Liquid Life

by Zygmunt Bauman

I have significantly mixed thoughts about this book.

One the one hand I found it a fascinating description of modern (post-modern) life. His descriptions of the difficulties people face within an ever-changing world was both revealing and horrifying, especially for those who have nothing outside of this way of living by which to gain perspective and solidity. Christians have faith in God that can provide a means of overcoming the fears and hopelessness of the liquid life that non-Christians struggle with. But to the extent that Christians have compromised their faith, or bought into the assumptions of liquid life, they too will feel the affects of insecurity and inability to cope with life as it is.

Something I am most thankful for about the book is his very thorough and helpful description of the problems of consumerism. Critics that I have read over the years of the post-modern world inevitably discuss materialism and consumerism, but I struggled to see the importance of the point being made, until now. Bauman helped me to see that the assumption of consumerism is that every need and desire that people have, all solutions to problems, and relief from every pain and anxiety can be bought and sold. Instead of belief in God and faith that He will provide all that we need, modern belief is that only other people will, through things that we can purchase and consume, provide all that we need or want. To the extent that our culture has turned away from faith in a good and loving heavenly Father that delights to bless His children – to that extent we are condemned to find alternatives in shops, and only in shops.

On the other hand, I found the book a bit exasperating because it reads mostly as a description of modern life without offering any commentary whether this is either a good or bad way of living, or what the alternatives are. This is just the way of things. It offers no solutions or hope. His final paragraph revealed what I suspected all along: He doesn’t know what to think about it all. He wrote:

“We feel, guess, suspect what needs to be done. But we cannot know the shape and form it will eventually take. We can be pretty sure, though, that the shape will not be familiar. It will be different from everything we’ve got used to.”