On Durkheim

"What is this immaterial psychological bond that each particle is
carrying around in its head that continues to draw them back together or continues to make them act not only in their own interest but in the interest of everyone else that they perceive to be like them as well and to share some kind of identity with, or to participate in, some kind of collective consciousness with, like when we're all watching the Olympics together we're all participating in this shared event and
it is a kind of glue. There are a lot of different types of
glue. Maybe this would be a useful place to bring up the sacred and the profane; human beings, Durkheim held, experience life on two planes, one is private, mundane and utilitarian the other collective elevated and moral. These two planes are often religiously symbolized by a familiar dichotomy between the body and soul, a variation of the profane and sacred, just as the sacred is protected from the profane so the moral community is secured against the excessive egoism or utilitarianism. A society whose members were consumed by narrow self-interest and mundane activities would eventually disintegrate so the glue would be lost. The argument here is that, as individuals exclusively pursue the profane they reside within an increasingly contracted private space sharing less and less in common with one another and hence their shared way of life becomes thin and unable to generate agreement.''