Liquid Love: The Reality Of 21st Century Love?
Imagine that an elderly man appears, with a nice bald head, while smoking his pipe, and says: “cell phones help to connect with those who are far away. Cell phones allow those who connect… keep their distance.” This is a phrase that is on the tombstone of the recently deceased Zygmunt Bauman, who coined the term liquid love, among other “liquid issues” that perhaps define our reality.
I suggest a tour, from now on, through Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid love. Let’s try to demystify together if this question really is the true reality of love in the century in which we live. What do you think?
Who is Zygmunt Bauman
Before continuing, it might be a good idea to know a little more about Mr. Bauman. He was an outstanding Polish philosopher and sociologist. Unfortunately, he recently passed away.
Zygmunt Bauman
However, posterity is left with its enormous work on issues as current as social classes or post-modernity. After the 1950s, under the influence and echo of events as important as the Nazi holocaust or the rise of socialism, his vision turned to current issues related to the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
In his last years, Bauman’s work revolved around post-modernity, globalization, consumerism and the new poverty. Hence the concept of liquid modernity that leads us to the question that interests us today: liquid love.
Liquid love in the modern world
Bauman defined the term liquidity to explain how he views societies in the modern world. For the sociologist, the fragility of the bond is the reality in our relationships. Hence, liquid, due to the malleability of the shape and the ease of dividing the elements into a liquid state.
Unfortunately, the keen mind of the Polish philosopher esteemed today’s society as an occasional world. Most of the people who make it up look for momentary satisfaction: that one-off fact that makes us happy for a minute. The next it’s over, and seconds later, it’s already forgotten.
According to the essayist, this is because one of the elements of love in the relationship, self-love, is also liquid. How can we like another person if we didn’t like ourselves before? What are we going to offer if we don’t have anything valuable to offer? What will we correspond with if they offer us something valuable? Our lack of self-esteem causes us to have relationships that dissolve in a matter of seconds.
Therefore, with Bauman’s unique poetics, the term liquid love, and everything that reflects on our current reality, escapes from hands because we are not able to solidify it and grasp it with the necessary force, not even love towards itself. same. We live in an ephemeral world of the instant as collectors of liquid events. Each day it becomes more difficult to create a solid reality formed by self-love and true relationships that last in time with the necessary consistency.
The need for self-love to establish true relationships
For Bauman, modern humans need strong commitments. And the first one needs to be with yourself. Without self-love, without personal responsibility, without the capacity to transcend, we are rarely willing to take on solid relationships.
The essayist considered that today, more than relationships, we establish connections. Just as we spoke at the beginning with your phrase about cell phones, technology allows us to stay in touch. However, we don’t use it to delve, but just to connect.
In a very curious way, in this sense it is possible to observe the paradox that the less transcendent we are personally, the more individualistic we become. Furthermore, precisely in this context we cover the specific needs that satisfy us momentarily. Fleeting events with a beginning and an end, including going from the real to the virtual.
How to dye liquid love with reality
The current liquid love is more and more unreal. Established relationships are immaterial and without content and commitment. However, we cannot let ourselves be carried away by discouragement and temporality. Luckily, we have a powerful tool with which we could fight the immateriality of liquid love. It’s called education. But to use it and get results, you have to start from childhood.
It is necessary to form children safely, with high self-esteem, aware of themselves and the need to establish real and lasting relationships. Free children, able to think and confident in every project they undertake.
Otherwise, our children, like many of us, will be trapped in the liquid love of liquid reality in a liquid world. At least, so thought Zygmunt Bauman. What’s your opinion?
