Durkheim and Anomy

Anomy:

1.) Social instability caused by steady erosion of standards and values.

2.) Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards and values.

3.) Personal disorganization resulting in unsocial behavior

Sociologist Emile Durkheim viewed the liberation of the Ego as a threat to the individual. Desires and passions, if not regulated by overriding social institutions, become infinite and non-fulfillable causing the individual unbearable pain that may lead to suicide.

Rudolf Steiner agreed that egotism causes pain, but he believed that this pain was secondary to the liberation and the freedom of the ego. A free ego that can bear the birth pangs of egohood may increase in power and self knowledge and work back into the individual's desires and passions. The free ego takes over the regulative function that once belonged to societal institutions.

This fierce psychic and spiritual battle manifests spiritually in the circulatory system- in heart, in blood, and in body temperature. Abnormalities in heart and circulatory functions may result in feverous states.

This ego fever affected Sylvia Plath in body and soul as she battled to achieve free egohood. She struggled against the dark force, a force that not only interfered with her personal freedom but also sought to obliterate her ego entirely.

The past structures of societies, the atavistic forces that regulated and controlled the individual, passed into SP through her father. Within her dwelt a double, a doppelganger, a last remnant of the dark side of the German folk soul. The father double created her ambition and quest for perfection, but consistently sought to extinguish her individuality.

Rudolf Steiner's Occult Significance of the Blood

Sylvia Plath's Cut

Ego, Blood, and Spirit

Bill Clinton's Speech on the Shadow Side of Globalization

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