SOCIOLOGY - Émile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim was a French 19th century sociologist who focused on what modern capitalism does to our minds - and concluded that it might, quite literally, be driving us to an early grave. Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7
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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.
Durkheim lived through the immense rapid

transformation of 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 his entire scholarly career was
that 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 in Durkheim's

most important work: suicide
published in 1897.

The book chronicled a remarkable
and tragic discovery.

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

industrialized and consumer
capitalism takes hold.

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

was double that of Italy but in an 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