ZYGMUNT BAUMAN & LEONIDAS DONSKIS: LIQUID EVIL

Zygmunt Bauman & Leonidas Donskis, Liquid Evil (Cambridge, England, & Malden, MA: Polity, 2016) (From the back cover: "There is nothing new about evil--it has been with us since time immemorial. But there is something new about the kind of evil that characterize our contemporary liquid-modern world. The evil that characterized earlier forms of solid modernity was concentrated in the hands of states claiming monopolies on the means of coercion and using the means at their disposal to pursue their ends--ends that were at time horrifically brutal and barbaric. In out contemporary liquid-modern societies, by contrast, evil has become altogether more pervasive and at the same time less visible. Liquid evil hides in the seams of the canvas woven daily by the liquid-modern mode of human interaction and commerce, conceals itself in the very tissue of human cohabitation and in the course of its routine and day-to-day reproduction. Evil lurks in the countries black holes of a thoroughly deregulated and privatized social space in which cut-throat competition and mutual estrangement have replace cooperation and solidarity, while forceful individualization erodes the adhesive power of inter-human bonds, In its present form, evil is hard to spot, unmask and resist, It seduces us by its ordinariness and them jumps out wither warning, striking seemingly at random. The result is a social world that is comparable to a minefield: we know it is full of explosives and that explosions will happen sooner or later, but we have no idea when and where hey will occur." Query: Does that not sound like the domestic aspects of the so-called war on terror? We know that the terror is out there, and we also know that the government's circumscription of our liberties and principles in the name of fighting terror is occurring, we just don't when a terror attack will occur and what anti-freedom steps the government has taken in the name of fighting terror. Both the terror threat and the unregulated, boundless, parameter-less war against terror are, in essence, liquid-evils. The war on terror has itself become an industry. From the text: Donskis: "[W]hen it refer to liquidity of evil, I mean that we live in a deterministic, pessimistic, fatalistic, fear-and-panic-ridden society, which still tens to cherish its time-honored, albeit out-of-date and misleading, liberal-democratic credentials, The absence of dreams, alternatives and utopias is exactly what I would take as a significant aspect of the liquidity of evil. Two ideas of Ernst Bloch and Karl Mannheim proved prophetic: whereas Bloch regretted that modernity lost the warm and human spirit of a utopian dream, Mannheim strongly felt that utopia were effectively translated into political ideologies, thus stripping them of alternative visions, and confining them to the principle of reality, instead of imagination, The liquidity of evil signifies the divorce of the principle of imagination form the principle of reality, the final say being conferred upon the latter." Id. at 5. Query: What is the saying? When you lose your dreams, you die. Have we as a society lost our dream? "People gladly publicize their intimate life in exchange for momentarily having the spotlight turned on themselves: such feats of exhibition are possible only in an age of unsteady, twittering connections and of unprecedented alienation. Some of those who expose themselves on Facebook are like those whose blogs resemble burps and belches in which they, full of narcissism, heave up their crises and frustrations; others are merely temporarily overcoming their feelings of isolation and insecurity. In this sense, Facebook was indeed a brilliant and time invention, after all, Just when social separation and isolation became unendurable, when it was no longer bearable to watch bad television and to read the sadomasochistic press, Facebook came into the world." "But wit it also came possibilities of mortal danger and fatal evil For Facebook embodies, as you might say, the essence of the DIY phenomenon: do it yourself. Take off your clothes, show us your secrets--do it yourself, of you own free will, and be happy while doing it, DIY. Strip for me babe." Id. at 9. Yeah, look at me my 200 BFFs!).