Ideally, nothing should be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment till death do us part, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires considered ultimate. There ought to be a proviso 'until further notice' attached to any oath of loyalty and any commitment. It is but the volatility, the in-built temporality of all engagements that truly counts; it counts more than the commitment itself, which is anyway not allowed to outlast the time necessary for consuming the object of desire (or, rather, the time sufficient for the desirability of that object to wane).
Zygmunt BaumanThe 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!
Zygmunt BaumanThere 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 BaumanThe question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.
Zygmunt BaumanFully "biodegradable" structures are nowadays the ideal and the standards to which most, if not all structures, struggle to measure up.
Zygmunt Bauman