From Po-Mo to Li-Mo (Liquid Moderns): Permatemps, Beginners, and Nosedive
Why is fear and anxiety such a characteristic feature of post-modernism?
Jean Francois Lyotard, the man who coined the word post-modern, saw it as an intellectual state in which different voices have to be taken into account to help us make sense of the world. One grand narrative no longer works. Instead, post-moderns (po-mo) are disconnected and fragmented, made up of many, local, individual voices. Control and change are constant.
For Zygmunt Bauman the liquid metaphor better explains our human social condition. Liquid moderns (li-mo) can be seen in the market economy as well as self-identity. The emergence of crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and community debentures, in recent years, boast of an abundant, sharing, flexible economy for all. But these have highly exploitative and damaging effects (often invisible) — see permanently temping.
The movie Beginners shows liquid moderns who have everything materially, and are kind and tolerant of all. Yet, Oliver and Anna’s new relationship is beset by fears. They have no faith in the future, cannot commit to the relationship, and have few kinship ties. Both are constantly working on their skills to replace the security that used to come from having a stable family and/or career. They are unlike Oliver’s father (fantastically acted by Christopher Plummer) who comes out as gay after his wife of 45 years dies. One durable identity that coheres over time and space is no longer possible. Instead adaptation to change and transformation — even, if only with skills, not values or beliefs — are the limo experience. Beginners, ironically, is a romantic comedy. Loved the dog but I could not help identifying the stories of friends and family, and I raged and questioned. What is the price of progress? What have we done to our children? What are we leaving the next generation?
“Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.” There is not just fear of a collective disaster, Bauman argues, but of personal disaster — the humiliating fear of falling among the worst off or otherwise ostracized.
… Bauman finds his liquid modern hero working everywhere — jabbering into mobile phones, addictively texting, leaping from one chatroom to another. The liquid modern is forever at work, forever replacing quality of relationship with quantity — always panicking about being left behind or becoming obsolete.
A fear that is masterfully explored in Nosedive, a sharp satire on social media. Set in an alternate reality, economy and self-identity come together where people are rated by others on social media, and become dependent on many voices and public approval for the survival of their way of life, and sense of well-being.
I wonder what people of faith, any tradition be it Atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Islam, Jain, Secular, Sikh, others, would offer as counterpoint for li-mo. After all, in the Christian faith the most oft-stated extortion is: Do not fear. For I am with you.
What is your story from your faith or other perspective to share?
