The Era of Liquid Modernity

Is it possible that the sheer volume of choices available to us today is making us less committed to everything?

The sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, coined the phrase Liquid Modernity, as if we’ve transitioned from a solid to a liquid. It seems appropriate. It’s a metaphor to describe the condition of constant mobility and change he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society. To put it more simply, it’s a general lack of commitment to anything. Everything today is liquid. Everything today is fungible, interchangeable. When things get hard, we simply quit and do something easier. When things get boring we simply stop and change directions. When things get messy we simply wash our hands of it and walk away.

Three Channels and a Dose of Patience

When I was growing up we had three channels on the television. If you didn’t like what was being broadcast you simply watched and waited for the next show. It was often painful, but necessary. Today we have Netflix. Literally thousands of programs playing whenever and wherever you want. Of particular note, Netflix recently changed their algorithm to reflect the liquidity of it’s viewers.

Netflix is using its new algorithm to calculate their top ten “most viewed” list. In the new metric, a “view” counts if an account watches at least two minutes of a movie or series.

Think about that for a minute. We’ve become so fluid in our decision making that two-minutes has become our metric for commitment. So, the Netflix Top Ten list is actually the top ten shows that were watched for at least two minutes. That’s just long enough to realize that the show is foreign, subtitled and overdubbed in English before you turn it off.

The Twitterverse

Our opinions have also been reduced to pithy 240 character missives on Twitter cause that’s about the extent of our attention span. It’s the equivalent of opening your window, screaming at your neighbor and quickly slamming the window shut.

The Mainstream Media

The Cable News channels have added to this liquid modernity. What used to lead a news cycle for days is now exhausted in a few hours. Donald Trump used Twitter during his Presidency to speed up the news cycle even faster. During his Presidency the news moved faster than ever, as his Tweet from today would, literally, “trump” his tweet from yesterday. The news media went scrambling from one topic to another, like a nine year old boy who forgot to take his ADD meds. It was a maddening, yet masterful, manipulation of the news media. And, it exacerbated an already liquid discourse.

The Liquid Career

This fluidity is leaking over into nearly every aspect of our lives, especially our career aspirations. Liquid Modernity is to simply abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities at-will. As if life is comprised of a series of frequent pivots and tacks, like a sailboat constantly changing its heading to gain the most advantage from the wind.

But, that constant pivoting restricts ones ability to reach a state of flow. As a Yoga aficionado I’ve learned that yoga is most rewarding when you reach a state of flow. That is, a series of yoga postures which, when practiced efficiently, yield a sense of fluid physical motion or flow. Each posture flows effortlessly into the next with seemingly little thought or effort. that takes years of practice and intense ficus to achieve.

According to Bauman. “a young American with a moderate level of education expects to change jobs at least eleven times during his or her working life — and the pace and frequency of change are almost certain to go on growing before the working life of the present generation is over.” Don’t like your current Manager, just quit and find something new. Hundreds of strangers will laud your upward mobility and fluidity on LinkedIn. An instant jolt of dopamine confirms your brilliance.

Liquid Commentary

Our commentators today are also quick to claim the “end” of something. (See also post-racial, post-feminist, post-carbon, post-human, post-family, etc.) David Brooks recently claimed the death of the nuclear family in a lengthy piece in The Atlantic magazine. Here’s a quote from that piece:

“The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.” The article opines that “Americans are are now groping to build new kinds of family and find better ways to live.” As if the nuclear family has simply run it’s course. And, since the divorce rate is high, and marriage is notoriously difficult, that we should simply abandon the family unit altogether. But, abandon it for what? Perhaps when you abandon your wife and children for your research assistant 23 years your junior the nuclear family seems fleeting.

In my experience, anything worth doing takes time. Having a relationship or friendship takes time. Developing a career takes time. Committing to a cause takes time. Making a baby takes time, although sometimes the first one takes less than nine months. And, all these things take discipline and commitment, not liquidity and flippancy.

The Liquid Overnight Success

We tend to see our modern icons as overnight successes. Take Elon Musk, as an example. He is the richest man on the planet at a net worth of $304B. Musk left South Africa, arriving in Canada in June 1989, and lived with a second-cousin in Saskatchewan for a year,working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill. He later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He enrolled in grad school at Stanford University. He dropped out of Stanford after two days, deciding instead to join the Internet boom and launch an Internet startup.

But, his first startup was formed around 1995. While Tesla seems like an overnight success, he joined the company in 2004 or 18 years ago. Hardly an overnight success story. And, having recently driven a Tesla one can only marvel at the engineering genius of the Tesla. I’m certain that Musk had many frustrating roadblocks along the way. Many opportunities to “throw in the towel” and do something easier.

“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” — Alexander Hamilton

In the post covid world, I’m hopeful that we will revisit our liquidity. That we will reassess our institutions, like marriage and church and career and family. That we will recommit to solid modernity. Those structures that provide stability and steadfastness in times of despair. These are the things that made America exceptional.

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