By Marina Yan
Edited by Tiffany Au
From the AI apocalypse to climate change, it appears that the modern body politic has become perpetually surrounded by diseases it cannot vaccinate itself against. Yet, as the philosopher Slavoj Zizek observed, “in today’s market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol.” Thus, while contemporaneity remains an inferno, humans have retained their evolutionary impulse towards safety. This tension between a craving for stability and the fundamentally unstable nature of modernity drives today’s core existentialist anxieties, consequently electing the authoritarian strongmen governing our global politics.
In his 2007 book Liquid Times, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman explores the phenomenon which he dubs “liquid modernity.” Liquid modernity refers to the way in which the elements of modern society have shifted from a stable, predictable state to a fluid, uncertain one. In liquid modernity, the solid structures of Fordist production, nation-states, nuclear families, and life-time careers melt faster than new ones can form, replacing collective security with individual anxiety. In the first chapter, “Liquid Modern Life and its Fears,” Bauman examines “negative globalization,” a term he attributes to the process where capital, goods, information, crime, and terrorism can move freely across borders, while political and legal institutions remain trapped at the level of the nation-state. In other words, there has been a split between power and politics. Power, if defined as the ability to accomplish aims, has drifted beyond territorial borders, moving faster and more discreetly than bureaucracy can tame, while politics, if understood as the ability to choose what aims to accomplish, remains local and limited in its scope. Consider the denouncement of immigrants in popular political discourse. Bauman notes the alter ego, or mirror image relationship between immigrants and global elites; “like that elite, they have no tie to any place, are shifty and unpredictable. Like that elite, they epitomize the unfathomable ‘space of flows’ where the roots of the present-day precariousness of the human condition are sunk.” He uses the metaphor of burning an effigy, a dummy or sculpture which represents a disliked figure. To release anger at global elites, the true targets, the anger becomes re-directed towards migrants, the effigy. “That elite is much too powerful to be confronted and challenged point blank, even if its exact location were known (which it is not). Refugees, on the other hand, hapless and helpless, are a clearly visible, sitting and easy target for unloading the surplus anger, even if they are totally irrelevant to the miseries and fears of more miseries which caused that anger.” This is a prime example of negative globalization—as politics has lost power, struggles are forced to be deflected from their epicenter and instead towards manageable, local conflicts. “If the idea of an ‘open society’,” Bauman writes, “originally stood for the self-determination of a free society cherishing its openness, it now brings to most minds the terrifying experience of a heteronomous, hapless and vulnerable population confronted with, and possibly overwhelmed by forces it neither controls nor fully understands; a population horrified by its own undefendability and obsessed with the tightness of its frontiers and the security of the individuals living inside them—while it is precisely that impermeability of its borders and security of life inside those borders that elude its grasp and seem bound to remain elusive as long as the planet is subjected to solely negative globalization.”
The feeling of powerlessness and insignificance that pervades the modern individual is what Erich Fromm feared almost 70 years earlier. Fromm, in his 1941 book, Escape From Freedom, describes the key paradox of our human conquest for freedom and individuation; that as humans fight to free themselves from the restraints of traditional and external authorities, the resulting isolation and anxiety drives them to surrender that freedom back to totalitarian or conformist systems. A loss of freedom, he illustrates, is not merely conceptualized through overt dictatorships in stories like Nineteen Eighty-Four or countries like North Korea. Rather, it can be abstract and invisible, which is precisely what makes the modern iteration of disempowerment so powerful.
He begins the book’s core analysis by positing that while animals act primarily on innate instinct, humans possess self-awareness, reason, and imagination, coupled with a relative absence of instinctive regulation. In other words, humans have broken the chains of nature, and experienced individuation. “One side of the growing process of individuation is the growth of self-strength,” but the other is “growing aloneness.” He additionally declares that “this separation from a world, which in comparison with one’s own individual existence is overwhelmingly strong and powerful, and often threatening and dangerous, creates a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. As long as one was an integral part of that world, unaware of the possibilities and responsibilities of individual action, one did not need to be afraid of it. When one has become an individual, one stands alone and faces the world in all its perilous and overpowering aspects.” Whereas the feudal system of the Medieval times affirms this craving for belonging by creating distinct social hierarchies, the individualist, wealth-focused notions of the Renaissance and theological notions of the Reformation shatter this order. This lays the groundwork for the precarity of capitalist life. As individuals became a pawn in this economic system, in which life, happiness, and salvation are no longer ends in and of themselves—rather, profit-making is—this powerlessness was only amplified. Despite the characterization of modern citizens as homo economicus, the reality is that they, as agents, do not strive to maximize their own utility or profit, if, by “them,” we do not mean them as “the worker,” or “the manufacturer,” but “the concrete human being with all [their] emotional, intellectual, sensuous potentialities.” Capitalist life has not led to a life of self-interest. Instead, it has led to a life of self-negation disguised as self-improvement. The most glaring example of this is in hustle culture; while hustle culture is portrayed as an endless, egocentric climb to the top of the corporate ladder, employees routinely sacrifice sleep, physical health, hobbies, and relationships for economic ends. The concrete human being, who fundamentally requires rest, connection, and creativity, is in the process suppressed. Ultimately, “being employed [means] that they [are] dependent on the laws of the market, on prosperity and depression, on the effect of technical improvements in the hands of their employer.” They are manipulated directly by their higher-ups, not themselves. Systems from the Renaissance onwards have therefore formed a dual purpose: while they alienate individuals, they simultaneously provide a fragile sense of identity.
As Fromm wrote, “once man was ready to become nothing but the means for the glory of a God who represented neither justice nor love, he was sufficiently prepared to accept the role of a servant to the economic machine—and eventually a ‘Führer.’” One way of escaping this harrowing fear of freedom, according to him, is through developing an authoritarian character. Fromm formulated the authoritarian character as a combination of sadism, pleasure from inflicting pain on others, and masochism, pleasure from experiencing pain—together, sadomasochism. Sadomasochism as a combination may seem illogical. Afterall, how can one comprehend simultaneously wanting to be dominated and dominating others? Yet according to Fromm, both tendencies are the outcome of one fundamental human flaw: the inability to bear the weakness of one’s own self. He calls the ultimate aim of sadomasochism “symbiosis.” “Symbiosis, in this psychological sense, means the union of one individual self with another self (or any other power outside of the own self) in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of its own self and to make them completely dependent on each other.” The sadist side aims to achieve two goals: first, to mask one’s fragility, and second, to gain a sense of power and purpose by controlling another. Consider an oppressive husband who beats his wife, demanding she obey his command, while begging her to stay if she ever threatens to leave, because he remains utterly dependent on her to feel strong and anchored. On the masochist side, by submitting to a higher authority, one no longer has to worry about the heavy burden of choice and responsibility; as Søren Kierkegaard said, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” While Kierkegaard saw this as necessary for growth, the authoritarian character prefers peace even if it stunts their humanity. The authoritarian groundedness is, consequently, an illusion. It does not provide the structuralized security, the “womb-like” reality of the Medieval times, but rather provides a fragile hierarchy to cling to as a means to keep from drowning in existential reality.
Politicians such as Donald Trump recognize the political legitimacy in providing the solution to these fears and frustrations that accompany liquid modernity. They act as an “agitator,” as Leo Löwenthaal and Norbert Guterman describe in their 1949 book, Prophets of Deceit. “The agitator does not spin his grumblings out of thin air [but from the] modern individual's sense of isolation, his so-called spiritual homelessness, his bewilderment in the face of the seemingly impersonal forces of which he feels himself a helpless victim.” Thus, no matter the validity or the stability of safety brought by the agitator, the belief that one can find harmony is enough for it to become a worthwhile movement. Donald Trump evokes such feelings time and time again, as he expresses his promise to lift the “forgotten” middle class back into the light of prosperity. He echoes the struggles of those who feel left behind by contemporary culture, the so-called “silent majority.” During his nomination acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, he addresses the crowd with a powerful, mobilizing sentiment: “To all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned and left behind, you will be forgotten no longer. We will press forward, and together, we will win, win, win.”
To revive democracy, it is imperative not merely to overthrow authoritarian leaders; rather, it is imperative to foster a sociocultural environment in which power, security, and freedom are felt and embraced by the people. This does not mean that we should return to the rigid orders of the Middle Ages, nor cherish the oppressive frameworks of patriarchy and the like, even if such systems provide structure. Instead, citizens must claim control back from the elites and welcome the uncomfortable responsibility it is accompanied by. Whether this pursuit is compatible with the modern economic system is doubtful.
