Theory: Introduction to Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity 

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

Thanks man, that's good to hear! What are you guys working on?

Awesome! I think these metaphors are pretty essential to understanding the world today.

Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it. It sounds like it's going to be a really cool paper. Bauman's thought is very interesting and I think highly insightful with respect to modern life.

Zygmunt Bauman is a stalinist and communist murderer

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

Glad it was helpful!

Yeah, Bauman has had a big influence on my thinking. Really important, critical stuff. Baudrillard too really understood the present moment. This is a cool idea, thanks!

Thank you! And, definitely--I think Bauman really articulates some profound and deeply necessary and useful insights here.

You're very welcome

Thank you! There's a lot of insight in Bauman.

Absolutely! Knowledge is power. Understanding where the uncertainty comes from provides possibilities for its alleviation.

Oh 😞 why??? He's very intelligent!

@@NirnaethMV he used to be a communist back in the 50' and was very active in building communist regime in Poland. He wusued to act against the intrest of people that (according to the modern histrocial narration at least) are heroes, therefore, he is now an anti-hero.

@@rupertbambarya2829 Oh my god... He should definitely write lyrics for Nergal. Two outcast creatives can achieve only so much together.

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for more great stuff!

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland. This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

Thank you for watching! Bauman is really important IMO.

I do think there are some definite connections to stuff like Fisher's Capitalist Realism. I'll probably do a video on that subject in the near future as well. As far as the multitude idea--I think that's an interesting hypothesis. And, yeah, I think that this sort of... obsessive self-concern, to the point of being even sort of solipsistic, does have something to do with, like, the depoliticization and disempowering of the global 'multitude'. But! I actually think that there's a bigger problem here as well. And this is one the big most important videos I want to make about theory. Concerning, say, psychopolitics and class narcissism. :)

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

In what part did you think it was similar to Fisher's capitalist realism??

100%

The sort of staple I'm mostly drawing on is Liquid Modernity. But some of the foundational concepts for it and another great one is the Postmodernity and its Discontents. Thanks for watching and reaching out!

Zygmunt Bauman is a stalinist and communist murderer

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

I have heard of it, and I think John David Ebert is great. Actually, I'm doing a series on Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy also, and he is thanked in the front of the book. Had something to do with the translation or editing or something. Very cool. I haven't read Hypermodernity yet, but I'd like to, and I'm confident it's worth reading. I've read a couple of JDE's books, and all the stuff he used to have on... culture-discourse? He's a little nutty, but every genius is.

Zygmunt Bauman is a stalinist and communist murderer

@@midianwolf1502 scary shit yo

There might be some truth to that. But even if it were in some sense an accurate sort of.. psychological characterization, that doesn't in itself really constitute a refutation, right?

@@thinkculture6106 Zygmunt Bauman was one of the founders of the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . He was the commander - major of the communist Internal Security Corps (KBW) dealing with the prosecution and murder of Polish patriots : Polish soldiers of the natinal army (AK) , Polish soldiers of the anti-communist resistance movement , and all Poles opposing the Sovietization of Poland. I am asking you to watch this short video about the communist apparatus of terror in post-war Poland .ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

Thanks for watching!

I do think it's pretty horrifying, lol. And, yeah, there's still a lot in his work for me to ponder too. The Wu-wei I guess Is "無爲"? Meaning something like, 'effortless action'? It's a Taoist principle. The moving with the current in a river thing might've been just a way I heard it explained before, rather than having some literal connection to the words? I'm not sure. But in any case, this idea of 'effortless action' I think relates here, and does relate to this 'go with the flow' expression. The point is not to be hard, not to come up with a clear goal and push for it, etc. But to effortlessly adapt to the stream of events, adapt, be malleable.. Wu-wei then as a kind of mantra for success in liquid modernity. Even identity seems increasingly to follow this principle. Do the words/does the phrase have any other meaning/connations maybe? The last two points I think are connected. I think we can understand this Individual Freedom^-->Insignificant choice^ as referring to a few different processes maybe. One, that...increasing individuation/isolation seems to result in depoliticization. That if everyone is making individual choices, working on themselves, then that means a reduction in the sense of like a collective purpose, the idea of.. democratic collective self-government, etc., the possibility of collective action and agency. Also, I think this endless multiplication of [consumer] choices means that we're stuck forever deciding things that are irrelevant. The choices become smaller and smaller in significance as more and more, smaller, distinctions have to be made in order to generate these choices. And then I also think of the 'paradox of choice'. Which is an important concept for me generally. And that's like, a lot of choices doesn't really make us feel free and empowered, it makes us feel bogged down and anxious. Weighed down by the... responsibility. I don't want to have to decide between 1,000 books, 1,000 chairs for my office, desks, monitors, computers, mice, pens, pen holders, cameras, etc. In the US, healthcare stuff works like this. The 'we need to be free to pick our own healthcare/doctors' stuff seems a little absurd to me. 'Picking' a doctor here in NYC means, what? I have to sit around researching the hundreds of different clinic, thousands of different doctors, finding each of their ratings, balancing that with distance from me, but maybe the train goes there so it's sort of closer, but what's the specialty of this physician, okay now we look at costs, who's in network, with what insurance, which plan is best, etc., etc. It's actually a total nightmare. I don't want to pick. I don't want the freedom. Back home was good for this. One hospital in the area. That's where you go. And there's a small number of doctors, and they've been working with the same patients since they were kids. Choice is eliminated. And so is anxiety.

Zygmunt Bauman is a stalinist and communist murderer

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

*puts into perspective

100% Absolutely. A very important area of application there.

lmao, I didn't remember his last name immediately, but my wife filled me in. I hope that's a good thing! She was thinking maybe the similarity is that he's an intellectual. I think maybe more like, we're both sort of mumbly and sleepy sounding? I have had people tell me my voice is pretty calm/ing. And, thank you, I'm glad it was helpful! I think that sounds like a pretty fair synopsis. They definitely go together, but I'm not sure exactly how. Ambivalence to some degree is normal, but liquid modernity is sort of like... an historical epoch of hyper-ambivalence. The fluidization of all conceptual boundaries, institutional boundaries, identity formations, etc. Nothing gets settled, given a determinate meaning... Maybe ambivalence is, like, one particular dimension of liquid modernity? Because the latter is also about, like, geographic fluidity and mobility, right? The, like, cosmopolitan nomad on the one hand and the refugee on the other. Placelessness, as well as semantic confusion. Etc. ? It's an interesting question.

Zygmunt Bauman is a stalinist and communist murderer

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html Zygmunt Bauman was one of the founders of communist terror in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was

Zygmunt Bauman created the communist terror apparatus in post-war Poland . This short video shows what this murderous Soviet machine was ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1p9KxU1YFl8.html

I'm not sure about grad-level sociology, maybe, but I never heard anyone else talk about Bauman in my Phil program. Or at any time in undergrad. I think a friend of mine that did Soc at Stanford has read him and we've discussed him before, but I'm not sure? I think he's pretty obscure here. And that's unfortunate. Actually, from what I understand Brazil has a pretty great intellectual culture. And maybe very Euro, not so much Anglo influenced? Like, in my program the people who were biggest into and best on Lacan were all Brazilians. One of them was IMO maybe the most impressive person in the program. Very smart guy.

@@thinkculture6106 Yea, Brazil has been greatly influenced by French intellectuals and more progressive ideas, but it's a little more complicated than that lol After the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) supported by the USA against the URSS and leftist ideologies, left wing ideas got really popular in the country. But today, after the "Jornadas de Junho", which in english it's called V for Vinegar (an event that I think can be compared to the capitol attack, but not by the same reasons) the population got polarized. It seems like there's a growing movement on towards a more Anglo philosophy within the right. Before all of that positivism took a huge role on the formation of the our Republic in 1889 and later on it got assembled with Nationalism and then fascist ideas during the Vargas Era.

Yeah I think this is a good idea. Thank you!

I think this is an interesting take, I'll have to think more about this, thank you!

@@thinkculture6106 great channel

Consider this first section of Mearsheimer's talk ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TsonzzAW3Mk.html

I watched the whole thing, actually. It was very interesting and informative and I want to watch his related NATO one too. He's talking about IR exclusively here though, right? Not so much trade? Although the two may be related, ultimately. The question he seems to be addressing is whether/how/if liberalism has to pursue hegemony? I thought it was interesting that he said that the US as a hegemonic power will be displaced by China's ascent 'unless they make a major mistake', though. They may have just made such a mistake, right? I wonder if he thinks so. I think this idea of a multipolar world order seems to be a kind of growing consensus, at least as a [near] future reality. And maybe that does provide space for what you're talking about. That something of this logic can be transposed onto the economic plane as well. I think that'd be good. But I'm not sure that it would, say, reverse the destruction of the family or anything. :( What do you think?

@@thinkculture6106 I guess I was most interested in his articulation of nationalism as the central but grossly overlooked issue in the current political debate. Sure, he was talking about IR but my point was that there needn't be anything inconsistent with nationalist economic policy at the international level and liberal economic policy domestically. But then again, my philosophy is complicated lol. I'm a Georgist economically, a nationalist globally (in fact I think at their heart everyone is, sometimes it just takes a little pressure to surface), and a libertarian domestically. I personally share many traditional Christian values, though I think trying to force these values from the top down 1) doesn't work - we tried that it was called Christendom, and 2) is the antithesis of the self-sacrificial means by which the Christian god developed followers. So, I agree that healthy families with good values are key to a healthy society. But how should such families be maintained and rebuilt? The politically conservative tendency to try to constrain this through legislation is not helpful. I think the best we can do is model what a healthy family looks like in an open and inviting way to those who do/have not experienced this without becoming exclusive/elitist/judgmental about it, which again is another unfortunate conservative tendency. Sorry for the rant lol - I seem to have gone down a rabbit hole for this one.

I need to think a lot more about what you're saying about economics. I don't know that I'm opposed, really. I don't know what economic liberalism restrained in this way would look like or whether it's really feasible. I sort of think with Spengler that 'democracy' basically means plutocracy. So thinking about a democratic society in which we have a liberal domestic economic policy, it seems like naturally the corporations would come to dominate politics (as they have in our system). And, yeah, it always pushes at and seeks to destroy boundaries and norms. It wants to create new markets and expand to new demographics. So, like, sexual mores just get eroded. The virtues of things like stoic restraint. Capital wants you to consume. Wants you to live in immediacy. Wants to be able to create Onlyfans and Tinder and condoms and birth control, etc., and to profit from them. Everything has a value and gets put on the market. Right? Although, yeah, again, I don't know how much your Georgism affects this dynamic. And I DO tend to also want the fight to be cultural and not really legislative. I'm undecided though ultimately. And if the proper controls are in place and we can have the benefits of liberalism (and there definitely ARE benefits. It simply IS the most efficient and productive economic model) without the negatives, that'd be great. Are you familiar with the work, like, Oren Cass is doing? American Compass?

@@thinkculture6106 Thanks for putting me onto to Cass. I think he makes a lot of sense. At least you guys in the US have either no minimum wage or a comparatively very low one (I think) which would enable your manufacturing industry to kick back into gear if you were to put his foreign economic policies in place. Unfortunately, in Australia, our minimum wage is so high that the price of goods would skyrocket if we were to put these policies in place here. I'm still unsure of how his vision could be achieved within a domestic market though. Consider this example: The US closes all its borders to foreign imports, has then recalibrated its economy and is now chugging along just fine. Then, a US company develops a tastier, healthier, and considerably less production intensive alternative to sugar. If its product is allowed to compete in a free domestic market it will kill the jobs of millions in the sugar industry. If it is not, ordinary consumers are forced to continue to pay a premium if they want a sweetener (in this case sugar) just to keep the sugar industry employed. This latter situation is just redistribution dressed up in conservative garb, i.e. the personal edification they get from being a contributor to society and provider for their family. However, at the end of the day, their so-called productive contribution to society has become meaningless, as their job only exists out of state-enforced charity. It is difficult to see how Cass's view on work, personal identity and economic policy can avoid problems like this one.

Hey! Thanks for watching and commenting, my man! In general I don't... think that biographical information is ever really disqualifying for a thinker. So, I don't dismiss Heidegger due to his Nazi affiliation, and I'm not going to dismiss somebody like Bauman either. And I also primarily see my project as opening up 'Left' theory for the Right. As far as his economics, I mean, I'm primarily interested in his social psychology. Not so much the economics, except insofar as he thinks (and I agree) that the process of Capital constitutes a kind of attack on norms and traditions. I think that's true, despite the fact that I'd also say Capitalism has enriched the world and is probably the most efficient model known to man. I'm not an expert on economics, though. But, the important thing in this video with respect to capitalism is its tendency of liquefaction. Do you think that's wrong? Does him thinking that economics is a zero-sum game (or not) undermine any of his other claims or insights I was addressing? I don't see a connection, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. You tell me!

@@thinkculture6106 Maybe not a disqualification, but you have to know that he was not a professor because he was a great thinker, only because he belonged to the party. I don't know what you mean by tradition. Free market economy has such a long history that it can be considered a tradition. Economics is rooted in social psychology, it's the science of how people value goods and make decisions, and this is a psychological issue. Look up Human Action By Ludwig von Mises. Yes, his notion of economics strongly undermines his thoughts, as he bases them, like Marx, on the struggle of exploitative clauses. Marx concluded this exploitation precisely from the fact that economics is a zero-sum game, and we know that this is not true.

I mean, again, I don't really care why he was a professor. My interest in him isn't based on anything biographical. Sure, the free market is a tradition, of sorts.. But I'm talking about the culture. The traditions, norms, and institutions which constitute a culture. Did you watch the video? Haha. Norms around sexuality and marriage, for example. Capitalism parasitizes and destroys them, by nature. Even when you try to legally restrict the market activity with respect to these things, it doesn't ultimately hold. You might get the Hays Code or something, say. That's all well and good (although not to you, as this is already intervening in the 'free market'), but precisely BECAUSE, as you say, economics is rooted in human nature and human psychology, what you'll do is find the line. And go up to it over and over. You'll go to it because people are naturally libidinous. You do that enough and then people crave that and it's what they most want in their movies. Eventually there's enough public support to either de facto or de jure push that line back. Because, naturally, people crave to go beyond it. They want more. There's an addictive dimension. People are, again, 'naturally' prone to addiction. Something being natural doesn't mean it's good. Capitalism plays on our baser instincts. It uses human nature to profit. That's why you wind up with prolific, sexually suggestive advertising. It's why you get an average national diet consisting of fast food and potato chips and soda. The fact that it's 'natural' to crave and to love fatty, unhealthy, salty food doesn't at all indicate that it's good, or should be done, or even tolerated. It's natural to want to cheat on your spouse or to want to reneg on tough commitments and find a younger broad and ditch the kids, but Ashley Madison is an abomination and no-fault divorce has resulted in the annihilation of the family and all its attendant consequences. It's natural to like to be high but a nation of the stoned is not. The whole point of civilization is to RESTRAIN our bestial instincts. Our appetites. To compensate for our weaknesses. The market utilizes our 'nature', our appetites, our weakness, in order to generate profits. And, sure, to enrich society as a whole. Capitalism is very effective at that. But a rich society of debased Last Men isn't, in my mind, preferable to a poor society of noble men. That's a debate we can have. We can debate economics. I'm actually pretty ambivalent about capitalism. A lot moreso than Bauman. And I think Capitalism does good things and is responsible for good things too. But I don't see where you think it's relevant to the material I'm covering. Can you explain what specific claim or argument of his that I present in the video is based on the idea that 'economics is a zero sum game'? I don't see how that claim is related to anything he's saying here. Can you connect it for me? If you can, that undermines his argument. But if not, it's just sort of.. tangential, right?

@@thinkculture6106 I'm going on vacation for a week. I will try to refer to this comment on my return.

NP. I don't want to sound more convinced than I actually am. I think there is a debate to be had. I would be open to an argument that this kind of norm-destroying, liquefaction effect is actually caused by something else--mass culture, technology, etc.--or is just sort of a historical truism in general because of something like a general theory of cultural entropy. Etc., etc. I think maybe the entropy bit is true, and it's true that market dynamics at least facilitate that process. But I'm not 100% either way. The point is, though, that this it seems to me is up for debate at the very least. And in this video I'm talking about liquidity and the effects in terms of social psychology, largely. I don't see how whether or not he buys into Marx's view about profit and the ratio of exploitation, or the labor theory of value, or that economics is zero sum, or anything like that, relates to the material being covered here. I don't think, say, being critical of the view that economics is zero sum necessitates a rejection of the view that identity has been transformed from a given into an interminable project. Right?