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Confrontation between various Systems of Norms

Introduction

Causes of natural disasters are more than property and land damages. These disasters also bring a flood of emotions. The emotional reactions of humans may affect their recovery after these disasters and may vary due to the societal changes. People are very quick and rapid to do certain things in disasters like pilling, sandbagging, helping others etc. However, at the very same time they experience disbelief and doubts. This makes the people work for their survival during the disasters. People experience different kinds of feeling during the natural disasters like anger, panic, fear, and feeling out of control, anxiety, stress, uncertainty, generosity and cooperation with others.

There are many conflicts between various systems of norms towards the natural disasters. Some believe it due to the natural forces while some believe it as man-made trouble; however, each group faces the consequences with fear and terror. The experience after these disasters may long for several days and includes mild stress reactions. When these disasters occur people feel dazed, stunned and might experience shock and denial in the start of the disasters. The feelings and experiences change with the type of disasters that occurs.

According to Durkheim, the interests and wishes of people can be checked only by the forces that are present and creating outside of a human being. He described this external and outside force as a collective conscience. Collective conscience can be expressed as a social link that is articulated by the views, norms, standards, principles and thoughts of a society and culture.

Discussion

Collective Consciousness

The phrase collective consciousness describes the state and situation of a person in a culture and how the person realizes and views his role as a part of any group or society (Piepmeyer, 2007). Collective consciousness is a broad concept, having a number of meanings. First consider the word “collective”, it describes the social phenomenon, characteristics and distinctiveness that are made by the individuals when acting as a group. Then it can be referred to the collective effort or decision. Secondly, consider the word “consciousness” it is a sum of opinions, beliefs, attitudes and the outlooks of the world present in a group, individual or a person.

Consciousness is also related to different levels of group or individual alertness of certain issues. It can be like consciousness raising, religious consciousness, sub consciousness or class consciousness. There are basically two types of consciousness i.e. group and individual. Individual; consciousness is usually a manifestation of the collective consciousness of the group. So collective consciousness is the beliefs, ideas, attitudes and values of the group that identifies its outlook viewpoint or how things appear or are supposed to be.

Collective consciousness can be called the philosophy and ethos of group, the outlook of group towards the world and common understanding that surpass the persons, but combines the whole social group (Tembo, 1988). Collective consciousness is a term that is also highlighted by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. He referred collective consciousness as a shared belief ...