dancing on a friday night

fall is slowly fading. i heard on the bus yesterday that last year's first snow came on thanksgiving, which is 2 weeks away. i stupidly forgot to bring my jacket out with me yesterday, having had a week of warmth, and had to freeze in between classes. wind chill. most irritating.

week seven is drawing to a close. the benefit of a quarter system is how much it resembles the terms i'm familiar with. week seven is close enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and nearer to that end than the one i started with.

but mainly, i've been thinking about identity. for the first, and hopefully only time, i will talk about something i've read in class on this blog. emile durkheim, french sociologist, has this idea that as idea that as society progresses and labour is increasingly divided up, human society will become more tight knit. which is a very improbably notion to me. durkheim believes that the division of labour leads to a set of social conditions and morality that promotes cooperation and solidarity, which is superior to the repressive rule of religious law that came before. i think we've all simply traded one god for another. instead of praying to a higher power, we find ourselves at the foot of money's altar. rather dramatic, but i think materialism (not in the marxist way) is the real religion nowadays.

everyone defines himself/herself based on what he/she has. we are a people without any identity. purpose no longer determines who we are, because purpose is becoming increasingly small as the world gets increasingly complicated. we live in a disillusioned time, where no one knows who they are, and clutch at straws in search of "happiness", which according to durkheim we are no longer getting. he's right about at least that much.