Emile 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