Reality of Anomie

One of the failures of the international state system is the inability to prevent atrocity. As noted on Intercontinental Cry, 200,000 Nubans in South Sudan are on the verge of being annihilated by the Sudan military, and nothing appears to be in the works for stopping it. In fact, one can hardly find mention of it in the news.

As part of the international state system, civil society organizations are at a loss to intervene effectively. Humanitarian relief cannot penetrate zones of hostility like the Nuba Mountains or Blue Nile, any more than they could Bosnia, Rwanda or Gaza. Even UN peacekeepers have had to hightail it and run when massacres were imminent.

War correspondent Hans Magnus Enzensberger, author of Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, wrote about the incapacity of humanity to come to grips with the reality of anomie–a reality where people no longer cared whether they lived or died, and one in which civil society shuts down, unable to deal with the psychological impact of helplessness in confronting mass murder.  As we transform society, by exercising the network form of organization to address the failures of the state system, finding methods to prevent massacres should be at the top of our list.