Emile Durkheim Suicide And Modernity Analysis

I. Summary
In Emile Durkheim’s Suicide and Modernity, he expresses his belief that human needs are infinite. The only moderating power of our infinite needs, Durkheim believes, is society. If something happens to go wrong and these needs grow too great, a person would live in a world of unhappiness until the person simply would not want to live anymore. The best way to test this hypothesis would be through the interviewing of lottery players and lottery winners focusing particularly on those who come from a low-economic background and comparing them to middle-class players. Through the interviews, the researcher will assess the possible different wants and needs of the lottery players and winners. The interviewer will also ask some questions …show more content…
Hopefully, the compared answers between the lottery players and winners will confirm Durkheim’s hypothesis that human needs are infinite and the more you have, the more dissatisfied with your life you will be. The middle-class players will serve as the control group because they already have a median-income. If a low-economic lottery player has a low amount of wants compared to the middle-class players and the formerly low-economic lottery winners has higher amounts of wants than them, Durkheim’s theory will be confirmed. His theory will also be confirmed if low-economic players are less depressed than middle class players and lottery winners are more depressed. The lottery players will be more content in life and they would not have as much of a desire for luxurious materials because they know they cannot afford them in the first place. Once the lottery players becomes a lottery winner, they will supposedly continue to play the lottery based on Durkheim’s theory. The winners will also not feel as content in life and will also be obsessed with buying things they would not have considered buying as a lottery player. Based on Durkheim’s theory, it is expected to already see differences in the wants of lottery players from low-economic and middle-class backgrounds. Only because the middle-class already has more money to start with, so they strive for more and can be less content in life than low-economic