Entrevista exclusiva Zygmunt Bauman

[Music] uh what happened in 20th century was passage from the whole era of world history namely from Society of prod producers to Society of consumers on the other hand you had the processes of fragmentation of human life uh if uh when I was young it was ages ago um we were impressed by je paulart who told us that we need to create po project for life and once we selected the project for life we have to go step by step consistently from one year to another closer closer to this ideal now tell that to the

present day use and they will laugh at you really uh we are in great difficulty to uh guess what will happen to us next year and uh project for life for the whole life is something incredible life is split into episodes it was not like that at the beginnings of uh of 20th century uh societies have been individualized Lely instead of thinking in terms of community to which you belong Nation to which you belong U political movement to which you belong and so on people tend to think redefy uh the meaning of life the purpose

of life the happiness in life to uh what happen is happening to one's own person the questions of identity uh which play such a tremendously important role today uh in the world you have to create your I your own identity you don't inherit it uh you not only you need to make it uh of from scratch but you have to spend your life in fact redefin your identity because the styles of Life the what is considered to be good for you and bad for you uh the attractive tempting forms of life change so many times

in your life if if I if I try to lift all fashions in this respect which changes change in 86 years of my life well we would probably have to spend several hours here talking in order to just to name them all so all these have changed there are plenty of changes not just the passage from uh totalitarianism to democracy uh but uh so many other things and I'm afraid that um we can't really with uh head with hand on our hearts say which of these changes is the most lasting and will influence the life

of next Generations of our grandchildren or great grandchildren I still unable to say whether it is the beginning of the new form of life which will last for centuries or whether it is a trans period of transition from one kind of social order to another kind of social order when you are in the process of transition it's very difficult to imagine another kind of a stable uh solution settlement of human cohabitation but then it comes sooner or later so even that that question is um if we are unable to answer I can with some degree

of responsibility say that two things happened which are irreversible all the two things I can say they are really irreversible one thing is that uh we have multiplied we Humanity on the planet and um the connections the relationships the independ interdependencies the communication spread all over the globe we are now in a position that we are all dependent on each other what happens in Malaysia you know it or you don't know it you feel it or you don't feel it has tremendous importance of the prospects of life for young people in s Paulo and vice

versa we are all in the same boat this is the first time in history where uh the globe is really one country in a sense the second issue is that after 300 years roughly of modern history when our ancestors decided to uh take over nature of uh under human management and uh that's hope that they will make our nature absolutely um obedient to human needs and human wishes and there will be full control over what's happening in the world now that came to an end because in the result of our own successes and our ancestor

successes development of modern technology of efficiency of the ability to produce more and more and more uh Rich for all sorts of uh natural resources of the planet and so on in the result of all these tremendous success of Science and sociology we came very closer very close to what we Now understand are the limits of endurability of the planet I am humble sociologist I don't have any prophetic abilities really I never learned any any any the methodology of Prophecy uh in my 60 old years doing sociology so I don't know how it to eventually

develop I can only tell you what are the dangers today to democracy really uh one is uh what I already mentioned namely the divorce between power and politics because uh if that is the case then uh State the only political institution which we have we don't have a global political institution uh the state uh is not powerful enough to keep all the promises which states 50 years ago gave to the citizens and that was the Golden Era of democracy the 30 after War years was the you know prol Pro proliferation and thriving of idea of

democracy Now democracy is all the way down less and less people are really deeply convinced that it's a good thing and they are doubtful about the quality of democracy why simply because the relatively powerless State uh can offer citizens less and less less and less uh what states are doing with very few exceptions Most states today are doing is Contracting out the many functions which state was expected to perform uh who knows Perhaps Perhaps here I am engaging prophecy already we will we will invent a global democracy sometime and that would be radical solution mind

you because uh uh I don't believe that uh the framework of the nation state any longer is able to defend on its own the future of democracy for reasons which I mentioned before right uh so we will have to invent not I I am too old for that but you and your generation will have to invent Global equivalent to the inventions of our forefathers they invent Nationwide democracy Nationwide representative democracy parliaments modern Parliament they invented uh they invented U uh jurisdiction not a local traditional habitual customary uh laws but the you know one unified code

of law for the whole country all the things which create uh modern democracy they invented uh if Aristotle was invited to building of any of the Contemporary Parliament uh Aristotle who first use the concept of democracy and describe it right U uh he would probably enjoy what he sees because people quarrel they represent different views uh they argue you know they then they vote they come to some agreement he would like it but then if someone told him that that is democracy he would laugh because democracy he described in ancient aens was just people coming

to the marketplace you know and fighting each other and then coming to some resolution uh which means that uh democracy is a notion which acquires over time in history different forms and different instruments different strategies so I can of one thing be sure that if you really invent Global equivalent to nation state democracy then it would be a democracy okay but uh it won't be the institutions of democracy which we know only bigger it will be not similar to this institution because these institutions which we now call Democratic were created were adjusted to the needs

of a nation state and then cadis goes and says that autonomous individual and autonomous uh Community polity can all exist together one needs another right you can't be individual in a tyrannical Society in a totalitarian Society are not really an individual it it must be a cooperation of the two autonomies with each other well very beautiful but the danger came from um unexpected side when cadis wrote this words he wrote them against totalitarianism up there know we again terribly sorry for remembering the uh prehistorical past but when I was young I I uh uh I

was afraid that all the danger uh will come from the public sphere uh George Orwell um memorably put it this way we are afraid of the soldiers uh boot tramping human face all right that was a danger there's no question about that our ancestors and partly my own generation manag to get over this danger move it aside we are not uh any longer afraid really as uh I was in my young of the um of the uh individuality being overwhelmed by the pressures from the top censorship you know the secret police and so on there

are some remnants of it but much alleviated mitigated by comparison the danger however to this autonomy came from the other side uh from the sphere of the private and the individual uh contemporary the nearest approximation contemporary approximation of Agora of the place where democracy was made and remade and continued and developed and protected the nearest approximation of it are chat shows on television talk shows you and uh that's where masses watch participate telephone send questions messages you know and um uh something similar to what was done in ancient Agora now uh when you look when

you look at it they are not discussing our sh interest they are not discussing the well-being of society they are not discussing what needs to be done to uh uh abolish and uh you know repair uh the troubles which we all suffer in one like and in another they just confess that ultimately private individual and very intimate problems right um ER be the French sociologist famously pointed out that in his view the postmodern Revolution started on one Wednesday evening in 1980s Autumn one Autumn of 1980s when certain viven just ordinary woman in presence of 6

million TV viewers declared that uh that uh uh she never experienced orgasm in her marriage because um her husband Michelle suffers of premature ejaculation that was Revolution start of the Revolution uh why start of Revolution because suddenly on the Alora people started confessing confessing things which were the embodiment of privacy embodiment of intimacy which you would confine only if you were a Catholic to the priest on confession or uh to your really very very close circle of very intimate friends but you wouldn't go to the Public Square and Shout about it so Agora has been

conquered not by totalitarian regimes but by precisely that by privacy by things which previously were privacy in confessionals which are the embodiment the Incarnation of intimacy and privacy you Converse there with God directly and it's absolute secrecy no one can know what you confess to in confessional we have installed microphones in congressionals one addict of Facebook uh confided in me not confided he actually boasted to me that he made 500 friends in one day my reply was that I live 86 years but I can't I don't have 500 friends I didn't manage to do it

so presumably when he says friend and I say friend we don't mean the same thing it's different kind of friend um I I never heard when I was young the Cil of network I heard about uh human bonds I heard about communities um this sort of thing but not Network what is the difference between community and network Community precedes you you you are born into a community on the other hand we have Network what is Network unik Community Network is made and maintained uh kept Alive by two different activities one is connecting and the other

is disconnecting and I think that attractiveness of the new type of friendship Facebook type of friendship I call it uh it's precisely in that that is so easy to easy to disconnect it is easy to connect to make friends but the greatest attraction is the facility of disconnecting just imagine if you have not online friendship not online connection not online online sharing but offline connection real connection face to face body to body you know eye to eye then breaking relationship is always very traumatic event you have to find excuses you have to explain uh you

have to lie very often and even then you are you don't feel safe because the partner would say well you have no right you are swine you are pig you are whatever over man and so on uh it's difficult but on internet is so easy you just press delete and that's it instead of 500 friends you have 499 but it is only a temporary irritant because tomorrow you have another 500 um that is that undermines human bonds human bonds are a mixture of blessing and a curse blessing because it is really tremendously pleasurable and tremendously

satisfying to have another partner on whom you can rely and do something for him or for her it's uh something uh it's some kind of experience which is unavailable to the Facebook friendship so it's a blessing and I think that very many young people don't even are they are not even aware what they lost because they never experienced this sort of situation um on the other hand it just curse because once you enter the bond you expect to stay there forever you swear you take an oath you take an oath till death do us part

right right forever but what does it mean it does mean that uh you morgage your future perhaps tomorrow or the next or next month or next year uh there will be new opportunities now unheard off you you can't predict them and you won't be able to pick them this new opportunities because you will be tied by your old commitments old obligations so it's in a very ambivalent situation and hence the Curious phenomenon of this person solitary person in a crowd of solitaries right we are all in solitude and in a crowd at the same time

that there are two essential values which are absolutely indispensable for uh satisfac Factory satisfying rewarding relatively happy life one is security the other is freedom you can't be happy you can't have a decent dignified human life in the absence of one of them right uh security without freedom is slavery uh freedom without security is complete chaos inability to do anything plan anything even dream about anything so you need both the trouble however is that no one yet in history and in on the planet found the golden formula the you know uh the the perfect mixture

of uh security and freedom each time you get more security you surrender a bit of your freedom there's no other way each time you get a bit more freedom you surrender part of your security so you gain something and you lose something uh 70 odd years ago Zigman Freud published this uh famous and tremendously profound and influential book called uh civilization and discontent he said that Civilization is always an exchange a tradeoff as you put it tradeoff you give some uh something of one value in order to get something of the other value and he

said he wrote it in 1920s and at that time he said that our problem that their problem of the old generation was that they surrendered too much freedom for the sake of security my deep conviction is that if Freud was giving this interview of me at the moment uh he would probably repeat that every civilization is an exchange at Rao but his diagnosis will be exactly opposite that our troubles come today from the fact that we have surrendered too much of our security for the sake of more freedom that's a dilemma I think that I

sense already some pral signs that the pendulum is beginning to move back towards more security social State comes again into into public favors people dream about it you know they want stronger powers and more stability a little bit more stability it's very beginning I'm not saying that we are are already on the way but there are signs that that is happening and we so my conclusions are twofold one we will never find the perfect solution of the Dilemma between security and freedom there always will be too much of one and too little of the other

right and the second that we will never stop looking for such a golden mean I don't believe that there is one way of being happy there are many ways of being happy um there are two in his little book about art of life I wrote that there are two factors independent factors relatively independent factors which uh Shape Up human life one is fate Fai is the short name for all things on which we have no influence which happen to us but they are not of our doing that's F and the other is character and character

is very individual thing you can work on your character if you want you can change it you can improve it uh uh it is under your control to very great extent uh the role the division of labor between faith and character is such that uh the faith it sets the range of options which are realistic to you on that you have no uh influence if you were born 20 years earlier than you were your range of options will be different if you uh were born 20 years later again it would be different if you were

born in this suburb affluent suburb you have one range of options if you are uh born in a ghetto it's completely different range of options but there is always range of options which is provided by faith but the choices between these options are made by character and because characters are very many and very different uh you can't give one recipe for happiness I know that there are counselors now who earn quite a lot of money by ending that they have recipes for happiness don't believe them they are you know H being you uh I would

never dare to give such an advice well I am not comparing myself with Socrates but very many philosophers uh contemporary philosophers consider a life of Socrates the his uh personality which he construct as the most perfect relatively perfect which you can imagine but what does it mean uh uh the that does it mean that if Socrates kind of life which is selected is the perfect perfect solution for Socrates anyway does it mean that we all should imitate Socrates and try to be like him no the is on the contrary because precisely Socrates considered a secret

of his happiness in that that he on his own by his own will created the form of life which he lived people who imitate somebody else's form of life somebody else's uh uh model of Happiness are not like Socrates on the contrary they betray his recipe they betray his recipe because he res precisely uh well you can you can translate it in a simple term saying that for every human being there is a perfect world made especially for him or for her [Music]