{"id":1464,"date":"2026-08-11T18:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahamakkawi.com\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2026-09-19T07:07:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T07:07:04","slug":"liquid-times-or-the-age-of-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahamakkawi.com\/en\/liquid-times-or-the-age-of-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"\u0627\u0644\u0627\u0632\u0645\u0646\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0627\u0626\u0644\u0629 \u0648 \u0639\u0635\u0631 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0627\u064a\u0642\u064a\u0646"},"content":{"rendered":"In recent years, there has been much discussion of the \u201cage of uncertainty.\u201d I have written dozens of articles over the past period about political, economic, and social conditions in this age of uncertainty. In fact, the spread of this term is attributable to the writings of Dr. Zygmunt Bauman.\n\nZygmunt Bauman was born in Pozna\u0144, Poland, in 1925 to Polish Jewish parents. His family moved to the Soviet Union after the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939. He eventually settled, in 1991, at the University of Leeds as a professor of sociology. He died in January 2017 at the age of ninety-two.\n\nBauman wrote four books addressing this concept: *Liquid Love*, *Liquid Life*, *Liquid Modernity*, and *Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty*.\n\nAccording to Bauman, the world is now living in an unprecedented state of liquidity and uncertainty in human history. This condition resulted from five profound and overlapping transformations. Modernity shifted from a solid phase to a liquid one. The first transformation is that the structures that determine individual choices, and the institutions that ensure the continuity of customs and patterns of behavior, are no longer able to retain their old forms.\n\nThe second transformation is the separation of power from politics. A large part of the authority of the modern state has moved into the globalized sphere, where newly liberated forces have become a source of uncertainty. The state has failed to carry out its former functions, and its ability to attract citizens\u2019 interest has diminished.\n\nThe third transformation leading to liquidity and uncertainty is the erosion of the social foundations of solidarity. \u201cSociety,\u201d as the overarching bond under which state sovereignty is exercised, has begun to seem like an empty, meaningless word. Individuals now suffer from market fluctuations, as the market has become a breeding ground for new unchecked forces. Society has shifted from a state of \u201cstructure\u201d to a state of \u201cnetwork\u201d: a matrix of scattered connections and endless change.\n\nLong-term thinking, planning, and action have collapsed\u2014this is the fourth transformation. Fragmented life has pushed people toward \u201chorizontal\u201d rather than \u201cvertical\u201d paths. The fifth transformation concerns responsibility for solving these new, complex, and ambiguous problems, which require special skills to confront. Unfortunately, these vague and complex responsibilities have been shifted onto individuals, even though they exceed their awareness and abilities. This is precisely what has led to uncertainty, along with ambiguity, fear, and the feeling of heading into the unknown.\n\nWhat reinforces uncertainty are some shocking facts about the global distribution of wealth. Reliable international reports have confirmed that half of global investment benefits twenty-two countries, which contain no more than 14% of the world\u2019s population. The poorest forty-nine countries, home to 11% of the world\u2019s population, receive no more than half of one percent of global output\u2014an amount equal to the total income of the world\u2019s three richest men. Meanwhile, 90% of global wealth remains in the hands of 1% of the planet\u2019s population. While the elite at the top enjoy the experience of moving into \u201cimagined worlds,\u201d the poor sink into a swamp of crime and chaos.\n\nIn the age of uncertainty, the \u201cidea of progress\u201d has turned into a bitter reality and an extreme compulsion. Once one of the clearest expressions of optimism and hope, progress has come to signify a permanent and inevitable threat, warning of hardship, distress, insomnia, and nightmares of fear.\n\nThe world has been unable to slow the astonishing pace of change, and equally unable to determine its direction. We have come to live in an age of fear and insecurity. Advertising companies deliberately exploit widespread fears of terrorism in order to increase sales of armored vehicles, until personal safety has become a major selling point. Indeed, the promises of political parties and forces contesting elections have been reduced from striving to improve people\u2019s economic, social, and cultural conditions to promises of providing personal safety.\n\nThere is already talk of an alternative legitimacy and a different political formula for citizenship. This new legitimacy revolves around the state\u2019s promise to protect citizens from threats to their personal safety, giving rise to the \u201cpersonal safety state.\u201d In an age in which grand ideas have lost their credibility, fear of the specter of the enemy becomes all that remains for politicians to preserve their power.\n\nLiquid modernity, Bauman says, has placed the world before a black hole whose most important features include the collapse of long-term thinking, planning, and action, and the disappearance of social structures in which these processes can take root. A life that has reached a high degree of fragmentation and liquidity pushes toward different paths requiring different skills\u2014as noted earlier\u2014and a different management of sources of power. Therefore, past success does not guarantee future success; methods that succeeded in the past may become useless in the future.\n\nIn liquid times, the isolation and loneliness experienced by people increase. Despite the spread of social media, isolation has become the dominant feeling. People have tried to replace direct social relationships and real-world meetings with encounters in the virtual world, but the virtual world does not compensate for reality and does not lead to a sense of genuine social solidarity. This is a condition captured by the Lebanese poet Abbas Beydoun: \u201cI live surrounded by all those who have made me lonely.\u201d","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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