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

Zygmunt Bauman

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Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Urgent
Questioning
Services
Fellow
Fellows
Unquestionable
Humans
Ostensibly
Way
Arguably
Life
Premises

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Throughout early modernity there were very strong pressures on Jews to assimilate. Assimilating meant cutting your ties with the community of origin.
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Security is the slogan for people who feel unable to function by their own means.
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Human attention tends to be focused on the satisfactions relationships are hoped to bring, precisely because somehow they have not been truly satisfactory. And if they do satisfy, the price of this satisfaction has often been found to be unacceptable.
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Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.
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We belong to talking, not what talking is about... Stop talking - and you are out. Silence equals exclusion.
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Indeed, I did not truly belong to any school, order, intellectual camaraderie or clique I did not apply for admission to any of them, let alone did much to deserve an invitation nor would I be listed by any of them - at least listed unqualifiedly - as one of us.
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I guess I am doomed to remain an outsider to the end, lacking as I am the indispensable qualities of an academic insider: school loyalty, conformity to the procedure, and readiness to obey by the school-endorsed criteria of cohesion and consistency.
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It is easy now to break the vows. It is even easier to part your ways if vows haven't been taken.
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In Montreal, where I taught in 1970, I met many people. The only ones who said to me they were Canadians, were Jews. All the rest were Scotts, Irish, English, French, Swedes.
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Unlike 'real relationships', 'virtual relationships' are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.
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