Émile Durkheim and the Birth of the Gods

Toward a General Theory of Anomie The Social Psychology of Disintegration

“…We are motivated to act appropriately so as not to upset the order, and we know what the order is when someone violates it. The self, as constituted in the Elementary Forms , assumes a social psychological and emotional component powerful enough to motivate pro-social behavior to create solidarity and avoid disintegration [Maryanski 2018]. Thus, if Durkheim “was haunted by the idea of [humans] and society in disintegration” [Lukes 1977: 87], and his work points to the powerful motivation to sustain the group in the face of threats, then there must be a concept that captures the social psychological force that emerges when solidarity is threatened or, in fact, dissolved.…”

The deep origins of society: An assessment of E.O. Wilson’s Genesis

“…Because humans are still so closely related to these lines of great apes – sharing 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, 98% with gorillas, and 96–97% with orangutans – a cladistic analysis can provide useful information by using their shared relational patterns, evolutionary novelties, organizational biases, and other systematic regularities to draw blueprints on the organization structures of their last common ancestors. Maryanski’s cladistic analysis (1987, 1992, 1993, 1995) of the great apes has been used in many articles and books (e.g., Maryanski, 2018; Maryanski and Turner, 1992; Turner and Maryanski, 2005, 2008; Turner et al, 2018) to fill in details about the behavioral and organizational patterns of those hominoids from which hominins and then humans evolved.…”

“…Mothers with dependent offspring are reclusive and usually forage alone (without fear of roving gangs) while male chimpanzees wander about alone or join small, daily impromptu parties for a few minutes or hours. Rarely, if ever, does an entire community cluster in propinquity to constitute a group (Goodall, 1986; Luncz et al, 2012; Stumpf et al, 2009; and see a full listing of citations documenting these details in Maryanski, 2018; Turner and Maryanski 2005, 2008; Turner et al, 2018).…”

“…In a number of works (e.g., Maryanski, 2018; Turner, 2000, 2002, 2007; Turner and Maryanski, 2008; Turner et al, 2018), we have outlined in more detail how selection got around the low sociality and unstable group formations of early hominins. For, on the predator-ridden African savanna, hominins had to organize into some type of stable groupings, or go extinct.…”

“…But Homo sapiens share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees who are highly individualistic, who evidence more weak than strong ties and who are not locked into genetically controlled kin networks. Moreover, chimpanzees possess virtually all the interpersonal capacities of humans, often even in the human measure (Maryanski, 2018; Turner et al, 2018). They are thus able to role-take or evidence what biologists term Theory of Mind; they can interact with individuals whom they have not seen for a while; they can see themselves as objects in their environment and can evaluative themselves from the perspective of others and the larger community; they can read the emotions of others and empathize with others; they can form short impromptu parties and yet, they can also engage in emotionally-charged collective rituals when some members congregate in an apparent celebration of their larger community (see Maryanski, 2018; Reynolds, 1965).…”