ABSTRACT
The loss of cultural diversity in the face of economic globalisation or political persecution not only results in the loss of cultural identity and diversity but the growth of humankind’s fastest growing disease, anomie, the loss of those cultural reference points that make life worth living. People’s behaviour depends on how they perceive their situation: they define their own reality. Social learning is embedded in specific cultures in which people live. Anomie is the consequence of the fact that the necessary time for social learning is missing. Anomie indicates an anarchic state of crisis-prone uncertainty affecting a broad segment of the population. The term anomie has been widely used to describe social change to date predominantly in Western societies as they move from traditional forms to industrialised and further to post-modern. A little anomie makes society less rigid, too much anomie may be the beginning of the end of society.
