Liquid Modernity

Bowser

Namaste
Valued Senior Member
So I wonder where we may find ourselves in 20 years from now. With the passing of social and personal identity, will we become soulless robots? Or will a new identity arise to replace the old, a gypsy of sorts, one who traverses international and cultural boundaries.
As I understand it, Liquid Modernity is a theory of the Globalized Economy and it's impact on culture and individualism.

"Zygmunt Bauman, who introduced the idea of liquid modernity, wrote that its characteristics are about the individual, namely increasing feelings of uncertainty and the privatization of ambivalence. It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity, where a person can shift from one social position to another in a fluid manner. Nomadism becomes a general trait of the 'liquid modern' man as he flows through his own life like a tourist, changing places, jobs, spouses, values and sometimes more—such as political or sexual orientation—excluding himself from traditional networks of support, while also freeing himself from the restrictions or requirements those networks impose.

Bauman stressed the new burden of responsibility that fluid modernism placed on the individual—traditional patterns would be replaced by self-chosen ones.[8] Entry into the globalized society was open to anyone with their own stance and the ability to fund it, in a similar way as was the reception of travellers at the old-fashioned caravanserai.[9] The result is a normative mindset with emphasis on shifting rather than on staying—on provisional in lieu of permanent (or 'solid') commitment—which (the new style) can lead a person astray towards a prison of their own existential creation.
Wikipedia.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_modernity
 
With the passing of social and personal identity, will we become soulless robots?

The passing of social and personal identity is a problematic presupposition; perhaps your framework for that transition makes it seem more inevitable, but what you're trying to deal with, here, is a matter of macroeconomics as both driver and expression of sociopolitic.

Think of how many times within the current macroeconomic framework people miss this or that transition; newspapers and the internet are a great example, but a lot of companies missed the realities of the internet. The individual mandate is another. Both struggle to work within traditional frameworks instead of establishing new ones; thus far, any illusion of new framework has been just that, an operating shell within the traditional framework.

And within this framework lie pathways, rather quite accessible and possible, by which the passing of identity you describe becomes inevitable. There is some historical irony in that it was during my lifetime more communitarian notions—e.g., communism—identified with the specter of general identity erasure, yet it will be our statist, post-capitalist cult that actually brings such outcomes. Then again, given the amount of microerasure our society has demanded over the years, perhaps our fears of macroerasure engage a self-fulfilling neurotic prophecy.

But that all depends on what one means by the passing of social and personal identity, and what you present reads like economic dislocation and reaction thereunto.
 
The frame of reference shifts as the economic situation moves to a broader economy. Where I once worked in production years back, I now find myself working in the service industry, simply because the former has been outsourced. Where working for a company was once a 20-30 year endeavor, it is now transient and contractual for short periods. I find it less secure but also offering more freedom to explore opportunities. It does have an affect on the mindset. If I were not connected to family, I would be moving about.

I am a bit concerned for my children and their future. Will they have what I had: a home, a family, and a measure of security? With a rapidly shifting culture, where will they find community and their place?
 
Will they have what I had: a home, a family, and a measure of security? With a rapidly shifting culture, where will they find community and their place?

One way of looking at it is to consider the last several decades worth of societal decisions undertaken ostensibly in the name of promoting such American-values outcomes as home, family, and financial security, and considering how many of them were just schemes to redistribute wealth upward.

In the context that the subsequent generation won't have what you did, a large part of that is your doing.

Look outside the United States. You know, I can reach back two decades and find an Australian bartender named Isaac having a dispute about freedom, necessity, opportunity, and security with an American government agent in Hong Kong—a scene in a video game—and the underlying pitch sounds familiar and relevant in your context. Isaac, in this scene, was denouncing pretenses of democracy, as owning property and spending money were the only true freedoms. Less secure but offering more freedom to explore opportunities is an apt description of what our society has been building while pretending to do something else. Offering more freedom to explore opportunities, in such a context, is nothing more than a sales pitch for oligarchic economic dislocation and deprivation.
 
Offering more freedom to explore opportunities, in such a context, is nothing more than a sales pitch for oligarchic economic dislocation and deprivation.

What seems to be evolving is the pursuit of happiness that doesn't necessarily require more money. How that new idealism will pan out is yet to be seen. I don't think socialism will be the outcome though. What I see is a divide between two classes of people: those who find comfort in their possessions, and those who find freedom in minimalism. How the social structure--family, friends and community--develop in the later will be something to see.
 
I also believe people are looking for ways to work around the hegemony rather than just being another cog in the machinery.

As far as principles of economics are concerned, I ask myself which of the two affords the individual more freedom to be an individual.
 
As far as principles of economics are concerned, I ask myself which of the two affords the individual more freedom to be an individual.

Quite frankly, I see people pushing the axiom, "Question everything", to self-defeat. There is the Law of Thelema; there is the Wiccan Rede; one would have thought the former could figure out the latter, but when the Gardenerian formulation arose in the nineteenth century, the post-Qabalist and post-Christian would-be sorcerers already made the point that, yeah, some explicit marker would probably help.

Or, rather, something goes here about Mary Hume's superceding perfection and Lacy Davenport asking after the drapes.
 
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will."

Tiassa, be kind and offer links that highlight the terms being used. I want to follow your train of thought but don't have time to track every obscure reference you throw.

In a nutshell, Tiassa, we are changing, as we always have. What comes of us in the future? I don't see the structures of capitalism falling, but do believe people will start evaluating what's important over what is superficial. We might go full circle and rediscover what we had lost. The new man might become the old man of yesterday.

Tiassa...thanks for participating.
 
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