The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers. Zygmunt Bauman More Quotes by Zygmunt Bauman More Quotes From Zygmunt Bauman Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, "a wholly different kind of ball-game". Zygmunt Bauman games yesterday years Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas. Zygmunt Bauman diaspora london europe Lev (Léon) Shestov, a Russian Jew who later became a French Jew and even converted to Catholicism, defined God not by His power to create the laws of universe, but His ability to break them at will - the capacity for miracles. God could cancel the past! For instance, God could decide retrospectively, that Socrates was never poisoned... Assimilation demanded a miracle: that you stop having been somebody else before... But only God can do it. Zygmunt Bauman miracle law past Most young people today prefer just to move in together and stay together as long, but no longer, as satisfaction lasts. Zygmunt Bauman long people moving It is easy now to break the vows. It is even easier to part your ways if vows haven't been taken. Zygmunt Bauman taken easy way Once upon a time, when I was young, people saw a wedding as an event that determined the rest of their life. For a rising number of people today, it is quite normal to "try and err", marry, divorce, marry again. Zygmunt Bauman divorce numbers people Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics'; such a thing would be a contradiction in terms. Zygmunt Bauman ethics christian would-be There were no "unemployed" in the impoverished Polish countryside before the Second World War. Not a single unemployed. Every child that was born in the peasant family had his room at the table and his job in the field, stable or pigsty... If there was not enough food, everybody got less. If food was plentiful, everybody ate better. In such a setting, we may say, the problem of security couldn't even arise... One was born with life-long rights; the only thing that one could not do was to change them. A setting good on the side of security, though bad on the side of freedom. Zygmunt Bauman jobs war children There is less pressure on abandoning native communities: what for? There is nothing to be gained by it. On one hand, there are plenty tempting opportunities of experimenting with identities - being one kind of person today and a different the next day. On the other hand, there is little pressure to include the ethnic identity or religious identity into this mechanism, because now everybody is in a kind of Diaspora today. Zygmunt Bauman religious opportunity hands The visual does seem to me the most thoroughly grasped and recorded among my impressions; sight seems to be my principal sense organ, and "seeing" supplies the key metaphors for reporting the perception. Zygmunt Bauman perception keys sight State governments seek local remedies for the globally fabricated deprivations and miseries in vain - just as the individuals-by-the-decree-of-fate (read: by the impact of deregulation) seek in vain the individual solutions to the socially fabricated life problems. Zygmunt Bauman impact fate government The inequality between the world's individuals is staggering. Zygmunt Bauman inequality individual world At the turn of the twenty-first century, the richest 5 percent of people receive one-third of total global income, as much as the poorest 80 percent. Zygmunt Bauman income twenties people With my tongue in one cheek only, I'd suggest that were our palaeolithic ancestors to discover the peer-review dredger, we would be still sitting in caves. Zygmunt Bauman peers sitting would-be As the run-by-capital society of producers turned since into the run-by-capital society of consumers, I would say that the main, indeed "meta", function of the governments has become now to assure that it is the meetings between commodities and the consumers, and credit issuers and the borrowers, that regularly take place. Zygmunt Bauman credit government running We are living at the moment in revolutionary times. Argentineans probably are more aware of it than anybody else, because they tasted it several years earlier - but now the whole world is in trouble. Zygmunt Bauman revolutionary world years Everybody is in trouble, including the up-and-coming economic miracles of China, Brazil or India. Zygmunt Bauman brazil india miracle I was watching the TV broadcasts interviewing people stranded at airports for days on end, losing their holidays, their important business meetings and the long-awaited ability to see their families... In short, suffering. No one complained, though! They kept repeating: we are so grateful for the care taken of our safety, for feeling. They were ready to surrender a good deal of their human dignity, individuality, freedom of choice. Zygmunt Bauman holiday grateful taken "Once there, always there", would give you less freedom than you recently enjoyed, but more security. Security not in the sense of safety from terrorists, burglars, or pickpockets... but security in the sense of knowing where you are, who you are, on what kind of future you can count, what will happen, whether you will preserve your position in society or whether you will be degraded and humiliated - this sort of security. This sort of security for many, many people - a rising number of people - looks at the moment more attractive than more freedom. Zygmunt Bauman knowing numbers people I guess my claustrophobia is incurable - feeling, as I tend to, ill at ease in any closed room, and always tempted to find out what is on the other side of the door. Zygmunt Bauman ease feelings doors
