meal Durkheim is the philosopher who can best help us to understand why capitalism makes us richer and yet frequently more miserable he was born in 1858 in the little frenchtown EP now near the German border before he was forty to climb was appointed to a powerful and prestigious position as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris dot com live through the immense rapid transformation France from a largely traditional agricultural society to an up an industrial economy he could see that his country was getting richer that capitalism was extraordinarily productive and in certain ways that it was also liberating but what particularly struck him and became the focus for this entire scholarly Korea with the economic system was doing something very peculiar to people's minds it was quite literally driving them to suicide in ever-increasing numbers this was the immense insight unveiled intercoms most important work suicide published in 1897 the book chronicles a remarkable and tragic discovery the suicide rates seem to shoot up once a nation has become industrialized and consumer capitalism takes hold to come observed that the suicide rate in the Britain have his day was double that of Italy but in even richer and more advanced Denmark it was four times higher than in the UK Telecom's focus on suicide was intended to shed light on a more general level of unhappiness and despair in society suicide with horrific tip of the iceberg mental distress created by modern capitalism across as Korea to come try to explain why people had become so unhappy in modern societies and isolated five crucial factors in traditional societies people's entities are closely tied to belonging to a clan or class few choices are involved a person might be a baker a Lutheran all married to the second cousin without ever having made any soft conscious decisions for themselves they can just step into a place created for them by their family and the existing fabric of society but under modern capitalism it's the individual that now begins to choose everything what drop to take what religion to follow who to marry and where to belong if things go well the individual takes all the credit but if things go badly the individual is in a cruel a place than ever before for its seemingly means that there's no one else to blame but they themselves failure becomes a terrible judgment upon the individual this is the particular Burton life in modern capitalism capitalism raises hopes everyone with effort can become the boss advertising stokes ambition by showing is limitless luxury that we could if we play our cards right secure very soon the opportunities are said to be enormous but so too all the possibilities for disappointment in modern capitalism NV gross rife its easy to become deeply dissatisfied with one slot not because it's objectively awful because have to minting thoughts about all that is almost but not quite within reach the cheery Bruce to recite of capitalism attracted to cum spurting cular annoyance in his view modern society struggle to admit life just is often quite painful and sad tendencies to grief and sorrow made to look like signs of failure rather than should be the case a fair response to the arduous fact that the human condition one of the complaints against societies strongly voiced in Romantic literature is that people need more freedom rebellious types used to complain that they were far too many social norms norms telling you what to wear what you're supposed to do on Sunday afternoons what part 7 arm its respectable for women to reveal capitalism following the earlier efforts have a romantic rebels has relentlessly undermine social norms countries have become more complex more anonymous and more diverse people don't have so much in common with one another anymore the collective answers to even very important questions like who should marry you how should bring up your children to become weaker and less specific there's a lot of reliance on the phrase whatever works for you which sounds friendly but it also means that society doesn't much care what you do and doesn't feel confident it has good answers to the big questions of your life in upbeat moments we like to think of ourselves as fully up to the task reinventing life and working everything out for ourselves but in reality is dark on you were often simply too tired too busy to run certain and then there's nowhere to turn took I'm with himself and atheist but he worried that religion has become implausible just at its best sides its communal side would be most useful to prepare the fraying social fabric despite its factual errors in its fantastical dimensions duck unappreciated religion he knew that the sense of community in consolation religion offer a highly important to people capitalism has as yet offered nothing to replace this with science certainly doesn't offer the same opportunities for powerful shared experiences the periodic table might well possess a transcendent beauty and be a marvelous intellectual elegance pecan drawer society together around it in the nineteenth century looks at certain moments as if the idea of the nation Mike Russow powerful and intense that it could take up the sense of belonging and share devotion that had once been supplied by religion admittedly there were some heroic moments but they generally didn't work out very well family to you seemed for a time to offer the experience belonging the people seem to need but today although we do indeed invest hugely in our families they're not as stable as we might hope and by adult would children a heartbeat I to their parents anymore they don't expect to work alongside them they don't expect a social circles to overlap and they do feel that their parents on a reason their hands today neither family nor the nation a well placed to take up the task giving us a larger sense of belonging giving us the feeling the with part of something more valuable than ourselves Emile Durkheim was a master diagnostician afar Hills he shows us that modern economies a tremendous pressures on individuals and leave them dangerously bereft authoritative guidance and communal solace we are all Telecom's has and so happy ahead of us the task that he grappled with how we can create new ways of belonging how we can take some of the pressure of individuals and find a more correct balance between freedom and solidarity and how to generate ideologies that will house not to be so tough on ourselves for of failures and I'll setbacks