Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Anomie

This morning while eating breakfast and reading a book my friend Josh loaned me called Hideous Gnosis - a book about the philosophy behind Black Metal - I came across the word anomie. It's a word I've seen used before in other things I've read but for whatever reason this time I decided to look up it's meaning. Wikipedia has this definition for anomie:

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. if 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]
After reading this I thought to myself this sums up the postmodern condition perfectly. No need to write a book anymore.

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