Uncertainty has become the dominant background condition in our modern capitalist society. It is inextricably linked to our economic frameworks and ideologies. Modern capitalism is characterized by three elements: (1) the discontinuous reinvention of institutions (2) specialization of production and (3) concentration of wealth without centralization of power.

 

 

Zygmunt Bauman has termed our recent normalization of perpetual uncertainty as “liquid modernity”. This state of being is in diametric opposition to the previous world order of definitive social structures and linear technological development – the world of solid modernity.

 

Bauman argues that we as a civilization have progressed from a solid collective state, to one that solely exhibits the character of liquidity. This transition, he argues, has enabled a new and unparalleled capitalistic environment for the individual and business. It has created a world where our primary activity is the procurement and curation of choice. The contagion of this activity has spread to every aspect of our lives and it is disrupting the very fabric of our lives.

 

“The truth is that progress is not such a simple matter. Although our quality of life globally has dramatically improved on average, we have also seen a concentration of wealth that has never before been witnessed in human history.”

 

 

The British philosopher John Gray has stated that capitalism has had a pernicious influence on our choice culture. He states, “The permanent revolution of the free market denies any authority to the past. It nullifies precedent, it snaps the threads of memory and scatters local knowledge. By privileging individual choice over any common good it tends to make relationships revocable and provisional. In a culture in which choice is the only undisputed value and wants are held to be insatiable, what is the difference between initiating a divorce and trading in a used car?”

  

In the new dynamic, “always-on” world (as media theorists describe it), there is no security, there is only change. As the velocity of the modern world escalates, we unintentionally remove the incubation period of social and cultural institutions. They no longer perform their duty as overarching superstructures that serve the greater good. Consequently, they cannot serve as touch points and frames upon which people can build lifelong plans. It seems that the concept of constant progress has been upended in favor of constant revolution.

 

 

Our fragmented institutions and inconsistent, episodic careers are then projected onto our family and community lives. The effect, according to the sociologist Richard Sennett, is that we began to exhibit emotional and ethical “drift”. This drift is ultimately the erosion of our ability to extract and form character and values from the interpretation of our life narrative. He states, “Narratives are more than a simple chronicle of events, they give shape to the forward movement of time, suggesting why things happen, showing their consequences.” The ever-present moments of liquid modernity reduces our ability to recognize the significance of personal events in long-term contexts.

 

“Liquid modernity embraces the distributed nature of digital villages, largely because they provide temporary certainty and a diluted form of community, and of course, our expectation for their permanence does not exist.”

 

“The fundamental contradiction between utilitarian and egalitarian values need not derail all attempts to attain the best possible measurable results given the scarce resources and finite constraints inherent in all policy making.”

 

This “liquid environment”, according to Bauman, has increased the disregard for loyalty in communities and even families. Commitment is tagged as a legacy of solid modernity and is often seen as a social/professional restriction in our brand new liquid world. Many ask why would we commit to a process when the whole world could be completely different tomorrow? Or, even more plausibly, why commit when I will be presented with a plethora of seductive options tomorrow? It seems the ability to be anywhere at any time is shattering our ability to form meaningful long-term relationships and develop meaningful life narratives.

 

It is in this situation that Sennett forms his ideas about the corrosion of character. He asks some telling questions. What do we become when the things we used to define ourselves with are no longer available to our children? How do we form values and character when the world we live in demands that we sacrifice long-term loyalty? What happens when the world prefers the chameleon rather than the committed?

 

It is partly the chaotic continuation of our professional lives that is eroding our ability to form solid domestic relationships and communities. We are, in effect, creating a nation of “domestic tourists” – people who travel through life without any fixed commitment or entrenched value system.

 

Thus, in many ways, we are becoming communities of outsiders. The system of loose ties that solely benefit the individual in a highly developed society discourages the loyalty generated by deeper bonds. It seems that the more we are disconnected and divorced from our physical communities, the more we are attracted to engage with the digital equivalents. Liquid modernity embraces the distributed nature of digital villages, largely because they provide temporary certainty and a diluted form of community, and of course, our expectation for their permanence does not exist.

 

Could it be that the ultimate end of the individual in this liquid world is the development of character as “constant reaction and crisis”, to use Sennett’s language? Rather than forming character with intent, we become derivatives of a modern uncertainty that creates and rewards the shallow veneer of adaptive character.

 

As we start to evaluate progress, we must not forget to evaluate the cultural implications of our technologies, our economic dogmas, our sense of character and identity, and crucially, the social bonds that brought us this far.