Random Musings

Anomie

Anomie, a word I ran across today as I was skimming through The Writer's Guide to Fiction, a supplement to my subscription to The Writer magazine. It's been lying around in my bedroom for a while, but it wasn't until today that I actually picked it up and looked through it.

According to the definition given in the guide, it means "a condition in an individual or society characterized by a breaking down of social norms. I had never seen the word in that form, but I was familiar with the term anomaly, which roughly means the same thing.

The word stuck out to me because it applies so well to things that have been on my mind about events that have been going on in our world. I've been telling myself that I need to stop watching and reading the news because of the seemingly never-ending, increasingly awful stream of bizarre incidents that have made the headlines.

Pregnant women reported missing and then later found out to have been done away with by their mates. Mothers and fathers taking the lives of their children- not one or two, but three, four, five kids at a time; smothering them, hanging them, slitting their throats, throwing them from bridges. Wars with no winners, politicians with no scruples, negligent adults, apathetic kids, corrupt law enforcement, teachers with questionable judgment in their relationships with studetns, conspicuous consumption, the absence of ideals, it just goes on and on and every day seems to get worse and worse.

One has to wonder when or if it will ever get better. Where will it end? I am awfully afraid that things won't get better because it has been my experience that negatives in society tend to worsen, not improve. Lines of acceptablility get crossed, the "norms" break down, and it's easier and easier to push the envelope in terms of beasty, unscrupulous behavior. The more we are presented with, the more we become desensitized to what should be outrageous.

I think more of the children absorbing all of this mess. For them, these things are the "norm", just something that happened in the news. They have no idea that maybe even as recently as ten, fifteen years ago times were a lot more innocent than they are now. If these incidents are the norm for them, then what do we have to look forward to when they are adults? Sometimes I'm glad to be the age that I am. I don't think I would want to be a teenager or a very young person coming up in the world right now.

I watch my students sometimes, and I am appalled by the shallowness, the materialism. Although it is middle school, the overt sexuality and the acting out on the part of some kids is disheartening. I'm teaching, and they're text-messaging. A couple of times kids were found to be transmitting porn images to each other once they were caught with the phones in their lap during class time. It used to be the random profane or obscene note.

How poorly read many of my students are is scary, but then what else is there to expect from children who have been "plugged in" or "plopped down" since infancy? It is becoming harder and harder to keep the attention of young people who are accustomed to colors and animations rather than straight, on-the-page text. Last Friday I went off on the kids because I am sick of them coming to class in the latest fashions, expensive gym shoes, designer purses, cell phones, etc., but have their hands in the air asking to borrow a pen when it's time to take a test that they have known about for a week, and on top ot that, a pen is a daily class requirement.

Teachers get in trouble for "giving" too many bad grades, assigning "too much" homework, penalizing kids for not following the guidelines they were given to complete an assignment or for passing a class. Adults get angry and the conflict resolution strategy is to in some way get rid of the other party. I could go on and on, but I won't. It scares and depresses me too much.

I told myself that I need to stop watching the news and reading it. That would help me, but it wouldn't, in actuality, change anything. I would just be uninformed about matters and about people for whom I might need to watch out. It's all an anomie/ anomaly as far as I'm concerned, but what can I do about any of it?

Maybe the things that I am seeing and that I'm reading about are not really deviations from the norm. Rather, perhaps it has all become the norm, and I haven't been paying enough attention to notice that.