Apocalyptic Party: Solidarity

When we say someone is a good person, we usually don’t mean that they’re rich, powerful or even especially clever. Across cultures, across centuries, the term has gravitated toward something else entirely—dependability, trustworthiness, a person you can rely on, maybe even build a future with. They’re not “good” in the sense of outcompeting everyone else, they’re good because you could build a society with them.

That definition didn’t come from nowhere. It wasn’t the result of a conference of elders or some ancient TED Talk laying out the metrics of moral value. It emerged organically, from societies trying to survive. A society made up of impulsive, selfish people who break contracts and hoard resources won’t last long. But if enough people are predictable, if they pull their weight, if they restrain their worst impulses, then maybe—just maybe—you can build something together.

This isn’t a moral theory. It’s a survival strategy. And the reason it feels “right” isn’t because it’s divine. It’s because societies built on those values tended to survive.

But the kind of solidarity that holds a tight-knit village together—same gods, same routines, same accents—is not the same kind that holds together a megacity, or a nation, or a digital culture. Durkheim called that older form mechanical solidarity. The unity that comes from sameness. You believe what I believe, you pray how I pray, you wear what I wear—we must be on the same side.

The problem is, modern life doesn’t work like that. We live in a world where our phone was assembled in one country, our clothes stitched in another, and our breakfast shipped from three more. We work jobs that didn’t exist a generation ago, collaborate with people whose names we might not ever bother learn, and live in neighbourhoods where no two families are quite the same. So the question becomes: what holds this kind of society together?

Durkheim’s answer was organic solidarity. Not based on sameness, but on difference. Not on shared beliefs, but on interdependence. A social glue that doesn't pretend we're all the same but recognises that despite our differences, we still rely on each other. That insight might be simple but it’s revolutionary: modern cohesion isn’t about uniformity. It’s about mutual reliance.

You can see this distinction play out in the contrast between small towns and big cities. In small towns or tight-knit rural communities, people often share the same religion, cultural background, routines and rhythms. There's a sense of familiarity—not just with faces, but with values. That’s mechanical solidarity. Social cohesion here is built on shared moral codes and a strong collective conscience. It's not necessarily political conservatism, but it is cultural conservatism—the kind that prefers tradition over disruption, cohesion over divergence. And in such places, deviation from the norm often feels like a rupture in the social fabric.

Cities, by contrast, are patchworks. People come from different places, speak different languages, and live according to different scripts. There's no single value system you can assume everyone shares. And yet, cities function. Not because everyone agrees, but because they rely on one another. The delivery driver depends on the software engineer who depends on the cleaner who depends on the nurse. That’s organic solidarity. It’s not shared belief that binds the city together, it’s interdependence.

This is why cities often skew more liberal. They have to. Living in close proximity to difference forces a kind of tolerance. It’s not always perfect, and often contested, but it’s built into the structure: urban life demands a kind of functional pluralism. You don’t have to like your neighbours, but you need the lights to work, the trains to run, the services to be delivered. That requires cooperation, not consensus.

Of course, no place is purely one or the other. Even in cities, neighbourhoods or subcultures may operate on mechanical solidarity—shared traditions, rituals, common causes. And some small towns, particularly those undergoing social or economic change, may develop forms of organic solidarity.

Durkheim thought that organic solidarity is not weaker than mechanical solidarity but it is more diffuse. It lacks the emotional immediacy of shared ritual and belief. Its collective conscience is thinner, subtler and more abstract. That makes it fragile—especially during times of disruption.

While Durkheim didn’t frame it in quite these exact terms, the contrast between emotional and rational solidarity is helpful today. Mechanical solidarity feels natural. It has rituals. It has gods. It tells stories about who we are and who the enemy is. It’s powerful because it’s visceral.

Organic solidarity, by contrast, often requires explanation. It asks you to feel allegiance to people you may never meet and to imagine your wellbeing as inseparable from theirs. It’s less about shared beliefs and more about shared systems. It appeals to reason, structure, mutual benefit—and that makes it less intuitive, especially in moments of panic or decline.

Because when things fall apart, people don’t usually crave nuance. They crave certainty. A story where the lines are clear and the bad guys are obvious. And so, in a crisis, mechanical forms of solidarity tend to resurface. Not because they’re better suited to the world we live in, but because they’re easier to believe in.

That’s where religion often re-enters the picture. Not as theology, but as a form of social regulation. It explains why things are the way they are. It tells people how to act. It ritualises fear and channels anger and in its millenarian forms, it offers an elegant script: things are getting worse, someone is to blame, and a saviour is coming.

We can see these scripts play out in politics, media and even in tech. They promise renewal without requiring the hard work of mutual adjustment. They dramatise decline and offer redemption, but only through purification and only through exclusion.

Durkheim saw this as a danger. Not because he rejected solidarity based on shared values, but because he believed modern societies needed new moral frameworks—frameworks that could support diversity and complexity without fragmenting into chaos. Organic solidarity, if it’s to work, needs its own stories. Its own symbols. Its own sacred rituals. Not to flatten difference, but to make difference livable.

This is the cultural challenge of our time. To invent new ways of feeling connected, not in spite of our differences, but through them. To build rituals that affirm cooperation. To create moral narratives that hold people together without demanding sameness.

Durkheim never claimed this would be easy. In fact, he warned that the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity is dangerous precisely because it loosens the bonds of the past before new ones are fully formed. People don’t just need each other materially—they need to feel like they belong to something. And if that need isn’t met with mutual recognition, it will be met with exclusion.

Recognising our interdependence is not a weakness, but the beginning of a new kind of strength. It’s the realisation that the future of solidarity might not depend on who we are, but on what we’re willing to build together.

So the next time someone talks about the good old days, the return of tradition, or the need to purify society before it can be saved—remember our buddy Durkheim. The true test of a society isn’t how tightly it can cling to the past, but how courageously it can invent its future.