Life in Fragments: On the Ethics of Postmodernity

Author: Zigmunt Bauman (United Kingdom), translated by Yu Jianxing et al.
Translators: Yu Jianxing, Zhou Jun, Zhou Ying
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Now, we have finally "objectively and truthfully faced the chaos." We never did that before. Merely facing the chaos is enough to be embarrassing and frustrating. The novelty of this behavior—there are no precedents to follow, and no precedents to provide guarantees and guidance—makes the situation overwhelming. The water we have skipped over is not very deep, but unexplored. We are not even at a crossroads; a crossroads is a crossroads because there are already roads there. Now we know we are building roads—the only kind that can exist—we can only do this by walking. Or, to express the same idea in the language of philosophers and educators (missionary language, whatever is left in its system, we have not yet used it): there is no foundation that exists or can be discovered, and the effort to establish such a foundation has never been and can never be successful. Morality has no cause or reason; the necessity of morality, the meaning of morality, cannot be described or reasoned logically. Therefore, morality, like the rest of life, is unpredictable: it has no ethical foundation. We can no longer provide ethical guidance for the self of morality, we can no longer "create" morality, and we no longer hope that a more passionate or systematic engagement in this work will grant us such ability. Since we and everyone is willing to accept the view that morality is only safe when it is grounded on a solid foundation stronger than the self of morality itself—a force that transcends the fleeting/spatial constraints of the self of morality—we find it extremely difficult, even impossible, to understand why the self is moral and how we recognize it as such. Believing that an ethical foundation has not been established or has not yet been successfully constructed is one thing, while completely denying the existence of an ethical foundation is quite another. Dostoevsky's blunt words, "If there is no God, everything is permissible," scream the innermost fear of modern godless order builders. "Without God" means: there is no force more powerful than human will and resistance to compel humans to be moral; there is no authority more sublime and trustworthy than human own desires and intuitions to make humans believe that the behavior they feel is decent, just, and right—moral—is indeed moral, and that they can guide humans away from error to prevent them from falling into injustice. Without such force and authority, humans are abandoned to their own wisdom and will. When philosophers and missionaries endlessly search, this lack only breeds crime and wickedness; when theologians confidently explain to us, this lack cannot serve as a basis for producing just behavior or just judgment. "Ethically unfounded morality" does not exist. "Self-founded morality," when it lacks an ethical foundation, is clearly reprehensible. There is one thing we can be certain of: any existing or possible moral in a society that acknowledges the rootlessness of morality, its lack of efficacy, and relies solely on the fragile stepping stone of custom to bridge the abyss, must be ethically unfounded. Thus, everything is or will be uncontrollable and unpredictable. In the process of destroying and rebuilding itself in social interactions in different ways, morality has built itself: people gather together or leave, join an alliance or dissolve it, reach consensus or quarrel with each other, mend or tear apart the bonds, loyalty, and solidarity that unite them. What we know is limited, and the rest, the outcome of all this, is vague. What can be treated as an object is what has been carefully examined, dissected, measured, classified, and transferred from one place to another. To establish an obstacle to this kind of treatment, a "purposive impediment," is consistent with the idea of developing an emotional attitude. We call behavior and thought that are not constrained by the results of measurement and evaluation "emotional." Emotion is not reasoning, let alone logical reasoning. It is not enduring and has little cohesion, and is full of internal contradictions. It evades or destroys any framework built by standards and rules. Since, as Leo Strauss reminds us, we have demonstrated human maturity through the predictability and rule-governed nature of behavior—emotion cannot but be seen as an infantile manifestation (i.e., the process of maturation in the form modernity gives it, hoping we will forget). Under the influence of emotion, we seem to return to a state of infantile helplessness without defense: there are no rules to rely on; we are active in another unexplored world; we re-examine it, as if starting from the beginning, as we advance from the starting point. This is the meaning of "taking responsibility." (This is the fact hidden behind the idea of maturation as a gradual shift toward standards; in this idea, the cry of "be responsible!" means "obey the rules!"). Pointing to the rules, I re-describe my connection with the other as one item among a set of identical connections, a sample of a genus, a case of a universal rule—I escape all responsibility except for procedural responsibility. On the other hand, by uniting with the other through emotion, I am responsible to him/her, and first of all, responsible for the actions or inactions that may concern him/her. I am no longer an insignificant person, an interchangeable item in a set, a replaceable slot in a network of relationships; everything I do is meaningful—and if I stop doing it, it is also impactful. Now, the other becomes my guarantee; I, in turn, become the guarantor of my responsibility. Therefore, incorporating the other into my emotional web, establishing a mutually dependent bond, this important relationship is also my own creation and my sole responsibility. I am responsible for keeping this mutual dependence vibrant. This is the only fact established by my emotional "contact" with the other. What remains is silence; I do not know what fulfilling my responsibility means—it is both empty, waiting to be fulfilled, and infinite, impossible to fulfill completely. Therefore, I am also responsible for reshaping the existing responsibility into a feasible one, responsible for filling what it lacks, responsible for doing everything possible to realize it. This responsibility makes me powerful and strong; it also implies my power; it presents the other in the image of a weakling; it also implies the other's weakness. One is responsible to someone stronger; one is responsible for someone weaker. Thus, interdependence and responsibility are actually relations of power. Nothing can change this, even if the entire interactive process generated by responsibility, as well as the behavior of yielding to the other for purposes, is pushed into the background or outright denied, it still exists. (Even choosing to yield is a practice of my own agency). The connection between responsibility and power is practically tautological; without rights, there is no responsibility. Without rights, it is impossible to imagine the actual fulfillment of responsibility. (Conversely, fulfilling responsibility is an expression of rights). Due to often being in selective intimate relationships, distinguishing between cause and effect is futile; excessive concern about inadequacy is the cause of consumer mania? Or is the cause the clever strategy or unintended consequences of this expanded consumer market—this market replacing concern about deviation with concern about inadequacy, turning it into the public's concern about uncertainty? The discussion might easily delve into any of these possible answers, but this has already lost meaning, because—as in the scenario of capitalism interpreted by Weber—this foolish concealment has long since become a cage from which there is no escape. Inadequacy concern and consumer mania mutually reinforce each other, drawing energy from one another and ensuring the survival and integrity of the "other." Whatever this may lead to, the modern individual, who has had the role of a supplier of panopticon companions—a role that can no longer provide sufficient supply—finds himself in the position of a consumer of goods, playing the role of a collector of pleasures, or more accurately, a collector of various sensations. These two roles point to two different (collective and private) ways of dealing with uncertainty concern, formed in the important "shifting of responsibility" process called modernity. These two roles point to two different (collective and private) institutions tasked with applying these methods. What emerges in the process of defending against change is the uncertainty concern itself—though now disguised as concern about inadequacy rather than deviation. Concern about deviation is a form of anxiety that is tightly condensed. Behind the diversity of forms, it is easier to find a common content; Horkheimer and Adorno could accurately describe "anxiety about the void," which is the fear of being different and the resulting loneliness, the core of modern anxiety. Describing the postmodern anxiety about inadequacy cannot be as simple and clear-cut. Partly because of the world itself in which it operates—different from the "standard" modern world—is fragmented, and partly because postmodernity is the opposite of the linear, continuous modernity, it is "flat" and episodic. In such a world and such an age, categories refer to "family resemblance," not to "core forces," nor even to "common characteristics." In this rich pond of postmodern anxiety, it is almost impossible to find a feature that appears in every category. "Inadequacy" here serves as a label to file a large amount of anxiety—different in direction, experience, and treatment. Among so many anxieties, none can be easily described as a "major link" in the chain of anxiety, let alone the "primary cause." Instead of searching for a "source of postmodern anxiety," it is better to set up an index for postmodern anxiety. This, and nothing more, is exactly what the rest of this chapter will do.
Limitation, separation, exile (expulsion or destruction)—this traditional sequence constitutes all political strategies arising from the concern for health. Around the struggle against "stubborn health hazards," easily agitated, tense, and warlike political movements have emerged, whose foundations are more fragile and anxious; they can only rely on their collective fervor caused by fear, and only by inflicting remarkable harm on others does their presence in reality seem real. Therefore, they attract the most volatile, mainly marginal, independent radical elements in society, who are threatened by the "death of society," and those who are lost and confused by their extreme desire for an identity refused elsewhere. However, no matter how low their social status, they act as the vanguard of a larger force; it is by shedding the burden of the fear of death they share, by piercing a hole, that the tension accumulated in various parts of society is released, that they complete the major work of degrading, destroying, and humiliating the fears contained in the carrier of death. Then contemporary biotechnology gives individuals the means to mold the bodies of others. We rarely doubt the assumption that in the mother's womb, the child is an extension of the mother's body, and that the body with its organs and appendages is private property (as she can freely diet to eliminate "fat" or remove fat). Parents also have the right to decide what kind of children they want (or do not want) to bring into this world—now genetic engineering technology gives them a completely new, unprecedented opportunity to act according to their preferences. At least in theory, this new situation creates two complementary possibilities. One is to "customize" their offspring according to the demands of a few. They can quickly select the desired mix from a long and variable list of genes, and doctors guarantee that they will be produced exactly as instructed—if necessary, in a test tube.