Quotes from Zygmunt Bauman

Nosotros, mientras tanto, vivimos en una era de miedo, negatividad y malas noticias. Las buenas noticias no venden porque no interesan a nadie.

Nevertheless, 'stick lightly' they must, as 'possessions, situations and people' will keep slipping away and vanishing at a breathtaking speed whatever they do; whether they try to slow them down or not is neither here nor there. 'Let them go' they must (though, unlike Bill Gates, with hardly any pleasure), but whether they do it graciously or with a lot of wailing and teethgnashing is beside the point.

nuestra era de pensamientos y cosas calculadas para generar «un impacto máximo y una obsolescencia instantánea», tal como decía George Steiner.

T]he secret of all successful 'socialization' is making individuals wish to do what is needed to enable the system to reproduce itself.

vivimos en una época de re-ciclaje en la que nada parece morir del todo, de la misma forma que nada, ni siquiera la vida eterna, parece destinado a durar para siempre.

Cuanto mejor protegidos de la contaminación están los valores preservados en el pensamiento, menos relevancia tienen para la vida de aquellos a quienes deberían ser de utilizada.

El empleado ideal sería una persona que no tenga lazos, compromisos ni ataduras emocionales preexistentes y que además las rehúya a futuro.

I]n consumer culture choosing and freedom are two names of the same condition; and treating them as synonymous is correct at least in the sense that you can abstain from choosing only by at the same time surrendering your freedom.

El amor y el ansia de poder son gemelos siameses: ninguno de los dos podría sobrevivir a la separación. Si el deseo ansía consumir, el amor ansía poseer. En cuanto la satisfacción del deseo es colindante con la aniquilación de su objeto, el amor crece con sus adquisiciones y se satisface con su durabilidad. Si el deseo es autodestructivo, el amor se autoperpetúa.

Moderne folkemord, liksom moderne kultur generelt, er gartnerarbeid.

Actualmente, la sexualidad ya no es el epítome del posible placer y la felicidad. Ya no está mistificada positivamente en tanto éxtasis o transgresión, sino negativamente, en tanto fuente de opresión, desigualdad, violencia, abuso e infección letal.

la verdad, ni bien es pronunciada, se transforma inmediatamente en una opinión entre tantas, es contestada, reformulada, reducida a un tema discursivo entre otros.

El interés público se limita a la curiosidad por la vida privada de las figuras públicas, y el arte de la vida pública queda reducido a la exhibición pública de asuntos privados y a confesiones públicas de sentimientos privados (cuanto más íntimos, mejor). Los "temas públicos" que se resisten a esa reducción se transforman en algo incomprensible.

Con l'attiva cooperazione di governi e di altri personaggi pubblici che trovano nell'opera di appoggio e fomentazione del pregiudizio comune gli unici strumenti sostitutivi di una politica tesa ad affrontare le cause reali dell'incertezza esistenziale che ossessiona i loro elettori, i "rifugiati" [...] sostituiscono streghe maligne, fantasmi di malfattori impenitenti e altri spiritelli e spauracchi vari che popolano le leggende metropolitane.

The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

Real dialogue isn't about talking to people who believe the same things as you.

For one to be free there must be at least two.

Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.

The updated version of Descartes's Cogito is 'I am seen, therefore I am' – and that the more people who see me, the more I am…

What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity.

Desire and love act at cross purposes. love is a net cast on eternity, desire is a stratagem to be spared the chores of net weaving. True to their nature, love would strive to perpetuate the desire. Desire, on the other hand, would shun love's shackles.

The main point about civility is...the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place.

Beneath the dream of fame, another dream, a dream of no longer dissolving and staying dissolved in the grey, faceless and insipid mass of commodities, a dream of turning into a notable, noticed and coveted commodity, a talked about commodity, a commodity standing out from the mass of commodities, a commodity impossible to overlook, to deride, to be dismissed. In a society of consumers, turning into a desirable commodity is the stuff of which dreams, and fairy tales, are made.