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Emile Durkheim is the philosopher 
who can best help us to understand


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why capitalism makes us richer and 
yet frequently more miserable.

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He was born in 1858 in the little
frenchtown EP now

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near the German border. Before he was
forty to climb was appointed to a

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powerful and prestigious position

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as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Durkheim lived through the immense rapid

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transformation of France from a 
largely traditional agricultural society

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to an up an industrial economy. He could
see that his country was getting richer,

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that capitalism was extraordinarily
productive and in certain ways that it

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was also liberating. But what particularly
struck him and became the focus

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for his entire scholarly career was 
that the economic system was 


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doing something very peculiar 
to people's minds.


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It was quite literally
driving them to suicide in

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ever-increasing numbers.

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This was the immense 
insight unveiled in Durkheim's

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most important work: suicide 
published in 1897.

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The book chronicled a remarkable 
and tragic discovery.

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The suicide rates seem to shoot up 
once a nation has become

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industrialized and consumer 
capitalism takes hold.

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Durkheim observed that the suicide rate
in the Britain of his day

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was double that of Italy but in an even
richer and more advanced Denmark,

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it was four times higher than in the UK
Telecom's focus on suicide

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was intended to shed light on a more
general level of unhappiness and despair

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in society

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suicide with horrific tip of the iceberg
mental distress

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created by modern capitalism 
across as Korea

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to come try to explain why people had
become so unhappy

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in modern societies and 
isolated five crucial factors

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in traditional societies people's

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entities are closely tied to belonging
to a clan or class

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few choices are involved a 
person might be a baker a

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Lutheran all married to the second
cousin without ever having made any soft

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conscious decisions for themselves

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they can just step into a place created
for them by their family

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and the existing fabric of society but
under modern capitalism

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it's the individual that now 
begins to choose everything

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what drop to take what 
religion to follow who to marry

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and where to belong if things go well

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the individual takes all the 
credit but if things go badly

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the individual is in a cruel a 
place than ever before

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for its seemingly means that there's no
one else to blame but they themselves

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failure becomes a terrible 
judgment upon the individual

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this is the particular Burton 
life in modern capitalism

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capitalism raises hopes 
everyone with effort

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can become the boss 
advertising stokes ambition

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by showing is limitless luxury that we
could if we play our cards right

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secure very soon the 
opportunities are said to be

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enormous but so too 
all the possibilities

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for disappointment in modern 
capitalism NV gross rife

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its easy to become deeply 
dissatisfied with one slot

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not because it's objectively awful
because have to minting thoughts about

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all that is almost but not quite within
reach the cheery Bruce to recite of

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capitalism attracted to cum spurting 
cular annoyance in his view

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modern society struggle 
to admit life just is

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often quite painful and sad tendencies
to grief and sorrow

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made to look like signs of 
failure rather than

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should be the case a fair response to
the arduous fact that the human

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condition

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one of the complaints against

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societies strongly voiced in Romantic
literature is that people need

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more freedom rebellious types used to
complain that they were far too many

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social norms

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norms telling you what to wear what
you're supposed to do on Sunday

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afternoons

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what part 7 arm its respectable 
for women to reveal

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capitalism following the earlier 
efforts have a romantic

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rebels has relentlessly 
undermine social norms

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countries have become more complex more
anonymous and more diverse

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people don't have so much in common with
one another anymore

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the collective answers to even very
important questions like

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who should marry you how should bring up
your children to become weaker and less

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specific

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there's a lot of reliance on the phrase
whatever works for you

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which sounds friendly but it also means
that society doesn't much care what you

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do and doesn't feel confident it 
has good answers to the big

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questions of your life

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in upbeat moments we like to think of
ourselves as fully up to the task

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reinventing life and working everything
out for ourselves

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but in reality is dark on you were often
simply

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too tired too busy to run certain and
then

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there's nowhere to turn

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took I'm with himself and atheist but he
worried that religion has become

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implausible

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just at its best sides its communal side

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would be most useful to prepare the
fraying social fabric

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despite its factual errors in its
fantastical dimensions

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duck unappreciated religion he knew that
the sense of community in consolation

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religion offer a highly important to
people capitalism

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has as yet offered nothing to replace
this with science certainly doesn't

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offer the same opportunities for
powerful

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shared experiences the periodic table

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might well possess a transcendent beauty
and be a marvelous

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intellectual elegance pecan drawer
society together around it

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in the nineteenth century

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looks at certain moments as if the idea
of the nation Mike Russow powerful and

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intense

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that it could take up the sense of
belonging and share devotion

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that had once been supplied by religion
admittedly there were some heroic

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moments

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but they generally didn't work out very
well family to you seemed for a time to

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offer the experience

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belonging the people seem to need but
today

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although we do indeed invest hugely in
our families

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they're not as stable as we might hope
and by adult would

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children a heartbeat I to their parents
anymore they don't expect to work

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alongside them

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they don't expect a social circles to
overlap and they do feel that their

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parents

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on a reason their hands today neither
family

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nor the nation a well placed to take up
the task

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giving us a larger sense of belonging
giving us the feeling

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the with part of something more valuable
than ourselves

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Emile Durkheim was a master
diagnostician

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afar Hills he shows us that modern
economies

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a tremendous pressures on individuals
and leave them dangerously bereft

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authoritative guidance and communal
solace

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we are all Telecom's has and so happy

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ahead of us the task that he grappled
with how we can create new ways of

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belonging

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how we can take some of the pressure of
individuals and find a more correct

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balance

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between freedom and solidarity and how
to generate

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ideologies that will house not to be so
tough on ourselves

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for of failures and I'll setbacks