June 6, 2024

All day I have been watching reports about the the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day Allied invasion on the beaches of Normandy France.   This may be the last big celebration that many of the returning veterans attend. Their ages range from 90’s to 100’s. So many were being pushed to the celebration in wheel chairs.

People always ask, how did 150,000 fighters volunteer, get prepared and then hurl themselves into the jaws of death like they did that day? After asking how did that happen, there’s always the follow up question, could it ever happen again? Could we ever assemble a force like that if a similar crisis faced civilization again?

As a social scientist, I want to know, what kinds of external forces push and pull individuals to do what must be done – even at the risk of their lives. Have you seen Saving Private Ryan? That scene when they landed on Omaha beach was gut wrenching for me to watch. Americans are trained to be so individualistic that it’s difficult to think about external forces influencing us. Have you ever had a lump in your throat when at the stadium and the National Anthem begins?

Emile Durkheim was the first to have the academic job title, Sociologist. He was French and lived from 1858-1917. One of his major contributions to social thinking was his idea of “social facts.” There are things out there that we as a society create that turn around and influence us as individual members of that same society. Patriotism for example.

Remember the one child policy that the People’s Republic of China instituted between 1979 and 2015? Their society was too large (citizens producing too many children). This “social fact” was used by the government to mandate laws regulating how many children couples could have.

Crime rates are also infamous social facts. These are created by people committing crimes (or getting caught). We then create Three-Strikes Laws that punish repeat offenders by mandating jail sentences. This is another social fact, increased prison populations, led Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma to authorize a mass commutation of prisoners. Huge prison populations were bankrupting the state.

Anyway, Durkheim wrote about suicide. He challenged the notion that these tragedies were ALWAYS explained psychologically. That each case had it’s own individual cause. This French professor used newly available social data to demonstrate that there were social facts that could also explain suicides.

He came up with four categories of suicide caused by integration or regulation (too much and not enough):

1. Sometimes people commit suicide people because they never get connected enough and, more importantly, the social world doesn’t get connected into them. People who are all alone. Durkheim thought that unmarried males were especially susceptible to this type of problem.
2. At the other end, he believed that people could get too connected to the needs of their social group. Even their own self-preservation and safety might be sublimated to the needs of the group. This is the soldier who throws himself on the grenade to save the rest of his unit. During WW2 the west was shocked by the number of Japanese Kamikaze pilots prepared to die for their Emperor.
3. There are periods of time when the rules seem to change overnight and we don’t know how to play the game of living anymore. Think of the people who lost their fortunes overnight in the 1929 stock market crash. So many successful businessmen threw themselves out of their office windows. It can also happen in the reverse. The norms of life can dramatically change with a lottery win. There are hundreds of examples, someone is suddenly rich and powerful and then live suicidal lifestyles.
4. Finally, Durkheim pointed out that when the rules, or regulation is too overpowering, people sometimes choose suicide. The prisoner or captive that has all freedoms stolen and is left with no hope for any future.

“Things perceived as real become real in their consequences.” ― Émile Durkheim

I don’t think the invading forces during D-Day were committing suicide. Even the 9000 that are buried there at Normandy, each man’s hope was to one day return home to America. No, what I was thinking about all day were Durkheim’s idea about social facts. These bore down on all those young men and women. These external forces propelled the Allied Forces, each fighter, onto those salty beaches, flying through the air, off shore in great and small ships, and even floating down on parachutes. These brave and frightened young people were pushed forward by powerful beliefs they had been taught and internalized about liberty and democracy. About a cause greater than themselves.

Of course, we’re probably mythologizing. That’s what we often do with the past. But, this serves a great purpose for a society. We must have heroes, we must find living examples of our essential beliefs. All societies must have stories to tell that embody their most precious abstract values.

Many of the veterans interviewed this week reported that they had no idea of how devastating and inhumane the circumstances were for the conquered people in Europe and those in concentration camps. We look with hindsight at all the horrors of the war. I’m not sure those young soldiers at the time knew as much of the facts as we do today. Yet they were still willing to risk it all.

What do you think it would take to get you to risk everything on an idea?

“Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.” ― Émile Durkheim