ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON LIQUID FEAR

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life (New York: Polity Press, 2005) (From "Introduction: On Living in a Liquid Modern World": "'Liquid life' is a kind of life that tends to be lived in a liquid modern society. 'Liquid modern' is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvigorate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long." Id. at 1. "A habitual answer given to a wrong end of behavior, to conduct unsuitable for an accepted purpose or leading to undesirable outcomes, is education or re-education: instilling in the learners new kins of motives, developing different propensities and training them in deploying new skills. The thrust of education in such cases is to challenge the impact of dilly experience, to fight back and in the end defy the pressures arising form the social setting in which the learners operate. But will the education and the educators fit the bill? Will they themselves be able to resist the pressure? Will they manage to avoid being enlisted in the service of the self-same pressures they are meant to deny? This question has been asked since ancient times, repeatedly answered in the negative by the realities of social life, yet resurrected with undiminished fore rolling every survive calamity. The hopes of using education as a mac potent enough to unsettle and ultimately dislodge the pressures of 'social facts' seems to be as immortal as they are vulnerable . . . " Id. at 12. In short, teacher, we don't need no education . . . You're just another block in the wall. From "Consumers in Liquid Modern Society": "Consumer society rests its case on the promise to satisfy human desires in a way no other society in the past could do or dream of doing. The promise of satisfaction remains seductive, however, only so long as the desire stays ungratified; more importantly, so long as there is a suspicion that the desire has not been truly and fully ratified. Setting the targets, low, assuring each access to goods that meet the targets, as well as a belief in objective limits to ;genuine' and 'realistic' desires--these would sound the death knell of consumer society, consumer industry and consumer markets. It is the non-satisfaction of desires, and a firm and petrol belief that each act to satisfy them leaves much to be desired and can be bettered, that are the flywheels of the consumer-targeted economy." Id. at 80. Thus, the iPhone 700, which came out last week and which you purchased this morning, is already a disappointment because the iPhone 7 just might be out next year. Or, that dress is so last week.).