Liquid Life

1. Liquid Modernity: Life in Constant Flux and Uncertainty

‘Liquid life’ is a kind of life that tends to be lived in a liquid modern society.

Rapid change. Liquid modernity describes a society where conditions change faster than habits can solidify. Life cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long, as individual achievements and strategies quickly become obsolete. Learning from past experience is often ill-advised due to rapid, unpredictable shifts.

Constant uncertainty. This environment creates a precarious life filled with uncertainty. Acute worries include being caught unprepared, failing to keep up, being left behind, or being stuck with outdated possessions or skills. Trustworthy calculations and foolproof prognoses are increasingly difficult.

Speed is safety. Like skating on thin ice, safety in liquid modernity is found in speed. One must run with all strength just to stay in the same place, avoiding consignment to the "rubbish bin" of the obsolete. This constant motion is driven by the fear of expiry rather than the pull of imagined future wonders.

2. Precariousness and Disposability Define Liquid Life

Among the arts of liquid modern living and the skills needed to practise them, getting rid of things takes precedence over their acquisition.

Swift endings. Liquid life is a succession of new beginnings, but the most challenging moments are the swift, painless endings necessary for these new starts. The focus shifts from acquiring possessions to the skill of disposing of them efficiently when they lose desirability or usefulness.

Waste production. The waste-disposal industry takes a commanding position in this economy. Society's survival depends on the speed with which products are turned into waste and removed. Nothing is exempt from disposability, and steadfastness or stickiness are seen as dangers.

Creative destruction. Liquid life proceeds via "creative destruction," but this destroys other forms of life and the humans practicing them. It's a global game of musical chairs where the stake is temporary rescue from being excluded and consigned to waste. Success often belongs to those light, sprightly, and volatile individuals comfortable with disorientation and absence of itinerary.

3. Individuality Becomes a Mandatory, Contradictory Task

In a society of individuals everyone must be individual; in this respect, at least, members of such a society are anything but individual, different or unique.

Universal must. In liquid modernity, being an "individual" means being unlike anyone else, yet this is a demand enforced by society itself. To be individual means conforming to the universal norm of being different, creating an infuriating paradox where the sole truly individual act would be to not try to be individual.

Self-referential task. Individuality is perceived as an intrinsically self-referential task, seeking the "real me" unaffected by outside pressures. However, this search often leads to mass-produced, factory-made self-assembly kits peddled in a global fair, where uniqueness is recognized only when converted into the most common currency.

Costly pursuit. Individuality is a task set by society but performed individually using individual resources. This pursuit is self-contradictory and impossible to fulfill, yet society provides means to live with this impossibility. Consumerism offers a "how-to" response, but the race for individuality costs money, polarizing those who can afford the tokens of distinction from those who cannot.

4. Consumerism Reshapes Identity and Relationships

The struggle for uniqueness has now become the main engine of mass production and mass consumption.

Engine of market. The yearning for uniqueness is enlisted in the service of mass production and consumption. To fuel this, the consumer economy requires fast-aging objects, instant obsolescence, and rapid rotation of goods, leading to excess and waste. Uniqueness is measured by the difference between "up to date" and "out of date."

Identity badges. Denizens of the liquid modern world obsessively explore shops for ready-made, legible identity badges. They hope to find tokens to bring their selves up to date, fearing the moment a badge of pride turns into shame. The market thrives on preventing the fulfillment of desires, focusing on extinguishing old ones to clear space for new shopping escapades.

Relationships as commodities. Consumer patterns extend to interhuman relationships. Partnerships, like goods, require constant attention but consumers lack the skills for long-term commitment. Relationships are increasingly viewed through a market lens, leading to short-lived connections and a search for painless, instant terminations when satisfaction wanes.

5. The Body Transformed into a Consumable Project

The consumer’s/consuming body is ‘autotelic’, its own purpose and a value in its own right; in the society of consumers, it also happens to be the ultimate value.

Ultimate value. In consumer society, the body becomes an end-value, the ultimate purpose of life pursuits. Its well-being, defined by sensations, pleasures, and joys, is the primary objective. This focus makes the body a source of perpetual anxiety, as standards of "fitness" are limitless and constantly shifting.

Fitness as status. "Fitness" replaces "health" as the certificate of belonging. It refers to the body's capacity to receive and transmit sensations, its absorptive capacity for pleasures. Unlike health, fitness has no upper limit and is defined by the absence of limit, making the struggle for it a never-ending compulsion or addiction.

Anxiety and profit. Marketing experts capitalize on body-related anxiety, promising reduction or elimination of fear through consumption. However, this anxiety must be constantly reinvigorated to keep the consumer market thriving. The body's surface and apertures become sites of acute ambivalence, leading to phenomena like eating disorders and the "culture war" around issues like obesity.

6. Fear and Insecurity Redefine the Urban Landscape

From being a relatively safe place... the city has become associated... more with danger than with safety.

Substitute targets. Unable to control the pace and direction of change, people focus on minimizing personal risk. This leads to elaborate precautions against perceived dangers like disease, crime, or environmental threats, often finding substitute targets for diffuse fears.

Self-perpetuating fear. Defensive actions, like fortifying homes or driving SUVs, reaffirm and produce a sense of disorder, making the world seem more treacherous and prompting more defensive actions. Fear becomes self-perpetuating and a source of commercial and political capital.

Cities of fear. Cities, historically shelters, are becoming sources of danger. Strangers, embodying risk, mix in close proximity. The war against insecurity is waged inside the city, marked by defensive architecture like gated communities and fortified corporate buildings, transforming public spaces into controlled areas.

7. Culture Becomes Ephemeral, Measured by Market Value

An object is cultural in as far as it outlives any use that might have attended its creation.

Management shift. The idea of "culture" was born as a term for managing human thought and behavior. Historically, culture creators and managers had a sibling rivalry, both aiming to change the world. However, contemporary managers, acting as agents of market forces, apply consumer-market criteria to culture.

Instant obsolescence. Present-day criteria prioritize instant consumption, gratification, and profit, demanding cultural creations legitimize themselves by current market value. This clashes with culture's nature, which aims for durability and transcends immediate use or need.

Branding over substance. The fate of cultural creations is decided by prospective clients, sales, ratings, and box-office returns. Success is often linked to the power of branding and logos rather than intrinsic merit. Cultural products, like other commodities, are increasingly enlisted in short-lived "projects" with "use-by" dates, prioritizing "maximal impact and instant obsolescence."

8. From Martyrs and Heroes to Victims and Celebrities

In the liquid modern, consumer society settled in the affluent part of the globe has no room for either martyrs or heroes – since it undermines, derogates from and militates against the two values that prompted their demand and supply.

Changing ideals. Liquid modern consumer society undermines the values of long-term goals and collective well-being that motivated martyrs (sacrificing present for salvation/truth) and heroes (sacrificing individual for group/cause). It promotes instantaneous gratification and individual happiness instead.

Victimhood and compensation. Suffering is increasingly seen as avoidable and unjustified, requiring a culprit and potentially compensation. This culture of victimhood-and-compensation echoes ancient vendetta but is mediated by the market, allowing monetary settlement while often leaving underlying causes intact.

Celebrity notoriety. Celebrities, known for their "well-knownness," replace martyrs and heroes as prominent figures. Their fame derives from notoriety and frequency of mention, not deeds. They provide a fragile glue for ephemeral, imaginary communities, perfectly suited to liquid modernity's episodic nature and lack of lasting commitment.

9. Education Shifts to Lifelong Learning and Forgetting

It is only with the entry into liquid modern times that the ancient wisdom lost its pragmatic value and people concerned with learning and the promotion of learning known by the name of ‘education’ had to shift their attention from ballistic to smart missiles.

Continuous adaptation. In liquid modernity, education must be continuous and lifelong. The rapid pace of change means knowledge and skills quickly age. Like "smart missiles," individuals must constantly learn and, crucially, forget outdated information to adapt to unpredictable, erratically moving targets (the demands of the labor market).

Market-driven learning. The market steps in to address the need for continuous learning, offering courses at a price. This commercialization deepens social divisions, as access to necessary training is uneven. The focus shifts from "education" (formation) to "learning" (skill acquisition), often prioritizing vocational skills for economic competitiveness.

Abdication of responsibility. This shift is often framed as "lifelong learning" or "empowerment," but can serve to "subsidiarize" responsibility for skill selection and consequences of wrong choices onto individuals. It allows the state to abdicate responsibility for providing quality education and exacerbates socio-economic inequalities.

10. Thinking Critically in the Dark Times of Liquid Life

We live in what – following Hannah Arendt and through her Bertold Brecht – can properly be called ‘dark times’.

Loss of public light. Dark times occur when the public realm loses its power to illuminate affairs, replaced by credibility gaps, invisible government, and speech that obscures truth. This leads to individuals retreating from the world and public obligations into privacy and face-to-face encounters.

Alienation and conformity. Reduced to a sequence of instantaneous experiences, individuals struggle to connect with the past or future. Feeling weak and fearful, they cede to the collective, seeking shelter for personal narcissism in collective narcissism, which demands surrender of individuality for a deceptive sense of belonging.

Critique's task. Despite the challenges, the task of critical thinking remains vital. It must know why the world, which could be paradise, becomes hell. Critical theory, like a "message in a bottle," preserves the hopes of the past against relentless destruction, offering insight into entanglement and the infinitesimal freedom knowledge provides, pointing beyond the status quo.

Last updated: May 6, 2025