Polish sociologist (1925-2017)
To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
State of Crisis
Circular reasoning is infallible even if not exactly logical, and this is why so many of us so often resort to it--not so much to resolve baffling problems, but to be absolved of the obligation to worry about them.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?
Unlike 'real relationships', 'virtual relationships' are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
The Contemporary Bauman
And the enticement to seek a rose without thorns is never far away and always difficult to resist.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds
Ideally, nothing should be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment till death do us part, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires considered ultimate. There ought to be a proviso 'until further notice' attached to any oath of loyalty and any commitment. It is but the volatility, the in-built temporality of all engagements that truly counts; it counts more than the commitment itself, which is anyway not allowed to outlast the time necessary for consuming the object of desire.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Globalization: The Human Consequences
A good society is a society which believes that it is not good enough; that it is the task of the collectivity to insure individuals against individually suffered misfortune; and that the quality of society is measured by the quality of life of its weakest, just like the carrying power of a bridge is measured by its weakest pillar.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
"Ziggy Stardust", New Humanist, May 31, 2007
What happens is never unpredictable: there are always breaches, carelessness, incompetence, omissions, which have not prevented the occurrence.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
State of Crisis
Man is in his short sojourn on earth equal to God in His eternity.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
The Art of Life
Globalization is the last failed hope that, somewhere, there still exists a land where one can escape and find happiness.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity
People are cast in the underclass because they are seen as totally useless; as a nuisance pure and simple, something the rest of us could do nicely without. In a society of consumers -- a world that evaluates anyone and anything by their commodity value -- they are people with no market value; they are the uncommoditised men and women, and their failure to obtain the status of proper commodity coincides with (indeed, stems from) their failure to engage in a fully fledged consumer activity. They are failed consumers, walking symbols of the disasters awaiting fallen consumers, and of the ultimate destiny of anyone failing to acquit herself or himself in the consumer's duties.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Consuming Life
Th agony of culture is therefore doomed to eternal continuation; by the same token, man, since endowed with the capacity of culture, is doomed to explore, to be dissatisfied with his world, to destroy and to create.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Culture as Praxis
Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman
What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Liquid Modernity
Our vulnerability is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
The Art of Life
The problem is, eternity is barred to humans, and so humans, all too painfully aware of that and entertaining little hope of appealing against that verdict of fate, seek to stifle and deafen their tragic wisdom in a hubbub of frail and fleeting pleasures. This admittedly being a false calculation--for the same reason which prompted it (that tragic wisdom can never be chased or conjured away for good)--they condemn themselves, whatever their material wealth, to perpetual spiritual poverty: to continuous unhappiness.... Instead of seeking the way to happiness within the limits of their predicament, they take a long detour, hoping that somewhere along the route their odious and repulsive destiny may be escaped or fooled--only to land back in the despair that prompted them to start on their voyage of (dearly wished for, yet unattainable) discovery. The only discovery humans can possibly make on that voyage is that the route they have taken was but a detour that sooner or later will bring them back to the starting line.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
The Art of Life
If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights 'real' and keep them in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival can only be their joint achievement.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age