Anomie and COVID

December 19, 2021

By NZB3

As 2021 comes to the close of another COVID year it’s proper to look back at what has happened to New Zealand society. Readers will know my usual model for considering different archetypal groups and how they interact is the Theory of Moral Cultures (TMC). The four types (Dignity, Victimhood, Slave, and Honor) are created by the 4 quadrants generated by crossing two assumptions about people. One, that people perceive problems personally or impersonally; Two, that people solve problems in concrete or abstract. The COVID Hysteria has split our communities in all sorts of directions. Some people who were mainstream have been pushed out of it, others who were until recently fringe are now the new normal. The TCM alone describes people with relation to reality itself but what’s really needed here is a theory that explains people with relation to current mainstream New Zealand culture. Who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’? Who submit to “vaccinations”, who push them, who refuse, who protest, who gain, who won, who lost? Fortunately there’s an even more famous theory that maps on to the TMC to explain it all. That is, Robert K. Merton’s Social Structure and Anomie (1938.)

Merton (image left) was a pioneering Harvard sociologist and author of one of the modalities we learned about in university sociology. My Criminology lecturer said at the time that Merton was a brilliant man and his 1938 journal article was the most popular sociology paper ever written. That was years ago and I filed it away to read if ever I needed to deepen my understanding of Merton’s anomic theory of deviance in society. Having now done so I can appreciate the popularity. Merton forms up 4 different forms of deviance in society using almost identical means as the TMC. The difference is that his quadrants are judged as “deviant”/a-normal/anomic by pivoting around a “normal” while TCM makes no such innate judgments about any given Moral Culture.

Merton’s 1 normal  group is the “conformity” group who are defined in our case as New Zealanders who want what the mainstream wants and to achieve it the way the mainstream wants to achieve it. When it comes to COVID that means needles (in the arm,) nostrils (test probes up the,) masks, ‘Traffic Light’ systems, QR code tracing, policed border crossings, lockdowns, managed isolation and quarantine, closed borders, censored media, limitless money-printing, medical professionals made redundant, and all the rest of the new mainstream “normal.”

Merton’s 4 deviant groups revolve around the possible mixtures of people who accept or reject ‘normal’ goals and ‘normal’ methods. These are: The Innovation Deviant, the Ritualism Deviant, the Retreatism Deviant, and the Rebellion Deviant. See diagram (right.)

The Innovator is someone who accepts the current mainstream culture’s goals but not the methodology. Our most recent Innovators were Victimhood Culture along with their battery of wacky Woke and Politically Correct ideas. These embraced, as it turns out, the list above including “vaccine passports,” double-jabs, money-printing etc. The successful Innovation Deviant becomes the new normal which is what happened in our case, especially when Jacinda Ardern’s COVID Innovations became the new Conformity.

Merton’s old Conformity group was displaced, now to be defined as a deviant group within society. In this theory of criminology the individual hasn’t become evil or irrational or violent or dangerous with reference to morality or reality. They have become deviant because what was mainstream to conform to has shifted beneath their feet. Only months ago we had doctors, nurses, midwives, teachers, anesthesiologists, policemen, border-workers etc. who were employed as normal members of conforming society. In a flash, they lost that status and became deviants. As such, they have been treated as such by the current Conformity starting with being kicked out of their jobs and continuing on with fear and abuse and hatred directed toward them. However, they didn’t actually do anything to become deviant. Deviance became them.  

Some of the old Conformity, now displaced, find themselves still accepting the cultural goals of ‘fighting’ COVID but by a different means. This means taking up the now vacant space of the Innovation Deviant. Here we have dissenting doctors and scientists, especially the Covid Plan B group and it is logically possible that they may become ‘normal’ again but I doubt it. However, eventually, some powerful coalition of the Innovation Deviants will coalesce to throw out the current Conformity. It’s worth noting that no opposition political party in the House has positioned itself anywhere but in the Conformity camp despite 6 leadership changes.

Retreatism Deviants, as Merton calls them, are what TCM calls Honour Culture. They have turned away from “normal” means and “normal” ends both and set up their own parallel world. Some of them, like fallen knights, were once part of an old and lost Conformity. Others never were. This catagory includes criminal and otherwise gangs, prisoners, mentally ill, addicts, homeless people, and members of cults/intentional communities. It is possible that some individuals or groups within Retreatism might become future Innovators and even, one day, form a future Conformity. In terms of social media, this group has either been banned from Conformity platforms (eg Twitter, Facebook, Youbute) or has exited them in disgust at the rampant censorship. They’ve Retreated to alternative platforms like Rumble and Telegram, self-identifying as non-Conformist and “non-normal” (I have not chosen to do so.)

Mass protests each weekend and anti-vaccine mandates etc. are a product of Innovation Deviants and some Retreatist Deviants coming together and not thinking too hard about their differences. The other intersectionist group involved in this is the Rebellion Deviants. This group not only has rejected THE goals and THE means but has some new goals and means to substitute in. Anarkiwis belong to this deviation.

Finally, in Merton’s model, there has to be a group that accepts THE means but not THE goals of the Conformity. This he calls Ritualism Deviant and TMC the Slave Culture. This is the entropic outcome, where all other deviant group members go to die as they wind down to obscurity. I think of the Sundowners and Swagmen still alive in Merton’s day who were socialised to be the itinerant labour force when New Zealand needed one as part of its Conformity. Then, New Zealand changed and left them homeless wanderers. I also think of my elderly friends and family who are now shut out from society because they don’t have computers or smartphones and their cheque books and bank visits and even telephone customer assistants have been abolished. The most polar and dysfunctional version is a Ritualistic Deviant who performs mystic rites and magic in some padded cell obsessive-compulsively. Some are the archtypical ‘crazy cat ladies’. They’ve been socialised to prize a now redundant repetitive compulsion even if it never earns them value in return; They are an obsolete model. I also think of the old Labour Unionists and workers who would show up to work, do as they were told, watch the clock, punch in, punch out, go home and drink all weekend. They’d work a legacy job in some protected industry and ignore the warnings that it was doomed then act surprised when the axe fell that their Ritualism didn’t work any more. Now they were unemployed and didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t learn new skills to adapt or read the writing on the wall. Ref. 1981: Rixen, AHNZ.

In COVID Hysteria, Ritualism Deviants/Slave Culture are a vast majority of our population which is why the hysteria was possible. They are the useful idiots that the Innovators needed in order to become the new Conformity. The typical Ritualistic Deviant has adopted, bit by bit, all the postures demanded by the Conformity including being jabbed, wearing masks, social distancing, self-isolating, locking down, getting tested, shaming people to do all of the above etc. However, as much as they accept every mainstream institutional means they never have been or ever will be on board with the Conformity/Victimhood Culture. The Ritualistic New Zealanders are not Politically Correct, not Woke. At the same time that they line in masks for shots of sugar water in the arm they are angry about things like Offence Culture and Nanny State. Angry about New Zealand names being changed to Maori ones, disgusted by the ostentatious use of academic Maori talk in the TV news and weather reports. They go through the Rituals in part because they want to believe they’re still part of the Conformity, the in-group. Most of all though they obey the Conformity because they don’t want to have to accept that what they are now is part of a deviant group or all the abuse and hate directed at all of these right now

So much for the different possible groupings in society and how we do, indeed, see them expressed during these times of COVID Hysteria. My prediction is that a new intersectional Innovation Deviant will form up eventually as a Reaction Formation to the current Conformity. Given what it will be reacting against, Woke PC Outrage Industrial Complex, it will come out of a similar crucible as Classical Liberalism once did after Cromwell’s Woke Protectorate of the C17th. That’s something to look forward to but it’s not even a glint in its parent’s eye so far. The current Conformity will not make way for the next one until the Ritualistic group stops going along to get along. There will be a schism in the near future as the Slave Culture realises that the Victimhood Culture Conformity has lied about being able to protect them and they then be overthrown by the next Innovation. News headlines already indicate that the current State is unable to protect the people and violent crime is on the rise while police are re-deployed to enforcing COVID policy in preference to crimes. The facade is crumbling every day.

So many New Zealanders have been displaced into an normless/anomic state now and their denial of it is synonymous with Clown World. The old Conformity is never coming back despite the unthinking faith of the Ritualistic Deviants who represent the vast majority right now. Instead, something better, a new Conformity in a post-Woke world is on the way. It will be a crisis and resolution of crisis, a Fourth Turning. One of the chief satisfactions will be to see the present Conformity relegated once more to the ranks of Merton’s definition of ‘deviant’. Many of those who once ruled in the Woke Kingdom will be relegated to Retreatists or Ritualistics and they will not be able to over-cook our culture any more.

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