"Flowing Modernity": Solving the Puzzles of Postmodernity

This is the best of times, this is the worst of times. Dickens' maxim is still widely quoted today. The era we live in seems to be the same as before. On the one hand, it is romantic. The present must be better than the past and the future must be better than the present. Whether it is politics or economy, there is continuous progress; on the other hand, it is full of confusion. , we find that the traditional way of life is no longer suitable for today's human condition, and new ways of coping with challenges have not yet been discovered and effective. If we do not keep learning, we will be abandoned by the times at any time.

"Modern" technological progress and productivity development have brought about this dilemma, which inspired Orwell's fears and Huxley's nightmares decades ago. Today, however, the predicament is more individual and unprecedented in many ways: the precariousness of status, rights, and livelihoods, the uncertainty about their future continuance, the inconsistency of people’s bodies, property, and bodies. Security is a perceived pain in modern life.

Searching for the meaning of life on this basis is like Sisyphus pushing a stone, futile and meaningless. Postmodernism has arisen from this. Faced with the alienation of people caused by modernity, perhaps the best way is to deconstruct it. As long as the meaning is completely eliminated, the problem will no longer exist. Postmodernity seems to be the next stage of modernity, a denial and subversion of modernity.

Bauman, the author of "Fluid Modernity", regards postmodernity as the self-evolution of modernity and refers to it with "fluid modernity". Modernity is "fluid" in comparison with previous "heavy" stages.

The state of flow is reflected in "reshaping" rather than "replacing" the established order and old structures. It flows and deforms like a liquid. It cannot establish an authoritative order system, but is constantly negated in the process of "self-transcendence". It is under such conditions that the dilemma of unreliability, uncertainty and insecurity arises.

Bauman selected five basic concepts: liberation, individuality, time/space, labor, and unity to compare the changes in modernity. His writing style is obscure and jumping, as if it has been liquefied with modernity, making the reading experience quite painful. But in summary, one main thread can still be found, which is the "process of individualization."

The literal meaning of "liberation" means that people can feel free on the basis that their imagination and practical desires do not exceed their ability to act. There is certainly the possibility that, through some form of brainwashing, people are incapable of making judgments about their own circumstances, and that people may be content with what they have, even if the freedom they feel is in fact an illusion at all.

In the modern era, "emancipation" was placed at the top of the political reform agenda, and "freedom" was at the top of the list of values. However, the power of liberation is based on social constraints. Durkheim believes that individual submission to society is the condition for individual liberation. It is those "normative" social forces that free individuals from blind, unthinking material forces and enable sustained economic growth and global trade. become possible. This extreme embodiment of the pursuit of order is exactly Weber's rational bureaucracy, Bentham's panopticon, and Big Brother.

That has changed, and the problem now is that society has stopped questioning itself. This does not suggest that our society suppresses questioning ideas with norms, as it did in the modern period, nor does it silence its own members. The situation is just the opposite. Nowadays, each of us is engaged in life politics. Through Weibo, Twitter and other channels, we can easily criticize the government and society without being punished.

However, this criticism is not profound enough to touch the depths of the operation of social mechanisms. Because the relationship between individuals and society has changed, from the original "producer" to the "consumer". Consumption promotes the economy more than production. Individuals' requirements for society are very simple. Provide public space and public products to support consumption, and society gives individuals great freedom of consumption.

As Leo Strauss warned, unprecedented freedom has arrived together with unprecedented powerlessness.

Different from the modern period, the inherent logic of contemporary social and economic growth lies in waste. The abundance of resources enables individuals to survive in society first as consumers rather than producers.

In consumer society, freedom is first interpreted as the full choice of consumers, and dependence on consumer goods is a necessary condition for all individual freedom and identity.

Therefore, it is inappropriate to regard consumption as a public manifestation of materialism and hedonism. Today, consumption is more like a compulsive behavior. In order to keep up with the pace of an uncertain society, in order to gain The ability to no longer be anxious must be consistent with public consumption trends. The rise of payment for knowledge is the best evidence.

However, personal progress can never catch up with the pace of society, and no one knows whether the joy of the present can be carried into the future. Under panic, all kinds of consumption with quick results become "rational choices", the principle of delayed gratification is abandoned, and the distance between desire and satisfaction is condensed to a point. On Douyin, the interval and duration of each video must be short, the delay is approximately zero, and the intensity of desire satisfaction is inversely proportional to the frequency. Nothing else matters except immediate, ongoing self-satisfaction.

In today's cities, there are a large number of places that are regarded as "public spaces". According to Habermas, citizens can speak freely in this space without interference from the state. It is between the field of commodity exchange in civil society and the field of national public power. It is a public opinion independent of political construction, thereby safeguarding public welfare and the overall interests of society.

Today, Internet life has opened up a new public space. Most offline public spaces have been transformed into tangible consumer spaces, such as concert halls, tourist attractions, and shopping malls. These open spaces encourage action, not interaction (inner-acton). Individuals within them do not expect interaction as it adds nothing to the pleasure of shopping and only takes their attention away from the task at hand - consumption.

The crowd in the consumption space is an aggregation of people rather than an integration of people. No matter how crowded they are, there is no collective existence in these consumption spaces, and it is naturally impossible to form opinions on public affairs in them.

Since its birth, the online public *** space has been occupied by individuals. The vast majority of "public topics" on Weibo and Twitter have been reduced to personal curiosity about the private lives of public figures. Any social hot spot will eventually become a topic of discussion. It will be fermented and exposed until no one cares about it. It won't take more than a week.

"Public domain" encroaching on "private domain" is not what is happening now. On the contrary, it is private issues that occupy public space on a large scale, driving away all public topics that are useless to them. Public space cannot play the role it did in the past, and individuals must bear the individualized pressure and responsibility for personal well-being.

Fordism is a model of industrialization, capital appreciation and management. This system is based on the division of labor between physical labor and mental labor. Engineers and management use the Taylor system to strengthen the management control of workers. Workers repeat the same labor on the assembly line.

Fordism is constrained and restricted by large factory buildings, heavy machinery and large-scale labor. Capital, like labor, is fixed in a specific area. In order to prevent the transfer of labor, he doubled the wages of workers. The interdependence of capital and labor is the best embodiment of the heavy, solid, and huge modern period.

Now, through the Internet, capital can move easily around the world, while labor remains as motionless as it used to be. This puts workers in a very passive situation, and their rights to bargain and protest have been weakened. The speed and frequency of job changes continue to increase, and their working lives are full of uncertainty. Wanting to sign a long-term contract no longer depends on your ability.

People are connected through similar goals and methods, through the concepts they hold and the rules of conduct they follow, forming a community. Community forges the idea of ??unity, which erases potential differences and the possibility of conflict. In a homogeneous community, people can avoid mutual hostility and live in harmony. It creates a safe haven in contemporary society with rising uncertainty.

Bauman introduced the concept of "cloakroom community" to explain the characteristics of today's community. The audience attending the performance wears clothing appropriate to the occasion, even though these people may have different interests and hobbies during the day. After the show ended, the men returned to their usual roles and disappeared into the motley crowd.

Cloakroom-style sexual homologation attracts individuals who are unrelated in other aspects through similar interests in one aspect. It will not integrate individual sexual interests and concerns into a real connection. It is therefore an illusion and an illusion. This type of homophilia has been further developed in Internet life. Just look at your WeChat group and you will know that the number of homophiles now exceeds the sum of all previous eras. Every APP is a homophilia. Every subculture community or QQ group is a kind of homogeneity. Everyone is split into different parts and integrated into different homogeneous bodies, but when you need the security and safety of a homogeneous body, this small social network is of no help.