Émile Durkheim is the philosopher who can best help us understand
why capitalism makes us richer and often unhappier.
He was born in 1858 in the small French town of Épinale near the German border.
Before he was forty, Durkheim gained a powerful and prestigious position:
as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Durkheim lived during the immense, rapid transformation of France.
Formerly a strong traditional rural society …
… to an urban industrial economy.
He could see that the country was getting richer;
that capitalism was remarkably productive
and, in certain ways, also liberating.
But what particularly struck him and became the focus of his entire career
was that the economic system did something very peculiar with people’s mind.
It drove them, quite literally, to suicide.
In ever-larger numbers.
This was the immense insight revealed in Durkheim’s most important work: Suicide, published in 1897.
The book describes the remarkable and tragic discovery
that suicide rates seem to rise when a nation is industrialized
and consumer capitalism settles.
Durkheim observed that the suicide rate of the current England was double that of Italy
but in even richer and further developed Denmark it was four times as high as in England.
Durkheim’s focus on suicide was meant to be one more
general level of unhappiness and despair in society.
Suicide was the terrible top of the iceberg of mental distress created by modern capitalism.
Throughout his career Durkheim tried to explain why people were so unhappy in modern societies.
He distinguished five crucial factors:
1 – In traditional societies, people’s identity is closely related to belonging to a clan or class.
Few choices are required;
a person can be a Lutheran baker or married to a niece without ever making a self-conscious choice for himself.
They can simply occupy a place created by their families and the existing construction of society.
But in modern capitalism,
it is the individual who has to choose everything; which job, which religion, whom to marry and where to belong.
If things are going well, the individual gets all credit.
But if things go bad, the individual is in an even more cruel place than before
for this means that there is no one other than himself the culprit.
Failure becomes a terrible judgment for the individual.
This is the specific burden of living in modern capitalism.
Capitalism increases hope: everyone can become the boss by making an effort.
Advertising fosters ambition by showing the endless luxury we could obtain by playing our cards correctly.
The possibilities would be enormous, but so are the chances of disappointment.
In modern capitalism jealousy is growing rapidly.
It is easy to be unhappy with your destiny. Not because it is objectively bad
but because of the unpleasant thought of everything that is almost not yet within reach.
The cheerful, enthusiastic side of capitalism caused specific irritation at Durkheim.
In this respect, the modern world could hardly admit that life is often quite painful and sad.
Our tendency to grief and worry are presented as signs of failure
rather than what it should be: an honest response to the heavy facts of humanity.
One of the great arguments against traditional societies, strongly represented in Romantic literature
is that people need more freedom.
Religious figures complained that there were far too many social norms.
Standards that said what to wear, what to do on Sunday afternoon, for which parts of an arm it is respectable not to cover them as a woman.
Following the earlier attempts of Romantic rebels, capitalism has ruthlessly undermined social norms.
Countries have become more complex, anonymous and diverse.
People do not have much more in common with each other.
The collective answers to even very important questions such as
with whom to marry or how to raise your children
have become much less specific.
There is a lot of confidence in the sentence “What works for you”,
sounds friendly but also means that society does not really care about what you do
and is not sure that it has the right answers to the big questions of your life.
At optimistic moments we like to think that we are fully capable of reinventing life
and working out everything for ourselves.
But in reality, as Durkheim knew, we are often just too tired or too busy, too insecure
and then we can not turn nowhere.
Durkheim himself was an atheist, but he worried that religion had become more implausible
because the good, common side would have been very useful to restore the disintegrating social structure.
Despite the factual errors in the imaginative dimensions, Durkheim appreciated religion.
He knew that the sense of community and the consolation that religion offers are of great importance to people.
Capitalism has so far offered nothing to replace this.
Science certainly does not offer the same opportunities for strongly shared experiences.
The periodic table may, however, contain an exquisite beauty and be a miracle of intellectual elegance,
it can not get a society together.
In the 19th century, it sometimes looked like the idea of the nation
it would grow so intense and intense that it could take on the sense of solidarity and shared commitment
that was ever delivered by religion.
Admittedly, there were some heroic moments, but in general they did not succeed as well.
Family seemed to offer for an end the experience of belonging that people need.
But today, despite the fact that we invest a lot in our families,
they are not as stable as we would hope
and in adulthood, children are no longer so hard connected to their parents.
They are not expected to work with them, their social circles do not overlap
and it does not feel like the honor of their parents is in their hands.
Today both nation and family do not take on the task of giving us a greater sense of belonging,
and a feeling that we are part of something more valuable than ourselves.
Émile Durkheim was a master diagnoser of our ailments.
He shows us that modern economics imposes enormous pressure on individuals
and dangerously deprived them of authoritarian guidance and common comfort.
We are all Durkheim’s heirs and still have the job for us that he struggled with.
How we can create new ways of connecting together;
how we can take some pressure from the shoulders of individuals
and find a better balance between freedom and solidarity
and how to generate ideologies that allow us not to be so hard on ourselves in case of failure and setbacks.
why capitalism makes us richer and often unhappier.
He was born in 1858 in the small French town of Épinale near the German border.
Before he was forty, Durkheim gained a powerful and prestigious position:
as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Durkheim lived during the immense, rapid transformation of France.
Formerly a strong traditional rural society …
… to an urban industrial economy.
He could see that the country was getting richer;
that capitalism was remarkably productive
and, in certain ways, also liberating.
But what particularly struck him and became the focus of his entire career
was that the economic system did something very peculiar with people’s mind.
It drove them, quite literally, to suicide.
In ever-larger numbers.
This was the immense insight revealed in Durkheim’s most important work: Suicide, published in 1897.
The book describes the remarkable and tragic discovery
that suicide rates seem to rise when a nation is industrialized
and consumer capitalism settles.
Durkheim observed that the suicide rate of the current England was double that of Italy
but in even richer and further developed Denmark it was four times as high as in England.
Durkheim’s focus on suicide was meant to be one more
general level of unhappiness and despair in society.
Suicide was the terrible top of the iceberg of mental distress created by modern capitalism.
Throughout his career Durkheim tried to explain why people were so unhappy in modern societies.
He distinguished five crucial factors:
1 – In traditional societies, people’s identity is closely related to belonging to a clan or class.
Few choices are required;
a person can be a Lutheran baker or married to a niece without ever making a self-conscious choice for himself.
They can simply occupy a place created by their families and the existing construction of society.
But in modern capitalism,
it is the individual who has to choose everything; which job, which religion, whom to marry and where to belong.
If things are going well, the individual gets all credit.
But if things go bad, the individual is in an even more cruel place than before
for this means that there is no one other than himself the culprit.
Failure becomes a terrible judgment for the individual.
This is the specific burden of living in modern capitalism.
Capitalism increases hope: everyone can become the boss by making an effort.
Advertising fosters ambition by showing the endless luxury we could obtain by playing our cards correctly.
The possibilities would be enormous, but so are the chances of disappointment.
In modern capitalism jealousy is growing rapidly.
It is easy to be unhappy with your destiny. Not because it is objectively bad
but because of the unpleasant thought of everything that is almost not yet within reach.
The cheerful, enthusiastic side of capitalism caused specific irritation at Durkheim.
In this respect, the modern world could hardly admit that life is often quite painful and sad.
Our tendency to grief and worry are presented as signs of failure
rather than what it should be: an honest response to the heavy facts of humanity.
One of the great arguments against traditional societies, strongly represented in Romantic literature
is that people need more freedom.
Religious figures complained that there were far too many social norms.
Standards that said what to wear, what to do on Sunday afternoon, for which parts of an arm it is respectable not to cover them as a woman.
Following the earlier attempts of Romantic rebels, capitalism has ruthlessly undermined social norms.
Countries have become more complex, anonymous and diverse.
People do not have much more in common with each other.
The collective answers to even very important questions such as
with whom to marry or how to raise your children
have become much less specific.
There is a lot of confidence in the sentence “What works for you”,
sounds friendly but also means that society does not really care about what you do
and is not sure that it has the right answers to the big questions of your life.
At optimistic moments we like to think that we are fully capable of reinventing life
and working out everything for ourselves.
But in reality, as Durkheim knew, we are often just too tired or too busy, too insecure
and then we can not turn nowhere.
Durkheim himself was an atheist, but he worried that religion had become more implausible
because the good, common side would have been very useful to restore the disintegrating social structure.
Despite the factual errors in the imaginative dimensions, Durkheim appreciated religion.
He knew that the sense of community and the consolation that religion offers are of great importance to people.
Capitalism has so far offered nothing to replace this.
Science certainly does not offer the same opportunities for strongly shared experiences.
The periodic table may, however, contain an exquisite beauty and be a miracle of intellectual elegance,
it can not get a society together.
In the 19th century, it sometimes looked like the idea of the nation
it would grow so intense and intense that it could take on the sense of solidarity and shared commitment
that was ever delivered by religion.
Admittedly, there were some heroic moments, but in general they did not succeed as well.
Family seemed to offer for an end the experience of belonging that people need.
But today, despite the fact that we invest a lot in our families,
they are not as stable as we would hope
and in adulthood, children are no longer so hard connected to their parents.
They are not expected to work with them, their social circles do not overlap
and it does not feel like the honor of their parents is in their hands.
Today both nation and family do not take on the task of giving us a greater sense of belonging,
and a feeling that we are part of something more valuable than ourselves.
Émile Durkheim was a master diagnoser of our ailments.
He shows us that modern economics imposes enormous pressure on individuals
and dangerously deprived them of authoritarian guidance and common comfort.
We are all Durkheim’s heirs and still have the job for us that he struggled with.
How we can create new ways of connecting together;
how we can take some pressure from the shoulders of individuals
and find a better balance between freedom and solidarity
and how to generate ideologies that allow us not to be so hard on ourselves in case of failure and setbacks.
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