Madness is no madness when shared. by Zygmunt Bauman

Madness is no madness when shared.

Zygmunt Bauman

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Categorized in : Insanity Madness

I worry about younger generations who were born to view their country trampling on humanity of everyone that comes in its way, as the 'normal state of affairs" - because they knew no other. We know how easy it is to shed, under such circumstances, the thin and frail veneer of civilization, not to mention the moral standards of which the Jews were presumed to be the world's teachers.

teacher civilization country

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.

holocaust risk sin

For one to be free there must be at least two. Freedom signifies a social relation, an asymmetry of social conditions: essentially it implies social difference--it presumes and implies the presence of social division. Some can be free only in so far as there is a form of dependence they can aspire to escape.

asymmetry differences two

The greatest economic minds of the 19th century, all of them without exception, considered economic growth as a temporary necessity. When all human needs are satisfied, then we will have a stable economy, reproducing every year the same things. We will stop straining ourselves worrying about development or growth. How naïve they were! One more reason to be reluctant about predicting the future. No doubt they were wiser than me, but even they made such a mistake!

mistake worry years

The so called "progress," "time marching on," is not a straight l... by Zygmunt Bauman

The so called "progress," "time marching on," is not a straight line, but a pendulum.

marching-on progress lines

If only evil things are done by evil people... Life would be then safe, morally elevated, cozy - we know how to spot evil people and what to do with them to pay for their crimes.

evil-people would-be pay

Never paint epic canvases during the revolution, because the revo... by Zygmunt Bauman

Never paint epic canvases during the revolution, because the revolutionaries will tear them apart.

revolution tears epic

Why are people so concerned with relativism? If you look back in history, millions of people were killed because of someone's dogmatic views, but I do not remember anybody being killed due to the tolerance of difference, to relativism; ethically relativism does not seem to be such an awful thing, really.

differences views people

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.

skating-on-thin-ice flu world

In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.

consumers surround-yourself people

Human attention tends to be focused on the satisfactions relationships are hoped to bring, precisely because somehow they have not been truly satisfactory. And if they do satisfy, the price of this satisfaction has often been found to be unacceptable.

satisfaction found attention

Today's youth have been cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of knowing whether it is transitory or permanent.

todays-youth knowing way

The consumerist culture insists that swearing eternal loyalty to anything and anybody is imprudent, since in this world new glittering opportunities crop up daily.

loyalty opportunity culture

I was leftwing, I am leftwing, and I will die leftwing. by Zygmunt Bauman

I was leftwing, I am leftwing, and I will die leftwing.

We already have - thanks to technology, development, skills, the efficiency of our work - enough resources to satisfy all human needs. But we don't have enough resources, and we are unlikely ever to have, to satisfy human greed.

greed technology skills

Middle class people, the bourgeoisie, they are also feeling frightened at the moment. Some fear losing their fortunes; some go bankrupt; some are thinking about suicide. They don't know if they will retain the beautiful house that they bought, or what will happen to the five family cars.

suicide beautiful thinking

For intellectual authority, the appropriate version of Descartes 's cogito would be today: I am talked about, therefore I am.

intellectual would-be today

Our vulnerability [to ressentiment] is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.

differences rights hands

Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.

crowds mass philosophy

While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.

differences country world