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An ideal and flawless freedom, complete freedom, enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.

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
Much
Metaphysics
Believe
Ideal
Life
Complete
Ideals
Disabling
Goal
Unreachable
Freedom
Oxymoron
Social
Flawless
Without
Enabling

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Today's youth have been cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of knowing whether it is transitory or permanent.
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Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.
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Community came to be seen as a chat-group: you switch on as long as your pleasure lasts, then push another button and switch off. Very easy to go in and out, join and leave.
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I did not and do not think of the solidity-liquidity conundrum as a dichotomy I view those two conditions as a couple locked, inseparably, in a dialectical bond.
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When opting out from partnership is so easy, every minor disagreement is perceived as a major catastrophe and irreparable disaster.
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The question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.
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Being condemned by fate to perpetual togetherness, we better make that shared fate into our shared, consciously and gladly embraced, destiny.
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After many years of thinking, reading and writing and looking, I came to believe that there are two basic, essential values which are indispensable for humane, decent, dignified life: one is freedom, and the other is security.
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With every death, a world is disappearing.
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You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest
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While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.
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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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People do not choose a government that will bring the market within their control instead, the market in every way conditions governments to bring the people within its control.
Zygmunt Bauman
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I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The more security we have, the less freedom there is more freedom means less security. You can hardly enough of both at the same time.
Zygmunt Bauman
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In our world of rampant individualisation, relationships are mixed blessings. They vacillate between a sweet dream and a nightmare, and there is no telling when one turns into the other.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Why are people so concerned with relativism? If you look back in history, millions of people were killed because of someone's dogmatic views, but I do not remember anybody being killed due to the tolerance of difference, to relativism ethically relativism does not seem to be such an awful thing, really.
Zygmunt Bauman
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In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.
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As long as we say: Alright, it is truth for me, and I believe in it and I am ready to fight for it, but I accept that others have different beliefs - and so let me have a closer look at what they believe - we can gain from our intercourse thanks to our difference, not despite our difference.
Zygmunt Bauman
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We live in a world of communication, everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.
Zygmunt Bauman