Anomie
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For other uses of "Anomie", see Anomie (disambiguation).
Sociology
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Anomie (/ˈænəˌmi/) is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.[2] It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim never uses the term "normlessness"; rather, he describes anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[3]
For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:
Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices… anomie is a mismatch, not simply the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie... Thus, fatalistic suicide arises when a person is too rule-governed...
Econoline wrote:Oh, well...the shooter wasn't a Muslim or a black teenager cop, so I guess it's all OK..
FTFY
Hmmm. I do believe that, between the two of us, we've got it right:
Oh, well...the shooter wasn't a Muslim, a black teenager or a cop, so I guess it's all OK.
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Jim - with regard to your "strawman" post...
Here: this guy says what I was trying to get at much better than I could. (from Michigan Public Radio)
According to police, the Uber driver arrested in Kalamazoo admitted to the shooting spree that killed six people and wounded two more on Saturday night.
They do not, however, have any idea why he did it. Frankly, I have no interest in why he did it, regardless of whether he was mad at his wife, wanted to impress ISIS, was in love with Taylor Swift, or any other of a thousand meaningless “reasons” such people give.
What fascinates me is the degree to which our response to our increasingly frequent mass shootings has become highly ritualized, a mere matter of routine. There are public expressions of remorse and shock. Television shows us flowers and teddy bears piled at the shooting site.
Newspapers go off to interview the relatives of the victims and find someone who just narrowly avoided getting shot. There was a prayer vigil at a Kalamazoo church. The governor, in boilerplate language almost certainly written for him by members of his PR staff, issued the standard communique:
“The shootings are a senseless act of violence that claimed the lives of innocent citizens. Our hearts are broken for the victims’ families and friends, and I join in mourning their loss,” he said, in words that can easily be recycled for the next mass shooting.
The only different touch was that he added “we will lower the flags for six days to honor each of the six who died.” That immediately raised two questions: If the little girl victim now fighting for life eventually dies, will she get a day of lowered flags too?
And also, why aren’t the flags being lowered for the nine victims of Legionnaire’s disease who died after the governor’s men switched to the river water in Flint?
I don’t expect an answer to either question. What I found even more fascinating was that no one even pretended to offer anything meaningful to stop the gun violence that costs our nation about 10,000 lives a year. There’s a good reason for that, and we might as well admit it: We love our guns more than our families and our children.
That’s the bottom line. Yes, I know the Supreme Court ruled eight years ago that the Second Amendment meant people have the right to possess a firearm for lawful purposes. But in that narrow, five to four decision, the court also specifically said that governments could limit that right in all sorts of ways – including prohibitions on concealed weapons.
We aren’t willing to even try and do any of that. We have become resigned to the fact that the gun lobby and the fanatics of the National Rifle Association own our elected representatives, and that doing anything about this is impossible.
So we don’t. We accept that before long, we’ll have another mass shooting, the way we accept that we are bound to have more snow. Can’t be helped, we say, and turn back to our smart phones. Well, it can’t be helped only because we aren’t willing to do anything about it.
Hypocrisy has its limits, and we might as well admit that in our society, we value our guns more than our lives. That’s the truth. I have no idea whether it will set any of us free.
Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.
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P.S. My younger daughter, who lives in Battle Creek, called my wife yesterday morning to tell her that she had just discovered that she (my daughter) knows the 14-year-old girl who's still in a coma. Apparently the family are regulars at the restaurant where she works. So this story really hit close to home for her...
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
Our wonderful . benign Commonwealth ,has started to allow concealed carry in bars . Always figured alcohol and firearms ,went together like gasoline and fire extinguishers .
kmccune wrote:Our wonderful . benign Commonwealth ,has started to allow concealed carry in bars . Always figured alcohol and firearms ,went together like gasoline and fire extinguishers .
My parents were trap shooters. They were both quite excellent at it. I spent a lot of my childhood at trapshoots as a result. I can tell you fist hand that a trapshoot in the 60's was a big, open air bar. Alcohol was not sold at them but it was one big BYOB outdoor get together. Yet ALL THAT ALCOHOL AND ALL THOSE GUNS AND NO ONE GOT SHOT.
Crackpot wrote:So Jim am I to read you're implicating Uber?
You figure they're that fiendish?
I hear they are merging with a company called Alles
Genius!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
wesw wrote:when I was a teen a friend and I would hunt the local railroad tracks after school.
Not hard to hunt, steel rails don't tend to move fast.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
KALAMAZOO, MI -- The first victim in a mass shooting in Kalamazoo Feb. 20 that killed six people and injured two has improved enough to have her condition upgraded to fair Tuesday, Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller said.
Tiana Carruthers, attacked at about 5:40 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20, remains hospitalized, according to Fuller, who has been asked by the family to act as a spokesman for them. She had previously been listed in serious condition following surgeries to repair multiple gunshots, authorities said.
Carruthers' age has not been confirmed, and details of the incident and her recovery have not been released at her family's request.
If anyone cares.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
