and medicine.
These are the institutions that citizens look to for competent leadership and truth, wisdom, faith, hope and for morale, mental and physical sustenance in good and bad times.
Durkheim further lists the destructive results to a society and its people issuing from such institutional collapse:
• A state of alienation experienced by individuals or among one or more class of the social structure.
• Severe personal disorganization, resulting oftentimes in furious outbursts of destructive and antisocial behavior.
• Characterized by a general feeling of rootlessness and a contempt for others who do obey social laws.
Such “collapses” occur in times of radical change, during movement from one society to another, as a result of death in one’s family or divorce, following severe or disorienting physical or mental illness.
Such collapses often cause a movement in frontier societies, or are the result of such movements.
The ultimate manifestation of the Anomy phenomena in a society is the increasing number of suicides.
“If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck — it probably is a duck!
I think Mr. Durkheim describes current global situations quite accurately, as far as he goes.
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