Zygmunt Bauman: Behind the world's 'crisis of humanity' l Talk to Al Jazeera

In Western Europe it has been a summer of great change and discontent. The European Union is facing major upheaval as the United Kingdom prepares to withdraw its membership and, in the process, possibly jeopardize the makeup of the United Kingdom itself. In fact, beneath the surface, people across Europe appear to be nervous as European nations face migration and various economic uncertainties. The political landscape is changing and the feeling that old social structures are being replaced or challenged is widespread. The same goes for the United States, where the race for the White House is anything but ordinary. The political rhetoric this year is harsher and there is a sense that the country is seriously divided along race and economic prosperity.

What has led us to this situation and what are the possible scenarios in the future? One of the most prominent philosophers of our time is Zygmunt Bauman. Born in Poland 90 years ago, he has thought and written extensively about the modern era and what it is doing to us, coining the phrase liquid fear, a tangible feeling of anxiety that has only vague outlines but is still very present everywhere today in a conversation with Al Jazeera. sit down with

zygmunt

bauman

to discuss what is happening in the

world

professor

bauman

thank you for speaking to al

jazeera

in your book liquid fear

talk

s about how we live today in a state of constant anxiety about dangers that could occur without warning at any moment Why are they fighting here?

It means fear that flows in an armed court without saying about the place but it is diffuse and the problem with liquid fear unless, unlike the concrete specific danger that you know you are familiar with, is that you do not know where it will attack from, we are working. that's my best favorite philosophy or the minefield: we are aware that the field is full of explosives, but we cannot tell where there will be an explosion and when there is no solid structure around us that we can trust and that we can invest our hopes and expectations, even the most powerful governments very often cannot keep their promises, they do not have enough power to do so, your work, even in the most reputable and apparently very rich company, suddenly also disappear or warn you that they are go to bed and make my makeup redundant associations between not so fragile people are until further notice they are not until death do us part and when two people are in a similar situation and they know when they are here together because they provide mutual satisfaction now If they know that they live in constant fear, what happens if the other party, the first one, decides that it is time to give notice and thus disappears at all levels of human life.

If you have the same situation, uncertainty is impossible to predict the future and even after having made your decision after long deliberation, very careful with meticulous calculation that seems so effective and I am still not sure if you will make the right or wrong decision, but it is not much different from how it was in the past and is only limited to today , No? so in the past we had uncertainty in the past, of course, dangers where we were with us without our sisters as long as

humanity

had tinel, but it was a different story, well, in the Middle Ages there were wolves in the forest, so why Did you have to prevent your children from going? where to get up at home not to go alone to the forest danger now dangers of the ether we have what the great german pathologist ulrich called risk society risk means that in the best of cases you can calculate the probability of catastrophe but probability you know that it is a very confusing idea probability there may be 90 percent probability, but still you are in this

world

, ten percent there or somewhere else, where all the probabilities are 10 percent, but you are in stock, ten percent.

I put it up front, the world activated the state of continuous uncertainty, which makes us a three in that case. Does that help explain why some politicians like Donald Trump, for example, in the United States? Does that explain why they are so popular because they claim to have the answers the definitive answers to this uncertainty? Well, put briefly, there are two crucial values ​​without which a sensible decision human life if an insecurity is simply inconceivable one measure of security feeling safe the other is freedom the ability to assert yourself first to do what you would really like to do and so on both are necessary security without freedom is slavery freedom without security is total chaos you are lost, abandoned, not north, so you need a measure of one and dad, we are incredibly freer than our grandparents or our grandparents, but we pay the price , we have to change it for security, a good amount of values ​​​​will be delivered, now you observe.

What I call the swing of the pendulum, people found themselves easily lost, unable to act with certainty and security. What is happening today I think is a third technique of the pendulum, among other things, it means that Donald Trump, there is Trump, is out in the. center of attention because its curtain is who knows perhaps the future president of the great United States, but the same trend is seen in practically all other countries, not only the strongmen of the Native Americans, more and more people dream of becoming someone who has the courage, ambition and audacity to say give me the power and I will take responsibility for your future.

I was exactly what the Latin cells are and there are many people like them. There is a lot of political capital to make these types of promises that seemed like democracy did not happen. water phase weak democracy cannot fulfill democracy is very strong in its mouth but not in its actions but believe me and I will change the situation. America will be great again or lepen marine in France, France we are becoming great, you know, great power and we want. allowing to dismantle that power and reduce it that is one thing an answer to your question the need for a strong man strong power something that our grandparents fought against they were afraid of totalitarianism young people like you forgot what they prefer the wars in Italy, you already know by reading textbooks, you know, but you haven't experienced that, I experienced two of them, the other one, however, I think that in economic progress, in GNP growth and things like that, there are always people who win and people who lose, The dismantling of the security network was felt especially strongly by people who were at the lowest levels of the social hierarchy, people who lived in poverty or close to poverty or the so-called precariat, middle class people. that at that moment they were sure of themselves, at that moment they were comfortable but then they fear that it will not last the rest. remains at any time loses his social position Hansard such phenomena perhaps some magical magic very strong man man who is not limited by political correctness who says what everyone thinks but does not dare to express it in public but you make a miracle of course, is linked to that It's time to dream, to have such sad dreams, but in the current situation it is understandable.

One of the things he stated in one of his interviews is that he believes that other human tragedies have far surpassed the tragedies that the Jewish people have suffered. What other human tragedies are you? referring to that, we have no shortage of tragedies, really look at what is happening partly due to our great fault, what is happening in the territory we bought, our foolish politics, destabilized and stripped of the normal institutions that were necessary to bring about a relatively regular human life. It happened in Arabic, well, in Syria, in Libya, what is happening now, for many decades there was always pressure on Europe because of the very drastic differences in the standard of living in Europe and in Africa, for example, the pressure of immigrants extra economic calls, but now we have a new phenomenon again and that is why Europe, what doors are they knocking on?

Yes, but everything is acting nervously. I think there is a psychological explanation that these people who are coming now are refugees, not hungry people without bread and water, people. that yesterday They are proud of their homes, they were proud of their position in society. Well, very often, very, very educated, very well-off, etc., but now they are refugees. They lost their homes. They love their position in society. They lost everything they had worked to live on. They achieve during their life and they come here to those who know here what I mentioned before the precariat we have nightmares and if they have a very good social position I would like to continue like this I would like to continue but what if tomorrow I will learn and my companies of denial Ahmad and I want to say that my services are not necessary so we are already afraid the precariat lives by anxiety because of fear which is the most important defining mark of the precariat precariat precariat comes from the French word precariat intra carrot a free translation means to walk or Those who avoid moving to the not having solid ground are very dirty and we attribute their fear logically to the fact that somewhere in cyberspace, beyond the control of our government, not to mention our own control, there are forces that we call by the name of global global powers that they can do whatever they want, they will go on strike at any time if my job is threatened, because of the globalization process and there is a real silat, it is not nonsense to say something like that and now those people are coming from Syria and Libya, for example , and they bring bad news they bring threats from distant countries here in our backyard they suddenly appear next to us we cannot turn back you can turn your face we must dare to avoid many of them we cannot emit their presence and they make signs eyes they embody all our fears yesterday were very powerful burning their card each act has been as if we were here today but look what happened today they are homeless they are begging without means of existence I think the shock is just beginning we are far from arriving to digest the new situation, adapt to this new situation, the possibilities of hospitality are not unlimited and the human capacity to endure their suffering and rejection is not limited either, so we must exercise what is called empathy, but, fortunately, that is a great battle.

There is no quick solution, an instant solution, dialogue is a long and long process to reach an understanding, then it takes some time for the whole generation or even more than one generation, so we have to prepare for the very difficult moment. what is coming right now. This past year, the wave of immigration was not the last. One of them is that there are more and more people waiting for the death of the judge, so we have to accept that the situation comes together and a solution is found. Can multiculturalism ever work? He was once quoted as saying that in big cities none of the ethnic religious groups intend to do it culturally. assimilate and each group demands the recognition of its own cultural identity multiculturalism is very difficult personally I do not accept the term multiculturalism it is much much safer much more to the point of

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ing about how we are all molded in multicultural environments environments in a multicultural policy of multiculturalism No makes a lot of sense, an aspect whose consequence is that we are now all armed, as you know, with Facebook, Twitter and, in general, computer access, so we divide our lives into online friends and offline friends walking around the street going to your workshop going to your workplace you can't avoid meeting strangers, they will be there waiting for you, you have to develop some skill to deal with their presence.

Fortunately, we have a part of life online and all research sources show that most computer users do not use them in order. learn new, different, alternative ways of life, understand them, learn something from them, etc., but isolate them to create for themselves what can be said to be called a comfort zone, there are no strangers, there is someone who pronounces ideas, me personally . I don't like to just delete it from my network and I am only among the people who applaud my every word, which is very pleasant but very dangerous because we forget the skills that are absolutely necessary in offline work in this multicultural situation that we all are. united, but the problem is that we have not even begun to develop a cosmopolitan consciousness yet, which means not only thinking in terms of our immediate surroundings, but also understanding these global collections that can determine the conditions under which we live, so what?

Is this something that just takes time, but we have to get used to the idea that we are interdependent on people and that we can live next to each other and depend on our neighbors, even if they are very different from us, why doesn't it work? still? It doesn't work as a good question, but well, the divisions between people and the conflict between people are as old as

humanity

, there was always a mixture of the processes of integration and separation, for the first time, restoration when we have to give the next step on the path. to integration without parish separation was always the instrument and the guiding strategy of the integrative effort ifI wanted to integrate the people, we had to point out to them a joint enemy, another stranger who is against us and we have to watch and be vigilant and defenders but the next step is already a step towards people who are the gospel in a cosmopolitan situation, but that It means that all humanity has no enemy left against which we will integrate.

It is a new situation not tested and practiced until now and it is what makes our present moment so terrifying on the one hand. another one so exciting so fascinating yes there is a chinese proverb maybe you heard it you are the one who travels but you care about the chinese curse I wish you live in interesting times now this cache is quite real and in development but like I said I will receive it on another day, I'm a pessimist In the short term, we are at the beginning of a long road, but everything is long term, except the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I am optimistic given the uncertain and anxious times in which young people live. You are happy? that you lived in the era you have lived in rather than the era that is yet to come in the future. I remember your great German poet. Wolfgang Goethe from the Baltic part was asked a very close question: did he have a happy life? What do you think of his life? and his answer was yes, he had a very, very happy life, but he immediately added: I don't remember a single happy week and that's it. against contemporary philosophy the warning to us because we have been educated by marketing, advertising, by our new temptations and actions like all the other new fads, now to think of happiness as an uninterrupted role of ever better pleasures and what Geta suggests, so it was. a very, very wise man, not only does a large part of happiness lie in overcoming the problems of unhappiness, in one of her poems she said that girls' nightmares are a long, long series of sunny days, they are the alternative to that, The product of death is not happiness but boiled by a lot of lack of enthusiasm, lack of purpose to strive for, etc., but Geta said it was a warning to the younger ones, don't really think about your life on earth, the collection of gifts collected from the unlimited container of pleasure.

The elements think of their life as a long, long fight, long fight, you solve one problem, another comes and the side effects are very often unpleasant, so I repeat it for the third time, which makes me short, docile, heads short and pacifist, lottery professor. Bauman, thank you for speaking to Al Jazeera, thank you very much for listening.