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