WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.639 Okay, I want you to picture something, something 00:00:01.639 --> 00:00:04.740 we've, I think, all been in. You walk into a 00:00:04.740 --> 00:00:08.300 room. Maybe it's a funeral or, you know, a really 00:00:08.300 --> 00:00:10.599 high -stakes board meeting. Or maybe it's just 00:00:10.599 --> 00:00:12.419 one of those super fancy dinner parties where 00:00:12.419 --> 00:00:14.279 there are way too many forks next to the plate. 00:00:14.419 --> 00:00:16.859 Yeah, and you have no idea which one to use. 00:00:17.039 --> 00:00:19.859 Exactly. You step across that threshold and you 00:00:19.859 --> 00:00:23.320 just, you suddenly feel it. Oh yeah, it's unmistakable. 00:00:23.519 --> 00:00:26.800 It really is. It's this heavy, kind of invisible 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:30.539 weight that just presses down on you. It's a 00:00:30.539 --> 00:00:34.060 force that tells you how to stand, how loud you're 00:00:34.060 --> 00:00:36.460 allowed to talk. What jokes are okay. And definitely 00:00:36.460 --> 00:00:38.380 jokes are not okay. It just sort of tells you 00:00:38.380 --> 00:00:40.340 how to exist in that space. It feels like there's 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:42.380 a script that everyone else got a copy of, and 00:00:42.380 --> 00:00:44.439 you're just terrified you're going to ad lib 00:00:44.439 --> 00:00:46.960 a line and, I don't know, ruin the whole show. 00:00:47.159 --> 00:00:50.079 And that's a universal human experience. I think 00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:52.579 most of us, we just chalk that up to internal 00:00:52.579 --> 00:00:56.159 things, right? We say it's anxiety or insecurity 00:00:56.159 --> 00:00:59.399 or just good old -fashioned peer pressure. Right. 00:00:59.740 --> 00:01:01.840 We think, oh, I'm just being awkward or I need 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:04.920 to read the room better. We turn it inward. But 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:07.599 what if that pressure, what if it isn't just 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:10.439 in our heads? What if that invisible weight is 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:14.599 actually an objective external force? What if 00:01:14.599 --> 00:01:17.280 it's as real and as measurable as, I don't know, 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:19.750 a sack of bricks or a gust of wind? And that 00:01:19.750 --> 00:01:22.049 question, that is the perfect way to get into 00:01:22.049 --> 00:01:25.209 our deep dive today. We are exploring the mind 00:01:25.209 --> 00:01:27.790 of the man who argued exactly that. He believed 00:01:27.790 --> 00:01:29.650 that these social pressures, they're not just 00:01:29.650 --> 00:01:32.250 psychological quirks. He called them social facts. 00:01:32.450 --> 00:01:34.689 And he argued that they're forces that exist 00:01:34.689 --> 00:01:37.489 completely outside of us, but control us just 00:01:37.489 --> 00:01:41.629 as rigidly as like the laws of physics. We were 00:01:41.629 --> 00:01:45.310 talking today about Emile Durkheim. Now, I know 00:01:45.310 --> 00:01:47.870 the name. It might sound a little dusty to some 00:01:47.870 --> 00:01:49.890 people, you know, like an old textbook you forgot 00:01:49.890 --> 00:01:51.329 in your high school walker. Yeah, it has that 00:01:51.329 --> 00:01:54.109 ring to it. But digging into his life and his 00:01:54.109 --> 00:01:57.670 work for this, I realized this guy is basically 00:01:57.670 --> 00:02:00.049 the architect of how we see the world today. 00:02:00.109 --> 00:02:02.849 He really is. I mean, alongside Karl Marx and 00:02:02.849 --> 00:02:05.010 Max Weber, Durkheim is considered one of the 00:02:05.010 --> 00:02:07.609 principal architects of modern social science. 00:02:07.989 --> 00:02:10.669 They're kind of the Holy Trinity, if you will. 00:02:10.770 --> 00:02:13.419 Right. But while Marx was focused on conflict 00:02:13.419 --> 00:02:15.719 and economics and Weber was looking at, you know, 00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:19.060 meaning and bureaucracy, Durkheim was just obsessed 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:20.860 with a different question. And it's a question 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:23.379 that feels incredibly relevant right now. Which 00:02:23.379 --> 00:02:25.780 is? What holds us all together? The glue of society. 00:02:26.020 --> 00:02:29.490 Exactly. The glue. Durkheim was writing at a 00:02:29.490 --> 00:02:32.030 time when the world was, I mean, it was tearing 00:02:32.030 --> 00:02:34.110 itself apart. Traditional religion was fading. 00:02:34.210 --> 00:02:36.870 Kings were being overthrown. The Industrial Revolution 00:02:36.870 --> 00:02:39.090 was upending every single community in Europe. 00:02:39.330 --> 00:02:42.770 He just wanted to know, in a modern world where 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:45.389 we don't all pray to the same god or answer to 00:02:45.389 --> 00:02:48.050 the same king, why doesn't society just dissolve 00:02:48.050 --> 00:02:51.150 into chaos? And the scary part is, sometimes 00:02:51.150 --> 00:02:53.270 it does. And we are going to get into that, too. 00:02:53.349 --> 00:02:54.789 We're going to talk about what happens when that 00:02:54.789 --> 00:02:58.400 glue fails, a concept he called anime. And then 00:02:58.400 --> 00:02:59.879 we're going to look at how he tried to prove 00:02:59.879 --> 00:03:02.900 all his theories by studying the most private, 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:06.120 most desperate act a person can commit. Suicide. 00:03:06.889 --> 00:03:10.009 It is a heavy topic for sure, but it's an essential 00:03:10.009 --> 00:03:12.650 one for understanding his work. We have a huge 00:03:12.650 --> 00:03:15.449 stack of sources today, biographical details 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:18.330 from his life in France, his really groundbreaking 00:03:18.330 --> 00:03:20.650 books like The Division of Labor and Society, 00:03:21.050 --> 00:03:23.550 Suicide, and The Elementary Forms of Religious 00:03:23.550 --> 00:03:25.789 Life. And a lot of modern scholars weighing in, 00:03:25.830 --> 00:03:27.909 too. Oh, yeah. Plus a lot of commentary from 00:03:27.909 --> 00:03:30.210 people who have spent decades just unpacking 00:03:30.210 --> 00:03:32.110 his work. So let's go. Let's travel back to the 00:03:32.110 --> 00:03:35.300 late 19th century. Who was this guy? I know he's 00:03:35.300 --> 00:03:38.180 French, but what's the origin story? Okay, so... 00:03:38.590 --> 00:03:41.530 Emile Durkheim was born in April of 1858 in a 00:03:41.530 --> 00:03:43.610 town called Epinal. It's in the Lorraine region 00:03:43.610 --> 00:03:46.030 of France. And to really get what drove him, 00:03:46.110 --> 00:03:48.169 you have to understand his family, his background. 00:03:48.389 --> 00:03:50.210 He wasn't just born into a religious family. 00:03:50.349 --> 00:03:52.789 He was, for all intents and purposes, born into 00:03:52.789 --> 00:03:55.509 a dynasty. A dynasty. Were they royalty? A religious 00:03:55.509 --> 00:03:58.349 dynasty. He was the descendant of a very, very 00:03:58.349 --> 00:04:01.530 long and unbroken line of rabbis. Oh, wow. Eight 00:04:01.530 --> 00:04:04.250 generations. His father was a rabbi. His grandfather 00:04:04.250 --> 00:04:06.389 was a rabbi. His great -grandfather. You get 00:04:06.389 --> 00:04:09.370 the picture. The expectation for Emil was crystal 00:04:09.370 --> 00:04:11.909 clear. He was going to be a rabbi. He was going 00:04:11.909 --> 00:04:14.389 to be a rabbi. He even started his education 00:04:14.389 --> 00:04:16.970 in a rabbinical school. That is a lot of pressure. 00:04:17.069 --> 00:04:18.930 I mean, talk about social facts just weighing 00:04:18.930 --> 00:04:21.129 on you from the moment you're born. Here's the 00:04:21.129 --> 00:04:23.110 family business that's been running for 200 years, 00:04:23.170 --> 00:04:25.470 son. Don't mess it up. It's the perfect example. 00:04:25.730 --> 00:04:27.949 But then at a pretty early age, he'd just be. 00:04:28.490 --> 00:04:30.949 He made a radical break. He switched schools. 00:04:31.230 --> 00:04:33.449 He decided he was going to lead a thoroughly 00:04:33.449 --> 00:04:36.199 secular life. He didn't just step away from the 00:04:36.199 --> 00:04:38.199 family business. He stepped away from that entire 00:04:38.199 --> 00:04:41.000 religious worldview. He wanted to understand 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:43.860 morality and society, but not through divine 00:04:43.860 --> 00:04:46.379 law. Through science. Through science. That's 00:04:46.379 --> 00:04:49.300 a huge move in the 1800s. Was his family okay 00:04:49.300 --> 00:04:51.319 with that? I'm picturing a very tough conversation 00:04:51.319 --> 00:04:54.160 at the dinner table. Dad, I'm not going to be 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:56.360 a rabbi. I'm going to be a sociologist, which 00:04:56.360 --> 00:04:58.160 wasn't even a thing. Well, what's interesting 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:00.040 is the sources suggest he didn't actually cut 00:05:00.040 --> 00:05:02.639 ties. He stayed close to his family and to the 00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:05.699 broader Jewish community. A lot of his key collaborators 00:05:05.699 --> 00:05:08.379 later on were Jewish, including his nephew Marcel 00:05:08.379 --> 00:05:11.420 Mauss, who became a really famous anthropologist 00:05:11.420 --> 00:05:13.689 himself. Okay, so it was an intellectual break, 00:05:13.769 --> 00:05:15.930 not a personal one. Exactly. Intellectually, 00:05:15.990 --> 00:05:18.089 he was on a totally different path. And he was 00:05:18.089 --> 00:05:21.790 a brilliant student. He gets into the Ecole Normale 00:05:21.790 --> 00:05:24.350 Supérieure, the ENS. And that's like the French 00:05:24.350 --> 00:05:27.170 equivalent of, what, Harvard or Oxford? I'd say 00:05:27.170 --> 00:05:29.449 it's even more exclusive. It was the intellectual 00:05:29.449 --> 00:05:31.850 pressure cooker of the entire French Republic. 00:05:32.250 --> 00:05:35.990 And the class he entered in 1879, it's legendary 00:05:35.990 --> 00:05:38.420 now. Who was in it? Well, his classmates included 00:05:38.420 --> 00:05:40.759 people like Jean Jaurès, who went on to become 00:05:40.759 --> 00:05:43.199 this massive figure in French socialism, and 00:05:43.199 --> 00:05:45.899 Henri Bergson, the hugely famous philosopher. 00:05:46.379 --> 00:05:48.319 So he's in this room with all these geniuses. 00:05:48.319 --> 00:05:51.680 He's rejected the family path. What does he actually 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:55.319 want to do? He wants to study society. Scientifically. 00:05:55.319 --> 00:05:57.500 But there was a really big problem. There's no 00:05:57.500 --> 00:05:59.319 department for that. The French academic system 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:01.699 at the time didn't have a sociology department. 00:06:01.899 --> 00:06:03.699 It just didn't exist. You had philosophy, you 00:06:03.699 --> 00:06:06.660 had history, literature. And Durkheim, he found 00:06:06.660 --> 00:06:09.680 those humanistic studies, frankly, a little uninteresting. 00:06:09.740 --> 00:06:12.459 He wanted to apply the scientific method observation, 00:06:12.800 --> 00:06:17.339 data, rigorous analysis to ethics and human behavior. 00:06:17.579 --> 00:06:19.819 So he didn't just choose a field to go into. 00:06:19.959 --> 00:06:21.579 He had to basically build the whole building 00:06:21.579 --> 00:06:23.800 he wanted to work in. That's a perfect way to 00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:26.860 put it. Some scholars talk about Durkheim's imperialism 00:06:26.860 --> 00:06:30.439 of sociology. He's aggressive. He wanted to carve 00:06:30.439 --> 00:06:33.500 out a very specific territory for this new science. 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:36.339 And he did it. He eventually set up the first 00:06:36.339 --> 00:06:38.600 European Department of Sociology at the University 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:42.120 of Bordeaux in 1895. And he wrote a kind of instruction 00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:45.120 manual for it. He did. He wrote a manifesto to 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:48.259 lay out the rules, titled, fittingly, The Rules 00:06:48.259 --> 00:06:50.699 of Sociological Method. Okay, and this is where 00:06:50.699 --> 00:06:52.600 we get to that key concept you mentioned at the 00:06:52.600 --> 00:06:54.899 top, social facts. Because if you're going to 00:06:54.899 --> 00:06:56.639 make something a science, you need something 00:06:56.639 --> 00:06:59.639 to study. Right. Biologists have cells. Physicists 00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:02.389 have atoms. What does a sociologist have? They 00:07:02.389 --> 00:07:04.310 have social facts. And Durkheim's definition 00:07:04.310 --> 00:07:07.769 was very precise. A social fact is a way of acting, 00:07:07.990 --> 00:07:11.470 thinking, or feeling that is, one, external to 00:07:11.470 --> 00:07:13.410 the individual. Okay, outside of me. And two, 00:07:13.670 --> 00:07:16.589 endowed with the power of coercion. External 00:07:16.589 --> 00:07:19.250 and coercive. Okay, let's unpack that. External 00:07:19.250 --> 00:07:21.629 means it's not just a feeling I have in my own 00:07:21.629 --> 00:07:24.529 head. Correct. Durkheim insisted, and this was 00:07:24.529 --> 00:07:26.810 a big deal, that we have to treat social facts 00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:30.879 as things. Things. Like, a table or a chair is 00:07:30.879 --> 00:07:33.439 a thing. How can a social norm be a thing? That 00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:35.560 seems like a stretch. I know, it sounds weird. 00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:38.740 But he made a distinction between material social 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:41.899 facts and immaterial ones. The material ones 00:07:41.899 --> 00:07:44.569 are easy to get. Laws written down in a book, 00:07:44.629 --> 00:07:47.149 the architecture of a city, the way a courtroom 00:07:47.149 --> 00:07:49.430 is laid out. You can see them, you can touch 00:07:49.430 --> 00:07:51.529 them. Okay, that makes sense. But the immaterial 00:07:51.529 --> 00:07:54.230 facts are the tricky ones. Things like morality 00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:57.069 or a sense of national pride or what he called 00:07:57.069 --> 00:08:00.149 the collective consciousness. So how can a feeling 00:08:00.149 --> 00:08:02.470 be a thing? Give me a concrete example. Okay, 00:08:02.470 --> 00:08:05.470 the classic word he uses is a flag. Let's think 00:08:05.470 --> 00:08:07.850 about a flag. Physically, what is it? A piece 00:08:07.850 --> 00:08:11.180 of cloth with some dye on it. On a stick. Exactly. 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:13.360 A material object. You can go to a craft store 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:15.180 and buy the components for, I don't know, a few 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:18.160 bucks. But that object is ingrained with this 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:20.899 immense immaterial meaning, right? Yeah, of course. 00:08:20.980 --> 00:08:23.899 It commands respect. If you see your country's 00:08:23.899 --> 00:08:26.300 flag, you might feel a surge of pride. If you 00:08:26.300 --> 00:08:28.220 see someone setting it on fire, you probably 00:08:28.220 --> 00:08:31.600 feel a surge of anger. In the military, you are 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:34.039 required to salute it. The physical flag is a 00:08:34.039 --> 00:08:37.059 thing. But the social fact is the power that 00:08:37.059 --> 00:08:39.139 it holds over your behavior and your feelings. 00:08:39.399 --> 00:08:41.659 And if I decide, hey, you know what? I don't 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:44.320 care about this piece of clock. I use it to wipe 00:08:44.320 --> 00:08:47.220 down my car. And you run right into the coercive 00:08:47.220 --> 00:08:49.740 part of the definition. You will feel the pushback. 00:08:49.779 --> 00:08:52.000 People will yell at you. You might get ostracized 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.059 from your community. In some countries, you could 00:08:54.059 --> 00:08:56.120 actually be arrested. You didn't invent the rule 00:08:56.120 --> 00:08:58.639 that flags are sacred. It existed long before 00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:00.919 you were born. That's the external part. And 00:09:00.919 --> 00:09:03.500 if you violate that rule, you get punished. That's 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:06.220 the coercive part. For Durkheim, that is the 00:09:06.220 --> 00:09:09.320 proof that it's a real objective thing. That 00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:11.279 actually makes perfect sense. It's like... You 00:09:11.279 --> 00:09:13.340 don't realize gravity is there until you try 00:09:13.340 --> 00:09:15.679 to jump off a roof. You don't realize a social 00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:18.240 fact is there until you try to break a social 00:09:18.240 --> 00:09:21.490 rule. That is the perfect analogy. And for Durkheim, 00:09:21.649 --> 00:09:24.389 this was the key. This was what would make sociology 00:09:24.389 --> 00:09:27.649 a real science. If these facts are real and observable, 00:09:27.730 --> 00:09:29.649 then we can study them, we can measure their 00:09:29.649 --> 00:09:31.610 effects, and maybe we can even figure out the 00:09:31.610 --> 00:09:33.690 laws that govern them, just like in physics or 00:09:33.690 --> 00:09:36.210 biology. So he's got his new science, he's got 00:09:36.210 --> 00:09:39.029 his object of study, now he needs to use it to 00:09:39.029 --> 00:09:41.190 answer his big question, the one we started with, 00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:44.220 the glue. What holds us together? And that takes 00:09:44.220 --> 00:09:47.779 us directly to his doctoral dissertation, a huge 00:09:47.779 --> 00:09:49.860 book called The Division of Labor and Society, 00:09:50.159 --> 00:09:53.259 which he published in 1893. He was looking at 00:09:53.259 --> 00:09:55.759 this massive shift that was happening all over 00:09:55.759 --> 00:09:58.460 Europe. People were leaving small rural villages 00:09:58.460 --> 00:10:01.620 and flooding into huge anonymous industrial cities. 00:10:01.799 --> 00:10:03.600 Right. The shift from a world where everyone 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:05.679 knows your name to a world where you're just 00:10:05.679 --> 00:10:08.299 another face in the crowd. And Durkheim's argument 00:10:08.299 --> 00:10:10.100 was that this wasn't just a change of scenery. 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:12.720 It was a fundamental change in the very nature 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:16.240 of. social solidarity. He identified two basic 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:18.759 types of this glue. He called them mechanical 00:10:18.759 --> 00:10:21.980 and organic solidarity. Mechanical and organic. 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:24.500 Let's start with the old way first. Mechanical. 00:10:24.580 --> 00:10:27.080 So think of a small traditional village a few 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:30.259 hundred years ago. Durkheim calls this solidarity 00:10:30.259 --> 00:10:33.519 mechanical because it works like a simple machine. 00:10:33.929 --> 00:10:37.070 It's based entirely on similarity. Everyone is 00:10:37.070 --> 00:10:39.470 basically a cog and all the hogs look the same 00:10:39.470 --> 00:10:42.190 and do the same thing. You all probably work 00:10:42.190 --> 00:10:44.710 in agriculture. You all share the exact same 00:10:44.710 --> 00:10:47.090 religious beliefs, the same moral code. You raise 00:10:47.090 --> 00:10:49.730 your kids the same way. So the glue holding us 00:10:49.730 --> 00:10:51.929 together is the fact that we're all basically 00:10:51.929 --> 00:10:55.269 the same person. Our experiences are almost identical. 00:10:56.139 --> 00:10:58.720 Essentially, yes. In these kinds of societies, 00:10:58.940 --> 00:11:00.620 what he called the collective consciousness, 00:11:01.080 --> 00:11:04.059 which is just the sum total of beliefs and sentiments 00:11:04.059 --> 00:11:07.039 common to the group, is incredibly strong. It's 00:11:07.039 --> 00:11:09.399 intense. It covers almost every aspect of life. 00:11:09.460 --> 00:11:11.759 There's very, very little room for individuality. 00:11:11.860 --> 00:11:13.659 And what happens if you break a rule in a society 00:11:13.659 --> 00:11:16.240 like that? Well, the law is overwhelmingly punitive. 00:11:16.700 --> 00:11:19.220 because everyone shares this powerful moral code 00:11:19.220 --> 00:11:21.980 an offense against one person or against one 00:11:21.980 --> 00:11:24.519 rule is seen as an attack on the entire community 00:11:24.519 --> 00:11:27.600 the collective feels violated so the punishment 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.659 is usually public it's harsh and its main goal 00:11:30.659 --> 00:11:33.980 is to satisfy that collective anger think of 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:36.480 a public hanging Or putting someone in the stocks 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:38.419 in the town square. It's all about repressing 00:11:38.419 --> 00:11:40.600 the deviant to reassure the group that the moral 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:42.919 order is still intact. Okay, so that's the village. 00:11:43.240 --> 00:11:45.379 Mechanical solidarity. But then we all move to 00:11:45.379 --> 00:11:47.360 the city, the factories open up, we get all these 00:11:47.360 --> 00:11:49.720 specialized jobs. This is where organic solidarity 00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:52.740 comes in. Yes. And here Durkheim switches his 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:54.860 analogy. He starts using a biological analogy. 00:11:55.820 --> 00:11:58.379 Think of a complex living body, like a human 00:11:58.379 --> 00:12:00.870 being. Your heart does a very different job from 00:12:00.870 --> 00:12:02.870 your lungs. Your liver does something totally 00:12:02.870 --> 00:12:04.750 different from your brain. They are not similar 00:12:04.750 --> 00:12:07.129 at all. No, definitely not. I do not want my 00:12:07.129 --> 00:12:08.769 lungs trying to pump my blood. That would be 00:12:08.769 --> 00:12:13.129 a mess. It would be a total disaster. But they 00:12:13.129 --> 00:12:15.990 are desperately fundamentally dependent on each 00:12:15.990 --> 00:12:18.309 other. The heart cannot function without the 00:12:18.309 --> 00:12:20.570 oxygen from the lungs. The lungs are useless 00:12:20.570 --> 00:12:22.529 without the blood being pumped by the heart. 00:12:23.049 --> 00:12:25.529 Okay, I see where he's going. Durkheim argued 00:12:25.529 --> 00:12:28.529 that modern, complex society is held together 00:12:28.529 --> 00:12:31.190 by this very principle, difference and interdependence. 00:12:31.370 --> 00:12:33.590 I'm a podcaster, you're a sociologist, someone 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:35.490 else is a doctor, someone else is a plumber. 00:12:35.649 --> 00:12:37.970 We don't really know how to do each other's jobs, 00:12:38.090 --> 00:12:40.850 so we need each other to survive. So the glue 00:12:40.850 --> 00:12:44.460 shifts. It's not we're all the same. It becomes 00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:46.500 I literally cannot get through the week without 00:12:46.500 --> 00:12:48.740 you. My car breaks. I need a mechanic. I get 00:12:48.740 --> 00:12:51.500 sick. I need a doctor. Exactly. The division 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:53.679 of labor, the specialization of all these different 00:12:53.679 --> 00:12:57.159 roles is what creates this new powerful type 00:12:57.159 --> 00:13:00.159 of solidarity. And he said it's caused by what 00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:02.820 he called dynamic density. Dynamic density. It's 00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:04.960 just a fancy term for more people leading to 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:06.620 more interactions, which leads to more competition. 00:13:07.580 --> 00:13:09.480 In order to survive in that more competitive 00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:11.480 environment, we have to specialize. We have to 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:14.460 find our niche. And how does the law change in 00:13:14.460 --> 00:13:16.620 this kind of society? We're not doing as many 00:13:16.620 --> 00:13:19.740 public hangings in modern cities. The law becomes 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:22.799 primarily restitutive. Meaning? Its goal is to 00:13:22.799 --> 00:13:24.879 restore order, to put things back the way they 00:13:24.879 --> 00:13:28.200 were. If you crash your car into mine, we don't 00:13:28.200 --> 00:13:30.059 gather the whole neighborhood to publicly shame 00:13:30.059 --> 00:13:32.460 you. The court just says you have to pay to fix 00:13:32.460 --> 00:13:36.039 my car. We try to repair the damage so that the 00:13:36.039 --> 00:13:38.580 complex social machine can keep running smoothly. 00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:42.659 The focus shifts from punishing a sin to fixing 00:13:42.659 --> 00:13:45.159 a problem. But wait a minute. If we're all becoming 00:13:45.159 --> 00:13:48.830 so specialized, so different. Doesn't that make 00:13:48.830 --> 00:13:51.669 us more isolated? More individualistic? We talk 00:13:51.669 --> 00:13:53.730 about the problem of individualism all the time 00:13:53.730 --> 00:13:56.529 today. And that is the amazing paradox that Durkheim 00:13:56.529 --> 00:13:58.889 identified. He saw that as society becomes more 00:13:58.889 --> 00:14:01.289 complex and organic, the individual actually 00:14:01.289 --> 00:14:04.110 becomes sacred. But, and this is the classic 00:14:04.110 --> 00:14:06.909 Durkheim twist, he didn't see individualism as 00:14:06.909 --> 00:14:09.690 the enemy of society. He didn't? No. He believed 00:14:09.690 --> 00:14:12.429 that modern individualism is a product of modern 00:14:12.429 --> 00:14:14.889 society. Wait. Society created the individual. 00:14:15.169 --> 00:14:17.820 That seems backwards. It does, but think about 00:14:17.820 --> 00:14:20.000 it. He has this amazing quote where he says, 00:14:20.139 --> 00:14:23.059 society instituted it and made of man the god 00:14:23.059 --> 00:14:25.940 whose servant it is. We have a cult of the individual. 00:14:26.220 --> 00:14:29.220 We worship individual rights, individual expression, 00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:32.759 individual achievement. But why? Because modern 00:14:32.759 --> 00:14:36.279 organic society requires us to be distinct individuals 00:14:36.279 --> 00:14:39.259 in order to function. The cult of the individual 00:14:39.259 --> 00:14:42.529 is itself a social fact. That is a head -scratcher. 00:14:42.850 --> 00:14:45.049 We are individualistic because the collective 00:14:45.049 --> 00:14:47.570 forces us to be. It connects right back to that 00:14:47.570 --> 00:14:49.850 external coercive pressure. You feel pressure 00:14:49.850 --> 00:14:52.970 from society to be yourself, to find your unique 00:14:52.970 --> 00:14:55.549 passion, to stand out from the crowd. That pressure 00:14:55.549 --> 00:14:57.629 doesn't come from inside you. It comes from the 00:14:57.629 --> 00:15:01.409 collective. Wow. Okay. So we have this organic 00:15:01.409 --> 00:15:03.830 society, this body with all its different organs 00:15:03.830 --> 00:15:06.639 working together, but bodies get sick. organisms 00:15:06.639 --> 00:15:09.000 get diseases. They absolutely do. And Durkheim 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.240 was very much thinking like a doctor for society. 00:15:11.460 --> 00:15:13.279 He was what we call a functionalist. He believed 00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:15.419 every part of society, every institution serves 00:15:15.419 --> 00:15:17.379 a function to keep the whole organism healthy. 00:15:17.720 --> 00:15:20.820 But sometimes it develops pathologies. It gets 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:22.879 sick. And the number one diagnosis he came up 00:15:22.879 --> 00:15:25.320 with is a word that I think is so incredibly 00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:28.789 useful for understanding the world today. That 00:15:28.789 --> 00:15:32.570 word is enemy. Enemy. Yes. It's often translated 00:15:32.570 --> 00:15:35.169 from the French as normlessness. Normlessness. 00:15:35.289 --> 00:15:40.190 So like no rules. The purge. Total chaos. Not 00:15:40.190 --> 00:15:42.289 necessarily no rules at all. It's more like a 00:15:42.289 --> 00:15:44.370 breakdown of the norms that give us guidance 00:15:44.370 --> 00:15:47.110 and meaning. Durkheim argued that NME happens 00:15:47.110 --> 00:15:49.649 when social change occurs too quickly. Think 00:15:49.649 --> 00:15:52.830 of a sudden chaotic economic boom or a devastating 00:15:52.830 --> 00:15:56.090 depression or a massive wave of migration. So 00:15:56.090 --> 00:15:58.210 the connections between people, the shared understanding 00:15:58.210 --> 00:16:00.250 of the world, it all just kind of breaks? Yes. 00:16:00.330 --> 00:16:02.710 The old rules don't apply anymore, but new ones 00:16:02.710 --> 00:16:05.610 haven't formed yet. Groups lose contact, the 00:16:05.610 --> 00:16:07.870 shared understanding of what is expected of me 00:16:07.870 --> 00:16:11.029 or what can I reasonably hope to achieve. It 00:16:11.029 --> 00:16:13.610 all dissolves. He has this really haunting quote. 00:16:13.710 --> 00:16:15.309 He says that without regulated relationships 00:16:15.309 --> 00:16:17.750 and common objectives, society is nothing more 00:16:17.750 --> 00:16:19.889 than a pile of sand waiting to be scattered by 00:16:19.889 --> 00:16:22.210 the wind. A pile of sand. That's such a lonely, 00:16:22.309 --> 00:16:25.389 bleak image. Billions of individual grains just 00:16:25.389 --> 00:16:27.669 touching each other, but with no real connection. 00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:30.610 That is the feeling of anime. It's the feeling 00:16:30.610 --> 00:16:33.570 of being morally adrift. You don't know your 00:16:33.570 --> 00:16:35.409 place in the world. You don't know what's enough. 00:16:35.809 --> 00:16:38.269 Durkheim believed that human desires are naturally 00:16:38.269 --> 00:16:41.179 infinite. It's society's job to regulate them, 00:16:41.220 --> 00:16:43.659 to give us a sense of limits. When those regulations 00:16:43.659 --> 00:16:46.820 disappear, our desires become a source of torment 00:16:46.820 --> 00:16:49.320 because they can never be satisfied. He also 00:16:49.320 --> 00:16:51.639 mentioned another pathology, right? The forced 00:16:51.639 --> 00:16:53.840 division of labor. What did he mean by that? 00:16:54.250 --> 00:16:57.129 That's his term for when the system of specialization 00:16:57.129 --> 00:17:00.210 goes wrong. It's when an unfair system based 00:17:00.210 --> 00:17:03.350 on power or inherited wealth forces people into 00:17:03.350 --> 00:17:05.789 jobs and roles that they aren't naturally suited 00:17:05.789 --> 00:17:08.470 for. If you have a society where your future 00:17:08.470 --> 00:17:10.589 is determined by the class you were born into 00:17:10.589 --> 00:17:12.529 rather than your actual talents and abilities, 00:17:12.829 --> 00:17:16.150 that creates deep -seated tension and unhappiness. 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:19.029 It's like forcing a heart cell to try and function 00:17:19.029 --> 00:17:21.529 like a kidney cell. It just makes the whole organism 00:17:21.529 --> 00:17:24.319 sick and unstable. Here's something in the notes 00:17:24.319 --> 00:17:26.859 that really made me do a double take. We're talking 00:17:26.859 --> 00:17:29.319 about the sicknesses of society. But Durkheim 00:17:29.319 --> 00:17:31.660 actually argued that crime is not a sickness. 00:17:32.299 --> 00:17:35.740 He said crime is normal, functional even. That 00:17:35.740 --> 00:17:39.539 just sounds wrong. I mean, how can murder or 00:17:39.539 --> 00:17:42.700 theft possibly be good for society? It's one 00:17:42.700 --> 00:17:44.640 of his most provocative arguments, isn't it? 00:17:44.980 --> 00:17:47.380 But if you follow his logic, it starts to make 00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:50.130 a strange kind of sense. He argued that crime 00:17:50.130 --> 00:17:53.049 is, and this is a quote, bound up with the fundamental 00:17:53.049 --> 00:17:55.450 conditions of all social life. In other words, 00:17:55.490 --> 00:17:58.390 you simply cannot have a society without deviance. 00:17:58.490 --> 00:18:02.150 It's impossible. But why? What possible good 00:18:02.150 --> 00:18:04.170 does a criminal do for the rest of us? He says 00:18:04.170 --> 00:18:06.309 crime serves at least three crucial functions. 00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:09.490 First, deviance challenges the status quo and, 00:18:09.609 --> 00:18:12.009 in doing so, opens the door for social change. 00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:14.910 He uses the example of Socrates. Socrates, the 00:18:14.910 --> 00:18:17.140 great philosopher. To the authorities in ancient 00:18:17.140 --> 00:18:20.619 Athens, Socrates was a criminal. He was officially 00:18:20.619 --> 00:18:22.980 charged with corrupting the youth and not respecting 00:18:22.980 --> 00:18:25.579 the city's gods, and they executed him for it. 00:18:25.799 --> 00:18:29.059 But his crime, his radical independence of thought, 00:18:29.240 --> 00:18:31.519 was what paved the way for a whole new morality, 00:18:31.740 --> 00:18:34.420 a new philosophy. Without the criminal, who dares 00:18:34.420 --> 00:18:37.099 to be different, society stagnates and dies. 00:18:37.339 --> 00:18:39.240 Okay, I can see that. It's the troublemaker, 00:18:39.279 --> 00:18:41.500 the heretic, who ends up inventing the future. 00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:44.930 What's the second function? Crime reaffirms our 00:18:44.930 --> 00:18:47.730 collective norms and values. This goes back to 00:18:47.730 --> 00:18:50.349 that idea of punitive justice. When a crime is 00:18:50.349 --> 00:18:52.309 committed and the community comes together to 00:18:52.309 --> 00:18:55.109 punish the criminal, it draws a bright, clear 00:18:55.109 --> 00:18:57.869 line in the sand. It brings all the law -abiding 00:18:57.869 --> 00:18:59.750 people closer together and reminds everyone, 00:18:59.890 --> 00:19:02.869 this is the boundary. We are the people who stay 00:19:02.869 --> 00:19:04.750 on the side of it. It's like when everyone in 00:19:04.750 --> 00:19:06.750 an office bonds because they're all complaining 00:19:06.750 --> 00:19:08.549 about the one guy who keeps stealing lunches 00:19:08.549 --> 00:19:11.289 from the fridge. That is a perfect modern example. 00:19:11.509 --> 00:19:14.000 It creates camaraderie. And that's really the 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:17.240 third function. The collective reaction to deviance 00:19:17.240 --> 00:19:20.000 increases social cohesion among the so -called 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:23.539 good people. It reinforces our sense of being 00:19:23.539 --> 00:19:27.160 a we because we are united against them, the 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:29.859 rule breakers. He had this amazing thought experiment 00:19:29.859 --> 00:19:33.759 to prove this point. The Society of Saints. Can 00:19:33.759 --> 00:19:35.220 you walk us through that? Because I just love 00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:38.019 this image. It's brilliant. So he says, imagine 00:19:38.019 --> 00:19:41.039 a monastery. a cloister populated by perfect 00:19:41.039 --> 00:19:44.599 morally exemplary individuals saints in this 00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:47.140 community there's no murder no theft no violence 00:19:47.140 --> 00:19:49.220 you would think okay in this society there is 00:19:49.220 --> 00:19:51.920 no crime right Yeah, that would be the definition 00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:54.720 of a society of saints. Durkheim says no. He 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:57.259 says that in that society, faults that seem completely 00:19:57.259 --> 00:19:59.480 trivial to us, like, say, being a little too 00:19:59.480 --> 00:20:01.599 sharp in conversation or showing up five seconds 00:20:01.599 --> 00:20:03.799 late to prayer or maybe letting out an inappropriate 00:20:03.799 --> 00:20:06.359 chuckle, those tiny faults would create the exact 00:20:06.359 --> 00:20:09.400 same scandal and outrage that a serious felony 00:20:09.400 --> 00:20:11.519 creates in our society. So they would just lower 00:20:11.519 --> 00:20:13.099 the bar for what they consider to be a crime. 00:20:13.630 --> 00:20:16.970 Precisely. They would magnify those tiny imperfections 00:20:16.970 --> 00:20:19.589 to the level of major crimes because society 00:20:19.589 --> 00:20:22.369 needs that process of judgment and boundary setting 00:20:22.369 --> 00:20:25.369 to exist. Society needs to define something, 00:20:25.569 --> 00:20:28.549 anything, as bad so that it can collectively 00:20:28.549 --> 00:20:31.269 define itself as good. That's kind of a dark 00:20:31.269 --> 00:20:33.450 thought. We will always find a witch to hunt 00:20:33.450 --> 00:20:35.589 because we need the hunt itself to feel like 00:20:35.589 --> 00:20:38.190 a community. That is the dark implication, yes. 00:20:38.390 --> 00:20:40.450 Okay, so we've looked at the big picture of society. 00:20:40.690 --> 00:20:43.650 Now we are going to zoom in. Way, way in. We're 00:20:43.650 --> 00:20:45.430 going to talk about Durkheim's most famous, most 00:20:45.430 --> 00:20:47.589 controversial, and probably his most intense 00:20:47.589 --> 00:20:51.410 work. The book is simply titled Suicide. And 00:20:51.410 --> 00:20:54.650 this book, which came out in 1897, was a methodological 00:20:54.650 --> 00:20:57.049 masterpiece. You have to remember, at the time, 00:20:57.089 --> 00:20:59.509 suicide was seen as either a purely personal 00:20:59.509 --> 00:21:02.420 tragedy. a result of individual psychology or 00:21:02.420 --> 00:21:04.720 mental illness. Or sometimes people blame things 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:07.180 like the weather. Yeah, there were theories that 00:21:07.180 --> 00:21:09.339 rainy climates caused higher suicide rates. It 00:21:09.339 --> 00:21:12.380 was seen as an individual or natural act. And 00:21:12.380 --> 00:21:15.099 Durkheim's goal was to prove that even this. 00:21:15.500 --> 00:21:18.180 This most lonely, private, individual decision 00:21:18.180 --> 00:21:21.380 a person can make is actually determined by social 00:21:21.380 --> 00:21:24.700 facts. Yes, this was his ultimate test case. 00:21:24.940 --> 00:21:27.579 If he could show that suicide rates were governed 00:21:27.579 --> 00:21:30.420 by social forces, he would prove the power of 00:21:30.420 --> 00:21:33.000 his new science of sociology once and for all. 00:21:33.180 --> 00:21:36.279 And his method was to use quantitative data statistics. 00:21:36.619 --> 00:21:39.339 He compared official suicide rates across different 00:21:39.339 --> 00:21:41.140 countries, different religions, different social 00:21:41.140 --> 00:21:43.339 groups. He was doing data science before it was 00:21:43.339 --> 00:21:45.490 cool. And what did the data start to show him? 00:21:45.650 --> 00:21:48.970 He found these incredibly clear, persistent patterns. 00:21:49.190 --> 00:21:51.789 For instance, across Europe, Protestants consistently 00:21:51.789 --> 00:21:54.250 had significantly higher suicide rates than Catholics. 00:21:54.470 --> 00:21:56.690 Okay, why? Was there something about the theology, 00:21:56.950 --> 00:21:59.210 like the view on salvation? He argued it wasn't 00:21:59.210 --> 00:22:01.369 about the specific beliefs so much as the social 00:22:01.369 --> 00:22:03.829 structure of the community. He created this brilliant 00:22:03.829 --> 00:22:06.809 model. He plotted suicide rates along two key 00:22:06.809 --> 00:22:10.150 social axes, integration and regulation. Integration 00:22:10.150 --> 00:22:12.930 and regulation. Integration is about how attached 00:22:12.930 --> 00:22:15.349 you feel to a group. the strength of your social 00:22:15.349 --> 00:22:18.430 bonds regulation is about the extent to which 00:22:18.430 --> 00:22:21.009 your life is controlled by norms and rules and 00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:24.309 based on these two axes he identified four distinct 00:22:24.309 --> 00:22:27.230 types of suicide let's go through them because 00:22:27.230 --> 00:22:30.289 this framework it just explains so much about 00:22:30.289 --> 00:22:32.150 the human condition let's start with type one 00:22:32.740 --> 00:22:36.200 egoistic suicide. Okay. So egoistic suicide happens 00:22:36.200 --> 00:22:39.160 when integration is too low. Too few social bonds. 00:22:39.339 --> 00:22:42.680 Exactly. The individual feels detached from society. 00:22:42.980 --> 00:22:44.660 They feel like they don't matter to the group 00:22:44.660 --> 00:22:46.539 and the group doesn't matter to them. This is 00:22:46.539 --> 00:22:48.019 what he believed was happening in the Protestant 00:22:48.019 --> 00:22:50.339 communities. Because Protestantism, with its 00:22:50.339 --> 00:22:52.720 focus on free inquiry, is more individualistic. 00:22:52.940 --> 00:22:55.880 Yes. The whole idea is it's just you and the 00:22:55.880 --> 00:22:58.039 Bible. You interpret the sacred text for yourself. 00:22:58.870 --> 00:23:01.009 Catholicism by contract is much more communal. 00:23:01.230 --> 00:23:04.609 You have rituals, confession, a priest, a rigid 00:23:04.609 --> 00:23:07.509 hierarchy. All of these things bind you more 00:23:07.509 --> 00:23:10.650 tightly into the group. For Durkheim, that lower 00:23:10.650 --> 00:23:13.390 level of integration among Protestants left individuals 00:23:13.390 --> 00:23:15.529 more vulnerable when they face personal hardship. 00:23:15.890 --> 00:23:18.549 It's the suicide of excessive individualism. 00:23:18.710 --> 00:23:21.440 The thought process is something like I am alone 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:23.759 and my life makes no difference to anyone. Okay, 00:23:23.799 --> 00:23:25.980 so that's too little integration. What's on the 00:23:25.980 --> 00:23:27.460 other end of the spectrum? What happens when 00:23:27.460 --> 00:23:29.319 there's too much integration? That leads to the 00:23:29.319 --> 00:23:32.740 second type, altruistic suicide. This is where 00:23:32.740 --> 00:23:35.000 the group completely dominates the individual. 00:23:35.500 --> 00:23:37.900 The person's own life is seen as meaningless 00:23:37.900 --> 00:23:40.099 compared to the needs of the whole. Like a soldier 00:23:40.099 --> 00:23:42.440 jumping on a grenade to save his platoon. That's 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:45.410 the classic example. or suicide bombers, or members 00:23:45.410 --> 00:23:48.670 of a doomsday cult who commit mass suicide. They 00:23:48.670 --> 00:23:51.009 don't do it out of sadness or loneliness. They 00:23:51.009 --> 00:23:53.109 do it because they believe it is their sacred 00:23:53.109 --> 00:23:56.109 duty to the group. The I has been completely 00:23:56.109 --> 00:23:59.269 erased by the we. They are so integrated that 00:23:59.269 --> 00:24:00.910 they cease to exist as separate individuals. 00:24:01.269 --> 00:24:03.009 Got it. Okay, so that's the integration axis 00:24:03.009 --> 00:24:05.990 from egoistic to altruistic. Now let's look at 00:24:05.990 --> 00:24:09.450 the regulation axis, the rules. What happens 00:24:09.450 --> 00:24:12.250 when regulation is too low? This is anomic suicide, 00:24:12.589 --> 00:24:14.470 and this is the one that really surprises people. 00:24:14.769 --> 00:24:17.829 This type of suicide occurs during times of massive 00:24:17.829 --> 00:24:21.089 social and economic disruption. Now, we'd expect 00:24:21.089 --> 00:24:22.730 it to happen during a depression, right? People 00:24:22.730 --> 00:24:24.650 lose their jobs, their homes, they fall into 00:24:24.650 --> 00:24:26.670 despair. Sure, that makes intuitive sense. But 00:24:26.670 --> 00:24:28.769 Durkheim's data showed that suicide rates also 00:24:28.769 --> 00:24:31.109 spiked during periods of sudden economic booms. 00:24:31.230 --> 00:24:33.970 Wait, when people are getting rich, getting everything 00:24:33.970 --> 00:24:36.289 they ever wanted, why would that lead to suicide? 00:24:36.569 --> 00:24:38.799 Because the regulations have disappeared. The 00:24:38.799 --> 00:24:41.119 old rules have changed. In a stable society, 00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:43.000 you have a pretty good sense of what you can 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:45.819 reasonably hope for. I'm a baker, so I can hope 00:24:45.819 --> 00:24:48.420 to one day own a slightly bigger shop. But if 00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:50.420 the economy goes crazy and suddenly anything 00:24:50.420 --> 00:24:53.279 seems possible, your desires become limitless. 00:24:53.460 --> 00:24:56.019 You no longer know what is enough. You achieve 00:24:56.019 --> 00:24:58.559 one goal and immediately a hundred new ones appear. 00:24:58.839 --> 00:25:02.660 That normlessness, that enemy, leads to a very 00:25:02.660 --> 00:25:05.619 specific kind of despair. The despair that comes 00:25:05.619 --> 00:25:08.829 from infinite... unsatisfiable ambition. That 00:25:08.829 --> 00:25:11.130 is profound. It's like the lottery winner's curse. 00:25:11.390 --> 00:25:14.150 When anything is possible, nothing is ever satisfying. 00:25:14.349 --> 00:25:16.549 Precisely. You're constantly chasing a horizon 00:25:16.549 --> 00:25:18.490 that keeps moving away from you. And the final 00:25:18.490 --> 00:25:20.930 type. The other end of the spectrum. Too much 00:25:20.930 --> 00:25:23.309 regulation. That he called fatalistic suicide. 00:25:23.589 --> 00:25:25.650 This is the suicide of the person whose future 00:25:25.650 --> 00:25:27.670 is pitilessly blocked, whose passions are violently 00:25:27.670 --> 00:25:30.089 choked by oppressive discipline. There is no 00:25:30.089 --> 00:25:32.690 hope of ever changing your situation. The examples 00:25:32.690 --> 00:25:34.829 he gives are people who are enslaved or prisoners 00:25:34.829 --> 00:25:38.049 serving a life sentence. Their lives are so overregulated 00:25:38.049 --> 00:25:41.329 that they see no way out but death. So egoistic, 00:25:41.509 --> 00:25:45.579 altruistic. Anomic and fatalistic. It's like 00:25:45.579 --> 00:25:48.019 a map of all the ways society can crush us, either 00:25:48.019 --> 00:25:50.720 by holding on too tight or by letting go completely. 00:25:50.980 --> 00:25:53.059 It really is. Now, it's important to mention 00:25:53.059 --> 00:25:56.180 that modern scholars have some very valid critiques 00:25:56.180 --> 00:25:58.299 of this particular study. I was going to ask, 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:00.980 has this held up? Well, there's a big methodological 00:26:00.980 --> 00:26:03.720 issue called the ecological fallacy. It's the 00:26:03.720 --> 00:26:08.160 mistake of using data from a large group to draw 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:10.279 conclusions about individuals within that group. 00:26:10.539 --> 00:26:13.420 So just because Protestant regions had higher 00:26:13.420 --> 00:26:16.200 suicide rates doesn't definitively prove that 00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:18.180 it was the individual Protestants who were committing 00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:20.880 suicide. It could have been, say, Catholics living 00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:23.259 as a small minority in a Protestant area who 00:26:23.259 --> 00:26:26.559 felt isolated and alone. Ah, I see that. And 00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:28.480 I also read somewhere that the data itself might 00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:30.500 have been been unreliable because Catholic communities 00:26:30.500 --> 00:26:33.640 where suicide was seen as a mortal sin might 00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:35.460 have been more likely to cover it up, to list 00:26:35.460 --> 00:26:37.339 the cause of death as something else. That's 00:26:37.339 --> 00:26:40.579 another huge and very valid point. Suicide reporting 00:26:40.579 --> 00:26:43.480 was notoriously messy in the 19th century. But 00:26:43.480 --> 00:26:45.859 even with all those data issues, the theoretical 00:26:45.859 --> 00:26:48.579 framework, this idea that human beings need a 00:26:48.579 --> 00:26:50.440 healthy balance of integration and regulation 00:26:50.440 --> 00:26:53.460 to thrive, that remains an incredibly powerful 00:26:53.460 --> 00:26:55.700 and influential idea for understanding mental 00:26:55.700 --> 00:26:58.720 health even today. Absolutely. Okay, let's move 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:01.400 on to his final major work. He's tackled the 00:27:01.400 --> 00:27:04.119 division of labor. He's tackled suicide. Now 00:27:04.119 --> 00:27:07.019 he decides to take on God. the elementary forms 00:27:07.019 --> 00:27:09.920 of religious life. Or, more accurately, he decides 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:12.740 to take on the social origin of God. This book, 00:27:12.839 --> 00:27:15.339 published in 1912, was his last great masterpiece. 00:27:15.740 --> 00:27:18.319 He wanted to find the common denominator of all 00:27:18.319 --> 00:27:21.480 religion, the most basic essential form. So he 00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:23.299 decided to study what he considered to be the 00:27:23.299 --> 00:27:25.960 simplest, most primitive societies, specifically 00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:28.460 Australian Aboriginal tribes and their practice 00:27:28.460 --> 00:27:30.759 of totemism. And he had a very particular way 00:27:30.759 --> 00:27:33.220 of defining religion. It wasn't about a belief 00:27:33.220 --> 00:27:35.420 in a supernatural being, was it? No, because 00:27:35.420 --> 00:27:37.960 he pointed out that many major religions, like 00:27:37.960 --> 00:27:40.519 Buddhism, don't really have a god in the Western 00:27:40.519 --> 00:27:43.640 sense. So his definition was different. He said 00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:45.759 all religion is based on a fundamental division 00:27:45.759 --> 00:27:49.099 of the world into two domains. The sacred and 00:27:49.099 --> 00:27:51.240 the profane. The sacred and the profane. The 00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:54.420 special and the everyday. Exactly. The profane 00:27:54.420 --> 00:27:57.740 is just ordinary, mundane, life -working, eating, 00:27:57.940 --> 00:28:00.420 sleeping. The sacred are those things that are 00:28:00.420 --> 00:28:02.420 set apart, that are forbidden, that are surrounded 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:05.799 by rituals and inspire awe. So for him, a religion 00:28:05.799 --> 00:28:08.339 is a unified system of beliefs and practices 00:28:08.339 --> 00:28:11.079 related to sacred things, which unite all their 00:28:11.079 --> 00:28:13.539 followers into a single moral community, which 00:28:13.539 --> 00:28:16.119 he called a church. Okay, so here we go. The 00:28:16.119 --> 00:28:19.279 big reveal. The huge plot twist of Durkheim's 00:28:19.279 --> 00:28:21.900 entire career. When these aboriginal tribes are 00:28:21.900 --> 00:28:24.180 gathered together worshipping their totem, which 00:28:24.180 --> 00:28:26.240 is usually an animal or a plant that represents 00:28:26.240 --> 00:28:29.339 their clan, what are they actually worshipping? 00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:31.599 Durkheim's conclusion is stunning. He says the 00:28:31.599 --> 00:28:33.920 totem is the flag of the clan. When they are 00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:36.680 worshipping the totem, they are, in fact, unknowingly 00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:39.019 worshipping the selective power of the clan itself. 00:28:39.480 --> 00:28:43.200 God is society. That is the big reveal. God is 00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:46.400 society. Personified. Think about it. What are 00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:49.279 the attributes of God? It's a force that is greater 00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:51.480 than you, that existed before you were born, 00:28:51.559 --> 00:28:54.200 that will exist long after you die, that gives 00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:56.519 you your moral rules and that has the power to 00:28:56.519 --> 00:28:59.559 punish you or to lift you up. To Durkheim, that 00:28:59.559 --> 00:29:02.420 is a perfect description of society. So we basically 00:29:02.420 --> 00:29:05.079 invented God as a symbol, as a way to visualize 00:29:05.079 --> 00:29:07.579 the power of our own group. That's the argument. 00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:10.359 And he has this amazing concept to explain how 00:29:10.359 --> 00:29:12.160 this happens, how this feeling is generated. 00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:15.200 He calls it collective effervescence. I love 00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:17.299 that phrase, collective effervescence. It sounds 00:29:17.299 --> 00:29:19.440 like a fancy soda. It's much more intoxicating 00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:22.400 than that. He says, imagine the clan is scattered 00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:24.319 across the landscape for most of the year, hunting 00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:26.640 and gathering. Life is dull. It's hard. It's 00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:29.180 profane. But then they all come together for 00:29:29.180 --> 00:29:32.279 a big ceremony, a ritual. They dance all night. 00:29:32.420 --> 00:29:34.880 They sing. They chant. They paint their bodies. 00:29:35.140 --> 00:29:37.480 The energy in the group builds and builds. It 00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:40.789 becomes electric. in that moment you feel carried 00:29:40.789 --> 00:29:43.569 away you feel stronger more powerful more alive 00:29:43.569 --> 00:29:45.750 than your ordinary self it's like being in the 00:29:45.750 --> 00:29:48.309 middle of a mosh pit at a concert or in a stadium 00:29:48.309 --> 00:29:51.410 when your team scores the winning goal yes it's 00:29:51.410 --> 00:29:54.210 that exact feeling you feel a power moving through 00:29:54.210 --> 00:29:56.109 you that does not feel like it's coming from 00:29:56.109 --> 00:29:59.299 you And since these early humans didn't have 00:29:59.299 --> 00:30:01.900 a concept of social psychology, they attributed 00:30:01.900 --> 00:30:04.640 that powerful external energy to their sacred 00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:07.579 object, the totem. They thought the spirit of 00:30:07.579 --> 00:30:10.279 the totem is here. It's moving through us. But 00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:13.380 for Durkheim, that spirit was just the supercharged 00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:16.720 energy of the group itself. So all religious 00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:19.240 ritual is basically society getting together 00:30:19.240 --> 00:30:21.920 to worship itself just to recharge its batteries 00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:24.460 and keep the social bond strong. That was his 00:30:24.460 --> 00:30:26.890 radical argument. And he took it even one step 00:30:26.890 --> 00:30:29.390 further into what he called the sociology of 00:30:29.390 --> 00:30:32.170 knowledge. He argued that even our most basic 00:30:32.170 --> 00:30:34.529 categories of thought, our concepts of time, 00:30:34.650 --> 00:30:37.670 space, causality, are social constructs. They 00:30:37.670 --> 00:30:39.869 are collective representations. Wait, hold on. 00:30:39.930 --> 00:30:42.130 Time is a social construct. I mean, the sun rises 00:30:42.130 --> 00:30:44.359 and the sun sets. That's not social. But the 00:30:44.359 --> 00:30:47.519 concept of time, of a week, a month, a year, 00:30:47.539 --> 00:30:50.220 an hour, where does that come from? He argues 00:30:50.220 --> 00:30:52.779 it comes from the rhythm of social life. We have 00:30:52.779 --> 00:30:54.680 a calendar because we need to coordinate when 00:30:54.680 --> 00:30:57.640 the next festival or ritual is. We understand 00:30:57.640 --> 00:30:59.880 the concept of space because of the way the clan 00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:02.400 arranges its camp into sacred and profane areas. 00:31:02.980 --> 00:31:05.579 Even language itself is the ultimate collective 00:31:05.579 --> 00:31:08.980 representation. You didn't invent the words you're 00:31:08.980 --> 00:31:11.319 speaking right now. They contain the accumulated 00:31:11.319 --> 00:31:14.490 wisdom and categories of your society. for thousands 00:31:14.490 --> 00:31:17.089 of years. So we are literally thinking through 00:31:17.089 --> 00:31:19.490 the filter that society provides for us. There's 00:31:19.490 --> 00:31:21.789 no escaping it. We cannot escape it. We are social 00:31:21.789 --> 00:31:24.190 animals down to the very bedrock of our minds. 00:31:24.309 --> 00:31:26.009 This is all so brilliant, but we have to talk 00:31:26.009 --> 00:31:29.190 about how it all ends for him. Because Durkheim's 00:31:29.190 --> 00:31:31.170 life, it didn't end with a quiet, comfortable 00:31:31.170 --> 00:31:33.589 retirement surrounded by his books. No, it ended 00:31:33.589 --> 00:31:36.049 in absolute tragedy. World War I breaks out in 00:31:36.049 --> 00:31:39.049 1914. Now, Durkheim was a French patriot. He 00:31:39.049 --> 00:31:41.089 deeply believed in the French Republic in a secular, 00:31:41.150 --> 00:31:44.130 rational state. But he was also a prominent intellectual, 00:31:44.549 --> 00:31:48.269 a Jew, and he had a German -sounding name. Not 00:31:48.269 --> 00:31:50.569 a good combination in the middle of a nationalist 00:31:50.569 --> 00:31:53.539 war frenzy against Germany. No. The ascendant 00:31:53.539 --> 00:31:56.240 political right in France attacked him viciously. 00:31:56.279 --> 00:31:59.200 They smeared his new science of sociology as 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:01.500 a German invention. They attacked his Jewish 00:32:01.500 --> 00:32:03.660 background. He was trying to contribute to the 00:32:03.660 --> 00:32:06.339 war effort, writing patriotic pamphlets, but 00:32:06.339 --> 00:32:08.779 he was being attacked from all sides. And then 00:32:08.779 --> 00:32:11.700 the truly personal blow came. His son, André, 00:32:11.799 --> 00:32:15.240 Berkheim had poured all his hopes into him. André 00:32:15.240 --> 00:32:17.859 was a brilliant linguist, a rising academic star. 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:21.960 He was sent to the Balkan front in late 1915. 00:32:22.160 --> 00:32:23.839 he was reported missing and then he was confirmed 00:32:23.839 --> 00:32:27.079 dead. And Durkheim just fell apart. He was completely 00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:29.119 devastated. By all accounts, he was never the 00:32:29.119 --> 00:32:31.559 same. He withdrew from his work. He stopped writing 00:32:31.559 --> 00:32:34.000 anything major. Friends said he never recovered 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:36.720 from the grief. He had a stroke in late 1917 00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:40.200 and died at the age of just 59. That's just tragic. 00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:43.000 The man who spent his entire life studying how 00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:45.099 society holds individuals together and keeps 00:32:45.099 --> 00:32:47.779 them safe was ultimately crushed by a massive 00:32:47.779 --> 00:32:50.900 failure of society. The war and the loss it caused 00:32:50.900 --> 00:32:53.569 him personally. It's a deeply somber ending. 00:32:53.950 --> 00:32:57.069 But his legacy, of course, is immense. The whole 00:32:57.069 --> 00:32:59.250 school of thought called structural functionalism, 00:32:59.269 --> 00:33:01.970 which dominated American sociology for decades 00:33:01.970 --> 00:33:04.609 with figures like Talcott Parsons and Robert 00:33:04.609 --> 00:33:07.980 Merton, that comes directly from Durkheim. His 00:33:07.980 --> 00:33:10.519 ideas about rituals were still hugely influential 00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:13.380 today. And there's still some academic beef about 00:33:13.380 --> 00:33:15.160 him today, right? Something about the philosopher 00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:18.900 John Searle. Oh, yes. The Durkheim -Contra Searle 00:33:18.900 --> 00:33:22.420 debate. So John Searle is a very famous philosopher 00:33:22.420 --> 00:33:24.920 who wrote a book in the 1990s called The Construction 00:33:24.920 --> 00:33:27.839 of Social Reality. In it, he talks about concepts 00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:31.079 like institutional facts and collective intentionality. 00:33:31.319 --> 00:33:33.559 Which sounds an awful lot like social facts and 00:33:33.559 --> 00:33:35.660 the collective consciousness. It sounds exactly 00:33:35.660 --> 00:33:38.960 like it. especially the sociologist Neil Gross, 00:33:39.220 --> 00:33:42.039 pointed out that Searle had basically just reconstituted 00:33:42.039 --> 00:33:44.619 Durkheim's entire theory from scratch without 00:33:44.619 --> 00:33:47.200 giving him proper credit. Searle later admitted 00:33:47.200 --> 00:33:49.220 he hadn't really read Durkheim because he thought 00:33:49.220 --> 00:33:52.019 his work was impoverished. It became a bit of 00:33:52.019 --> 00:33:54.079 an academic scandal, but it just goes to show 00:33:54.079 --> 00:33:56.700 that Durkheim's ideas are so powerful that people 00:33:56.700 --> 00:33:59.539 keep reinventing them, even by accident. So let's 00:33:59.539 --> 00:34:02.500 bring this all home. After this deep dive, what's 00:34:02.500 --> 00:34:04.940 the big takeaway for us, for the listener sitting 00:34:04.940 --> 00:34:07.519 here right now? I think Durkheim forces us to 00:34:07.519 --> 00:34:09.940 look in the mirror and realize that we are not 00:34:09.940 --> 00:34:12.559 islands. We in the modern West, we love to think 00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:14.760 of ourselves as these autonomous free agents 00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:17.719 making our own rational choices. But Durkheim's 00:34:17.719 --> 00:34:20.460 work shows us page after page that we are profoundly 00:34:20.460 --> 00:34:23.019 shaped by these invisible forces, these social 00:34:23.019 --> 00:34:26.760 facts that we ourselves created, often unconsciously, 00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:29.099 but which now hold power over us. It's really 00:34:29.099 --> 00:34:31.940 humbling. And it explains that feeling we talked 00:34:31.940 --> 00:34:33.880 about right at the very beginning, that invisible 00:34:33.880 --> 00:34:35.880 pressure you feel when you walk into a room. 00:34:35.960 --> 00:34:37.699 That's it. That's the weight of the collective. 00:34:37.940 --> 00:34:40.219 And in our world today, this digital world where 00:34:40.219 --> 00:34:42.500 all the traditional tribes, religion, nation, 00:34:42.659 --> 00:34:44.780 local community are dissolving and we're forming 00:34:44.780 --> 00:34:47.800 these new, strange and often very angry digital 00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:51.219 tribes. Well, Durkheim's questions about integration 00:34:51.219 --> 00:34:53.500 and regulation are more urgent than ever. We 00:34:53.500 --> 00:34:56.139 are seeing enemy all around us. We are seeing 00:34:56.139 --> 00:34:58.719 altruistic suicide and radicalized online groups. 00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:01.739 Durkheim didn't just diagnose the problems of 00:35:01.739 --> 00:35:04.280 his time. He gave us the diagnostic manual for 00:35:04.280 --> 00:35:06.960 hours. He really did. And here's the thought 00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:09.239 I want to leave everyone with. Durkheim believed 00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:11.539 that traditional religion was fading, that it 00:35:11.539 --> 00:35:13.500 would be replaced by science and what he called 00:35:13.500 --> 00:35:16.219 the cult of the individual. But he also insisted 00:35:16.219 --> 00:35:19.530 that society needs the sacred. It needs moments 00:35:19.530 --> 00:35:22.829 of collective effervescence to survive, to recharge 00:35:22.829 --> 00:35:25.809 its moral batteries. Yes. We can't live on the 00:35:25.809 --> 00:35:28.789 profane, the mundane alone. So the question for 00:35:28.789 --> 00:35:30.969 all of us is, if we're not going to church or 00:35:30.969 --> 00:35:32.869 the synagogue or the temple as much anymore, 00:35:33.110 --> 00:35:36.429 and if the old town square is gone, where are 00:35:36.429 --> 00:35:38.929 we getting our fix? Where are we finding our 00:35:38.929 --> 00:35:41.409 collective effervescence today? Is it at a Taylor 00:35:41.409 --> 00:35:43.630 Swift concert? Is it at a political rally? Is 00:35:43.630 --> 00:35:46.250 it in a chaotic, all -consuming Twitter mob? 00:35:47.110 --> 00:35:50.289 Or... Are we actually starving for it? And is 00:35:50.289 --> 00:35:52.710 that why so often we feel like a pile of sand? 00:35:52.909 --> 00:35:54.869 That is the question Durkheim leaves us with. 00:35:54.989 --> 00:35:57.110 Something to think about the next time you feel 00:35:57.110 --> 00:35:58.829 that invisible pressure. Thank you for diving 00:35:58.829 --> 00:35:59.769 in with us. It was a pleasure.