Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

one universal is crime. Crime is normal, and a complete lack of
crime would be pathological. From this, Durkheim contends that
crime plays a crucial function in society.
Crime is an activity that is determined by the society to be
unacceptable behavior. The rules by which we determine
acceptable and unacceptable behavior—the social facts—are
internalized; we never think about them. But when we face a
criminal or hear news about criminal activity, then and only
then do we think about the social facts. In this way, criminals
push the social boundaries.
Sometimes, those boundaries exist for good reasons, but
sometimes they do not. Some social facts undermine our ability
be challenged. But such challenges are criminal acts.
If there was no crime, that would mean that there is an
incredible degree of conformity in the culture. Given that
social facts are enforced, a society with no crime is breeding
a coerced uniformity in acting, thinking, and feeling. If
a society has succeeded in achieving a given amount of
conformity, it will not stop there but tighten its grip, insisting
on ever greater conformity. Smaller and smaller differences
will become criminalized. There is no natural boundary
between crime and acceptable difference. Social structures
will always push for greater uniformity.
The problem with this push for uniformity is that it creates what
Durkheim called anomie. If we internalize an overabundance
of highly restrictive social facts, the result will be an internal
struggle with ourselves. We will feel pressured from inside and
outside to live up to standards that we have both made a part of
ourselves and that we resent. We become torn. The usual mileposts
with ourselves.
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