Anomie as a word is of course linked to French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Modernity or progress brought with it an idea of self-realisation unconnected with inherited tradition - an atomisation most prevalent in Protestant cultures where individualism was stronger. Shared norms being lost a consequent ennui, purposelessness and despair would develop. Durkheim observed suicide was more prevalent in Protestant countries. Deviance resulting from a lack of shared and cohesive communal values led to increased crime and other forms of disconnection. Perhaps in contemporary times the most extreme example of the dangers of anomie is the teenaged American gun murderer - the murderous incel. An individualistic culture where institutions lose authority and values are no longer shared and a sense of being part of a community and tradition have been lost are factors that lead to anomie. It is furthermore the result of division of labour and rapid social change. In other words - progress.
Prior to economic and political progress our aspirations were limited and manageable. We belonged somewhere and had something like a predefined role. Life was not an individualistic pursuit of my own subjective idea of happiness. The world of guilds and family trades was replaced by economic and political progress through industrial revolution and division of labour. As Durkheim put it: " To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness."
Worse the idea of self realisation is therefore a myth. Division of labour turned many into wage slaves and those who "make it" are in spiritual danger of a materialist and passion-driven existence.
As religion became disorganised and splintered through the Reformation and a consequent sectarianism and spiritual individualism in belief so anomie grew. Anomie is essentially a lack of social mores, standards or ethics. These were provided by the Church, as Saint Vincent of Lerins put it:
" That faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all."
As a functionalist Durkheim himself had a reductionist leaning - religion was there for the purposes of social cohesion from his reductive and functionalist perspective. We do not need to accept this to be able to recognise that social progress leads to disintegration and anomie.
The so-called "Christian Nietzsche", the Russian aristocrat and later monk, Konstanin Leontiev was scathing about the notion of progress. For him it could be represented by the metaphor of a body suffering a progressive disease that led to disintegration of the biological form. In the same way social progress led to the disintegration of the commonwealth into individualism.
Progress can be understood as a social force that detaches us from what is around us - community, below us - our roots, and most significantly, what is above - the divine. These all hold the body together in a hierarchical coherence that connects us to the higher. Modernity and progress are on the other hand all about deconstruction and reduction.
The self realisation of the progressive West that we see today leads to misery and despair. Contrast this with the human being who was part of a spiritual hierarchy of Being. He understood that while existence was a mystery he had his place and purpose. He had meaning.
One might contrast the glorification of self realisation of the individual that results from progressive ideas with a more Aristotlean understanding. Self realisation is unconnected with Aristotle's thoughts on character, virtue or a preordained telos. Rather as progress breaks apart social, spiritual and historical links, individuals pursue their own subjective idea of fulfilment as subjective happiness and self realisation.
For Aristotle man like any other being had a purpose. Just as the lyre was made to be played to make music, so a man's preordained purpose was virtue. Virtue was attained by practice and establishing habits that formed one's character. This is a totally alien way of thinking for a progressive Westerner, who believes his current and flawed passsions of his character must be fulfilled to achieve self realisation - that is his purpose/he thinks, rather than forming his character by practising virtues that at first might seem unappealing and not suited to his flawed desires.
With Aristotle's virtue ethics we find a formidable and uncompromising answer to anomie. There are social norms and values that are preordained. The virtues are known and understood - but we have to work and reform our character to attain them. One can see how compatible this pagan philosopher's ideas were with the Church emerging a few centuries later into Greece from the Holy Land. Conforming to the likeness of Christ was the telos of every human made in the image of God and who was striving through the gate of the Incarnation to achieve likeness of God as Saint Irenaeus of Lyons explained. Later in the Middle Ages Christian Western Europe, in schism with Greek Orthodoxy would rediscover Aristotle and his thought was to be a major influence upon the thinking of Thomas Aquinas.
While progressive seeds of thinking were latent in Scholastism in the West, nonetheless this pursuit of virtue and character was again understood in a Christian sense.
To pursue character and virtue is a rejection of the very notion of progress. The progress of Western reductive thinking means breaking up social and religious traditions for the liberation of individual identity with no predetermined telos; just as much as it breaks up longstanding communities for economic progress.
Virtue ethics are in many ways the antidote to anomie. We should strive for character and thereby achieve the happiness of eudaimonia, rather than subjective self realisations as the existentialists such as atheist Sartre argued. For this reason Western philosophers, in Britain for example, such as Alasdair Macintyre are rediscovering Aristotle's theories of virtue and character as a way to counteract the harmful and individualistic traits of the Enlightenment paradigm.
The virtues Aristotle believed it was the purpose of human life to attain included courage, generosity, justice, temperance and prudence - meaning a sort of practical wisdom. The pagan philosopher cannot though have the last word, which would lead to a rather dry and restrictive purpose to living. Orthodox Christian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev argued that to attain the likeness of our Divine Maker we were meant to attain freedom, freedom through our creativity. This is not the Narcissistic self-realisation of the Western progressive, but a striving to participate in the divine through the freedom of being able to create as the imago dei.
Progress, the unquestioned good, has proved to lead to the breaking up of the community and the loss of tradition, virtue and purpose. It has created a disintegrated world dominated by anomie and deviance. If people do not simply fall into the trap of ennui, they are in danger of criminality and self-destructive tendencies. That is the legacy of the Enlightenment. Post modernism alone did not separate us from our telos, it is just the latest twist since the wrong turn of the Enlightenment and the new secular and individualist age.
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