DISTANCE GIVES COURAGE

Hej! Zeitgeist launches today a new version of itself. Because “I will always be myself, but certainly not be the same forever” ^[1]. We are really very happy with this. Today we are going to expose a small part of Bauman thoughts, and of course, we have a little bit of Nietzsche, without forgetting the stoics. J  You are very welcomed to read our first English essay. 

Liquid World is a concept developed by a polish sociologist and philosopher called Zygmunt Bauman (1923-2017). And today we are going through some aspects of this idea.

“The world I call ‘liquid’ because, like all liquids, it cannot stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything or almost everything in this world of ours keeps changing: fashions we follow and the objects of our attention.” [2]

And what does it mean? Actually it means that 21^th century is quite different from 20^th century. In a practical way of explaining these things, we can say that in the 20^th century all the ways were paved to be walked. Classical example from the beginning of the 20’s : Women must not (it was an obligation) use pants. So, for sure, if you were a woman in the old times, you would have just dresses and long skirts in your wardrobe. In the 21^th century things are not like that anymore. Nowadays people need (it is a necessity) to choose* everything, since the type of fashion they wear (What? Don’t you have one? – this contains irony) to the next profile that Tinder is showing them (precisely calculated - does it match? – C’mon you both liked almost the same pages on Facebook). All this means that we are changing from a solid to a liquid way of living. And this is not just about fashion, this includes humans relations.

Stop a little bit and think with me: in the 21^th century we switched the focus from building the grounds to the culture of immediacy. Community and network are a good example of this. And actually is one of Bauman’s example. Community precedes you. You were born in a community. Network is made and keep alive by two different activities: one is connecting and the other is disconnecting. It is the same to say that we have an online and an off-line version of life. Ok! I believe most of people can identify themselves with this, but what is the problem? 😬

Look, in the old times, important people used to go to Arena to discuss something relevant for the community and expose their opinion. They needed to convince everybody that they were right – just to be short, is possible to cite the Socratic or dialectical method. Nowadays everybody can just comfortably access internet from anywhere using even the mobile and publish for thousand million people how they agree with this and that. And if someone disagree, that is not a big problem. It’s possible to delete this “friend”. After all people use to have around 700 friends on Facebook. It is just less one ‘friend’ / less one ‘partner’, but it does not matter. Because it is a temporary situation, tomorrow “I can just connect to someone else different that can agree 100% with me, otherwise, I can just delete this ‘person’ too”. 

So, the main problem is that, in our liquid world, the post-modern man is losing his abilities to deal with relations. For sure, off-line connections, like face to face, body to body, dispend more effort to begin and to end than on-line connections. Understand here ‘off-line connections’ like ‘real connections’, since they are made of real life. Then, in off-line connections, breaking relationships is always a traumatic event. It’s necessary to find excuses, to explain and even to lie. But even that, you don’t feel safe because you are seeing in front of you someone that do not agree with your point of view. Practical example: Brazilian presidential elections. Facebook “friends” were silencing and deleting each other since they disagree at some point of this or that candidate. It happened also on WhatsApp... 

The attractive of this type of ‘relation’ (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Linkedin…) is precisely there: it is so easy to connect and disconnect. But the GREAT attractive is the facility of disconnecting. On the internet is so easy. It is just to press delete and no more problems, no more insecurities. Distance gives courage, but that is not good from this point of view, hm?! This courage comes like a bud from insecurity, since people are losing the abilities required for living in community and replacing it by living in a network.

Accord to Bauman, this can be a reflection of the structural insecurity of the post-modern man. Deleting, blocking, silencing… we don’t have these options in off-line life, it means in real life. So, we don’t experience this kind of events and end-up having just superficial relations in real life and, of course, also in on-line life. This can be transcript as feeling alone in the crowd. The post-modern man is not capable of deep relations with others. 

Thus, following this thought, we can say that we are often living a virtual life, that means: living a lie! Since we are real people!! In a personal and practical way of thinking about this, we can start asking ourselves questions, like: Do I really have 700 friends, just because they follow me on Facebook or Instagram? Do I really keep in touch and can count on those 1500 LinkedIn connections if I'm looking for a job? How much connection do I really have with these people?? Where am I projecting myself, in an on-line or in an off-line way of living?

Of course this is just a reflection of the insecurity of our times! And from where comes this insecurity? Well, here at Zeitgeist we are active thinkers and self-taught in Philosophy, so we can just try to propose something. This insecurity can come from Nihilism! Virtual Gods, no morality, no commitment, no nothing! And we have already talked about this in previous texts. Ahhh Nietzsche!! 💙 In the middle of the 19^th century and he wrote about these problems that would still happen. Is this an issue? Look, here, in Zeitgeist, we know from Epicteto that things just are, but we have the bad habit of classifying it in good or bad... That´s how our network society works nowadays. And we need to learn how to deal with it. 

Look, we are not saying that internet and network do not provide good ways to develop different kind of relations between people. Actually this can be seen as a great improvement in making people more close to each other. We are arguing about how we are dealing with this, how we are going through our off-line version of life, our real life!? Are we real living? Or are we just experiencing an on-line version of ourselves? J

Reflections of my life, ohhh how they fill my mind! [4]

I wish you good reflections of your life! See you in another time! 🙏

Renata Chinda
rechinda@gmail.com

PS: We are completely open to discuss it! If you want, just leave us a comment in our personal Arena and incipit tragedia. 😏 

* Chosen is a problem well discussed by Sartre…. “…man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.” [2] After all, when we choose a path, we give preference to one of several possibilities. We follow the path we believe to be the best, for all humanity…

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Clarice Lispector - unfortunately we do not have the this book here, so our bibliography will be incomplete (so sorry for this, it is the first time it happens in Zeitgeist), and the internet has not been able to satisfy me 😎 ... maybe this is from "Água-Viva". And give that translating Clarice to another language borders the impossible, you can find the entire Portuguese version of this “poem” just on the end of bibliography.

[2] Zygmunt Bauman in “44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World”

[3] Existentialism is a Humanism; lecture given in 1946; https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

[4] Reflections of my life - The Marmalade

“Gosto dos venenos mais lentos, das bebidas mais amargas, das drogas mais poderosas, das idéias mais insanas, dos pensamentos mais complexos, dos sentimentos mais fortes… tenho um apetite voraz e os delírios mais loucos.  Você pode até me empurrar de um penhasco que eu vou dizer:  - E daí? Eu adoro voar!  Não me dêem fórmulas certas, por que eu não espero acertar sempre. Não me mostrem o que esperam de mim, por que vou seguir meu coração. Não me façam ser quem não sou. Não me convidem a ser igual, por que sinceramente sou diferente. Não sei amar pela metade. Não sei viver de mentira. Não sei voar de pés no chão. Sou sempre eu mesma, mas com certeza não serei a mesma pra sempre. Não me prendo a nada que me defina. Sou companhia, mas posso ser solidão. Tranqüilidade e inconstância, pedra e coração. Sou abraços, sorrisos, ânimo, bom humor, sarcasmo, preguiça e sono. Música alta e silêncio. Serei o que você quiser, mas só quando eu quiser. Não me limito, não sou cruel comigo! Serei sempre apego pelo que vale a pena e desapego pelo que não quer valer… Suponho que me entender não é uma questão de inteligência e sim de sentir, de entrar em contato. Ou toca, ou não toca. É curioso não saber dizer quem sou. Quer dizer, sei-o bem, mas não posso dizer. Sobretudo tenho medo de dizer porque no momento em que tento falar não só não exprimo o que sinto como o que sinto se transforma lentamente no que eu digo.”