zygmunt bauman

intro’d to Zygmunt here (via fb share by seb):

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html

Since developing his theory of liquid modernity in the late 1990s – which describes our age as one in which “all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice” – he has become a leading figure in the field of sociology.

antifragile

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He has outlined his pessimistic world view in books such as 2014’s Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?, which argues that the world is paying a high price for the neoliberal revolution that began in the 1980s and that wealth has not trickled down to the rest of society. In Moral Blindness, published last year, he and co-author Leonidas Donskis warn about the loss of community in our increasingly individualistic world.

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We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. Action requires power, to be able to do things, and we need politics, which is the ability to decide what needs to be done. But that marriage between power and politics in the hands of the nation state has ended. Power has been globalized, but politics is as local as before. Politics has had its hands cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.

Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions

a nother way..via 2 convos.. as the day

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These are two values that are tremendously difficult to reconcile. If you want more security, you’re going to have to give up a certain amount of freedom; if you want more freedom, you’re going to have to give up security. This dilemma is going to continue forever. Forty years ago we believed that freedom had triumphed and we began an orgy of consumerism. Everything seemed possible by borrowing money: cars, homes… and you just paid for it later. The wakeup call in 2008 was a bitter one, when the loans dried up. The catastrophe, the social collapse that followed hit the middle classes particularly hard, dragging them into a precarious situation where they remain: they don’t know if their company is going to merge with another and they will be laid off, they don’t know if what they have bought really belongs to them… Conflict is no longer between classes, but between each person and society. It isn’t just a lack of security, but a lack of freedom.

let’s do this first: free art-ists.

for (blank)’s sake…

can’t read whole post.. ads keep freezing page.. so on 5th try.. copying all here to read

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We are in a period of interregnum, between a time when we had certainties and another when the old ways of doing things no longer work. We don’t know what is going to replace this. We are experimenting with new ways of doing things. Spain tried questioning things through the May 15 (15M) movement, when people took over public spaces, arguing, trying to replace parliamentary procedures with a kind of direct democracy. This hasn’t lasted long. Austerity policies will continue, nobody could stop them, but they could still be relatively effective in finding new ways to do things.

a nother way

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People set aside their differences for a while in the public squares for a common goal. If that goal is negative, about getting angry with someone, there is more chance of success. In a way it could have been an explosion of solidarity, but explosions are very powerful and short-lived.

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It is precisely because such movements lack leaders that they can survive, but it is also precisely because they lack leaders that they cannot convert their sense of purpose into action.

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Changing one party for another will not solve the problem. The problem is not that the parties are wrong, but that they don’t control things. Spain’s problems are part of a global problem. It’s a mistake to think you can solve things internally.

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I think we’re still following the principles of Versailles, when the idea of each nation’s right to self rule was established. But that’s a fiction in today’s world, when there are no more homogeneous territories. Today, every society is just a collection of diasporas. People join the societies to which they are loyal and pay their taxes, but at the same time, they do not want to give up their identity. The connection between where you live and identity has been broken. The situation in Catalonia, as in Scotland or Lombardy, is a contradiction between tribal identity and citizenship. They are Europeans, but they don’t want to talk to Brussels via Madrid, but via Barcelona. The same logic is emerging in almost every country. We are still following the same principles established at the end of World War I, but there have been many changes in the world.

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The question of identity has changed from being something you are born with to a task: you have to create your own community. But communities aren’t created, and you either have one or you don’t. What the social networks can create is a substitute. The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you. You feel in control. You can add friends if you wish, you can delete them if you wish. You are in control of the important people to whom you relate. People feel a little better as a result, because loneliness, abandonment, is the great fear in our individualist age. But it’s so easy to add or remove friends on the internet that people fail to learn the real social skills, which you need when you go to the street, when you go to your workplace, where you find lots of people who you need to enter into sensible interaction with. Pope Francis, who is a great man, gave his first interview after being elected to Eugenio Scalfari, an Italian journalist who is also a self-proclaimed atheist. It was a sign: real dialogue isn’t about talking to people who believe the same things as you. Social media don’t teach us to dialogue because it is so easy to avoid controversy… But most people use social media not to unite, not to open their horizons wider, but on the contrary, to cut themselves a comfort zone where the only sounds they hear are the echoes of their own voice, where the only things they see are the reflections of their own face. Social media are very useful, they provide pleasure, but they are a trap.

identity

ps in the open

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trouble with being human these days (trailer) – 2013:

we are challenged with a task.. to develop an art.. an art of living… permanently with uncertainty

today – power free from political control.. and politics w/o power..

inequality is result of how the system evolves.. – albert barabasi

his books/essays.. as message in a bottle.. sent out to sea.. with hopes that someone/somewhere required that message – that’s all it takes.. – mark davis

we need to be good to each other.. it’s as simple as that..

being with others.. being crowded in a space.. called planet

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find/follow Zygmunt:

Zygmunt Bauman (19 November 1925) is a Polish sociologist. He has resided in England since 1971 after being driven out of Poland by an anti-semitic campaign engineered by the Communist government. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Bauman is one of the world’s most eminent social theorists writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodernconsumerism and liquid modernity.

bauman institute:

http://baumaninstitute.leeds.ac.uk/

Founded by Dr Mark Davis in 2010, the Bauman Institute is an international research and teaching centre dedicated to analysing major social change around the world. During our first five years as a centre, we have secured over £330,000 in external funding to support our research activities and seen over 50 students graduate from our Masters Programmes.

Inspired by the sociological imagination of Leeds’ Emeritus Professor, Zygmunt Bauman, we aim to reflect critically upon social and economic life across the following primary research areas: money, markets, and moralities; power and resistance; time and new technologies; as well as sociology of capitalism and modernity.

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Mark Davis (founder of bauman institute)- in this doc – the trouble w/being human

http://www.beinghumanthesedays.org/

we are tasked.. to develop an art.. an art of living… permanently

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recommended his – art of life – to overdrive.. was recommending identity.. and got.. limit reached. dang.

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popular Zygmunt videos.. (playlist)

1\ the ambiance of uncertainty

migration and modernity are twin brothers

industries of modernity – (never coming to a standstill… produce a lot of redudant people.. meaning can’t be accommodated where they are .. must be on move whether they like it or not..):

1\ order building.. some people will prove to be unfitting.. have to be removed.. don’t fit your order

2\ econ progress .. possible to produce same things w/less expenditure/labor.. whenever next step made.. some people become redundant..

people with ie: triple identities… every single on move… before can grasp.. it already disappear .. the atmosphere of uncertainty.. everything may happen.. but nothing can be done..

immigrants are the natural people to be charged w/guilt of creating uncertainty.. why.. because they are the outposts of the great unknown..

migrants are only ones that attend.. they are absolutely necessary to run contemporary politics.. you can familiarize the unfamiliar…

7 min – something about them can be done… we could do with them all sorts of things.. that can’t be done with nationalities… ie: limited.. sent away… and .. govt can be seen as doing something..

9 min – the outcome… we fight each others… because victims fight victims.. and we are all victims.. when that happens.. the perpetrators can slip quietly and go scot free

2\ trouble with being human

4\ Europe in a global world – Dialogue between Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine (2010)

9 min – if i were going to dublin.. i wouldn’t start from here..

10 min – i don’t see bridge leading from international to global… perhaps it’s my lack of imagination.. but i don’t see it.. wrong point of starting…

12 min – on diff between international and global.. and being able to go through light depending on if you signed the papers..

reminding me of wikipedia account… of him talking of ridiculous details.. of b…

16 min – there are very hopeful signs.. grassroots.. perhaps solidarity will come.. but it’s a long process.. because institutions that hold power.. are not very keen

6\ love europe world of zygmunt – 25 min – not english

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The Global Factory of Wasted Humans [part 1]

holocaust.. window where you could see pictures of modernity

the refugees an extraordinary phenomenon.. a window.. to the fullness of the planet.. which i don’t understand demographically/geographically but sociologically.. the world which contains refugees as integral element

5 min – disfunctionalized human beings.. to be modern is to modernize.. to obsessively/compulsively modernize.. producing human waste.. redundant humans..

7 min – on building order..

8 min – on creating and re-ordering.. 1\ eating up.. making them like you.. or 2\ vomiting out.. exclusion

9 min – when there’s.. earning a living ness.. some will become redundant..

12 min – kicked out by order building.. could migrate to this empty land

part 2

3 min – the whole planet is modernizing now.. so there are redundant humans everywhere

5 min – before needed to produce global solutions to global problems.. doable… today.. need local solutions to global problems.. not doable..

7 min – 19-20th cent entertained idea of full employment.. if unemployment.. temporary.. of course.. out of question… never meant everybody…

part 3

1 min – neighborhood imperialism.. assimilate populations.. they become soldiers.. local resolution of global problem of human redundancy

3 min – not refugees in general.. but refugees in my own country..

6 min – on pointing out diff in camps from where they live…. refugees carry their extra territorially on their back… natural position to be scapegoated… all that arise from insecurity.. lack of safety ..

8 min – you can’t understand refugees studying local issues…

9 min – we know bad people do bad things.. real issue when good people do bad things

11 min – 1/ holocaust potential of wider society..permanent.. only in such a way can refugees be understood – liquid modernity 2\ refugee problem is not local but global..

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july 2016 – interview w aljazeera – on book – liquid fear

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2016/07/zygmunt-bauman-world-crisis-humanity-160722085342260.html

“There are two crucial values without which human life is simple inconceivable. One is security, a measure of security, feeling safe. The other is freedom, ability to self-assert, to do what you really would like to do and so on. They are both necessary. Security without freedom is slavery. Freedom without security is complete chaos where you are lost, abandoned, you don’t know what to do.

sounds like 2 needs – a and a ness…

People are looking for “magic” in leadership, which he says is a waste of time, but “understandable” in the current climate.

there is no short cut solution.. dialogue is a long process..

perhaps.. but perhaps we can hasten these convos.. cut through the small talk et al