The word that explains everything: anomie

Add it to your vocabulary immediately.

Why are people so lonely?
Why are people so rude to each other?
Why are people so unhappy?
Why are people staying home instead of socializing?
Why are people obsessed with status and followers?
Why are people addicted to their phones?
Why are we permitting civil liberties to be stripped away?
Why are people having to work multiple jobs just to survive?
Why do people look up to billionaires?
Why aren’t we doing anything about climate change?
Why is our society falling apart?
Why is no one stopping it?

What if I told you there was a word that answered every single one of those questions?

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I first learned about the concept of anomie in a cold, windowless classroom at NYU, and it has had a huge influence on the development of the New Happy philosophy.

Coined by the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim, anomie is usually defined as ‘a state of normlessness’ (the word itself comes from the Greek anomia, meaning ‘lawlessness'.)

Durkheim used it to describe the way that the Industrial Revolution disrupted established social norms, and how that affected people’s relationships and well-being. It’s a term that has long been confined to undergraduate essays, but is well overdue to be dusted off and brought into the spotlight, for it can explain so much of what’s happening to us right now.

When the president of the United States hosts a car commercial on his lawn, destroys global trade relations on a whim, or blatantly and repeatedly ignores the Constitution that he swore to protect, I think it’s safe to say that we’re in a ‘state of normlessness.’

How anomie works

Anomie begins with a crisis or disruption, an event that profoundly destabilizes society. This leads to a breakdown of trust in other people, institutions, and leadership, leaving society unable to satisfy core human needs. For Durkheim, this disruption was the Industrial Revolution; for us, I argue that it is the introduction and widespread adoption of neoliberalism in the 1980s, which is when Old Happy culture took its powerful hold.¹

Much like an avalanche builds from a small pile of snow into a monster that can bury people and wipe out buildings, so too did the events of the last fifty years accelerate anomie. The major events include:

• The gutting of America’s social safety net and the stigmatization of those who need it

• 9/11 and the “War on Terror”

• Increasing extreme economic inequality

• The 2008 financial crisis

• Trump’s first election

• The (ongoing) pandemic

• The insurrection of January 6, 2021

• The genocide in Gaza, including the death of over 15,000 children

• Witnessing issues like climate, school shootings, and police brutality go unaddressed

• Trump’s second election and implementation of the Project 2025 playbook

Each of these events chipped away at our social fabric, and the proof is showing up in our most recent data, such as the findings from the 2025 World Happiness Report. As of 2020, the United States has seen the world’s greatest increase in “deaths of despair,” which are deaths by suicide, alcohol abuse, or drug overdose.² Americans’ trust in their fellow citizens is at the lowest level in 50 years. The percentage of Americans who see the EU and Canada as an “enemy” has recently shot up. Only 20% of Americans trust the government.

The consequences of anomie

When people believe that society is falling apart, it results in a self-fulfilling prophecy—it leads to those people behaving in ways that do make society fall apart.

For example, studies have found that anomie fuels the rise of authoritarian leaders, as people desperately seek stability and a sense of control over their lives. These individuals present an image of strength, promising they are tough enough to fix anomie—and if they have to abandon democratic or humane values to do that, voters accept that as a necessary trade-off, because at least they’ll finally be getting their needs satisfied.

In the anomic society, people start to believe that others are untrustworthy, foolish, and most of all, bad. To protect themselves, they disconnect from the people in their lives and their broader communities. They become more likely to fall into ‘us-vs-them’ thinking, demonstrating less tolerance of people who are different to them. They stop behaving in helpful, loving, supportive ways, and instead, become more likely to cheat, steal, and endorse corruption. They stop contributing to the common good, and instead, focus only on what’s good for them. When other people see that behavior, they follow suit, a catastrophic ripple effect that results in a society of individuals who are trying to get as much as they can for themselves, no matter how it affects others.

People start to suffer psychologically, because they are withdrawing from the very sources of well-being that are keeping them afloat in the anomic society. Prosocial behaviors, building connection, and participating in community are what lead to happiness. When your world pulls you away from these pursuits, and tells you they’re not important, what do we think happens? Look around, and you’ll see: an adult mental health epidemic, a youth mental health epidemic, a loneliness crisis, and a widespread sense of despair about the future.

Grasping for a way to get our needs satisfied, we seek out what the anomic society has deemed to be acceptable. That’s where Old Happy swoops in, promising people that if they can just get rich, get powerful, get famous, get optimized, get on top, then they will feel happy and all their pain will melt away. That’s why, in a survey last year, members of Gen Z said that a “successful” salary for them would need to be over $500,000 a year—a salary that is earned by 0.79% of the American population.

Old Happy offers a rigged game that only a few can win, and only at the cost of the many. A winner in Old Happy culture usually has to be willing to perpetuate systems of oppression, abandon moral values, participate in the destruction of the environment, and exploit other people, communities, or the planet.

And of course, this doesn’t actually work; it doesn’t lead to happiness. These pursuits can never fulfill a person’s real needs, and we’re left with people like this, who chase more, more, and more, always believing that their hollowness will be filled up by the next acquisition or accomplishment, never realizing that their abandonment of their fellow humans is what has doomed them to their Sisyphean quest. They leave a path of destruction in their wake—like a planet that is now anticipated to reach 4 degrees Celsius, a temperature that will destroy so much of our beautiful world, all because we simply refused to unwind our Old Happy beliefs.

Changing our definition of happiness isn’t only required for us to thrive. We are now entering an era that requires that we do so in order to survive.

How we combat anomie

I spell out my long-term solution to anomie in detail in my book, New Happy. But in the meantime, let me share a few small actions you can start taking today.

1. Return to our values: We must reaffirm the values that we think matter in society, like compassion, community, and contribution. Then, we must hold ourselves and others accountable for practicing them; we can’t “let” each other decay further. One simple way to do this is by choosing to behave on social media the way you would in the real world. Cheap and easy cruelty exacerbates anomie.

2. Reconnect with each other: We must look for the good in others, build connections with people outside of our immediate families, and start to create communities of care. We do this by giving and receiving help. When you have an instinct to pull away and do something alone, pause and instead consider if you could ask for help or do it alongside another person. (You can also join our New Happy community by signing up for our free five-week training program, which is kicking off in May. It’s 100% free!)

3. Tell a new story: We must stop ruminating on the brokenness of our world. We can acknowledge its many, many flaws and problems, while also refusing to get stuck in them or believing they are intractable. Instead, it’s time for us to start imagining a new world, one that does meet our needs, and then look for ways to make it a reality.

That’s what I’m trying to do here, with the New Happy movement, which you are a necessary and important part of. We are building a world where everyone gets their needs met—a world where everyone can be happy. Thanks for being here, and for helping to make it.

Forward this newsletter to someone who has asked you, “How did we get here?” Learn more about New Happy here.

1. Old Happy is my term for the way that capitalism, individualism and domination have shaped the way we understand and pursue happiness.

2. In his work Suicide, Durkheim argued that deaths by suicide are in part caused by anomie.