Within the Walls There's plenty of funny business. My dad was enthusiastically arguing that we should invest in this little known bank offering a high return. Your money doubles every month! Who told you that, I asked? The dentist. He now lives in a big house in Dedinje and has...
Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist, saw modernity as two stages. Stage 1 - he called Solid Modernity, Stage 2 - Liquid Modernity. Modernity generally refers to a period that started in the 15th Century and, depending who you listen to, either ended in the late 20th Century or it's still with...
image3084×710 127 KB In the paradoxical constellation of modern paradigms and situations, there’s one hidden phenomenon that fascinates me. Until someone suggests a better term - I’ll call it Complicity Remediation paradox. It’s a paradox that highlights the dual role played by us, the members of the society and the...
There's plenty of funny business. My dad was enthusiastically arguing that we should invest in this little known bank offering a high return. Your money doubles every month! Who told you that, I asked? The dentist. He now lives in a big house in Dedinje and has a huge painting of Petar Lubarda on the wall.
The next day he was fixing the VW Beetle - not his. It belonged to a friend who lived in Germany and occasionally needed to be chauffeured from and to the airport. The thing was rotten in places, but the engine started every time and kept up with other traffic by constantly being revved out... (read 1558 more words →)
Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist, saw modernity as two stages. Stage 1 - he called Solid Modernity, Stage 2 - Liquid Modernity.
Modernity generally refers to a period that started in the 15th Century and, depending who you listen to, either ended in the late 20th Century or it's still with us.
For Bauman though - Solid Modernity covers 18th and late 20th Century, Liquid Modernity - from 1980s onwards.
Why an essay about modernity as analysed by Bauman? It's because this particular framing helps make sense of what's going on in the world and, maybe more importantly, offers insights for further research.
Solid Modernity
In Solid Modernity - society, politics, economy - all solid.
When we say something... (read 1170 more words →)
In the paradoxical constellation of modern paradigms and situations, there’s one hidden phenomenon that fascinates me. Until someone suggests a better term - I’ll call it Complicity Remediation paradox.
It’s a paradox that highlights the dual role played by us, the members of the society and the institutions that represent us - as both perpetrators and healers within a system that perpetuates certain harms.
This is an attempt to explain profound changes in the world through the lens of Systems Thinking. In particular, this touches on coherence as a principle that is a necessary pre-condition for legitimacy and validation of systems. Contradictions, paradoxes, inferior logic all present themselves as an opportunity for someone to challenge the legitimacy - and that's exactly what's been happening with the world. Most other framings are really talking about manifestations of this phenomenon and are not dealing with root cause. I'm writing a series of article on this topic - all to do with sense-making, blindspots and mystification.
One could argue that ownership is a concept used for future-proofing. A way to "mortgage" our future in an ever-changing world. It provides a basis for longer-term strategic actions by ensuring permanence and durability of conditions and choosing the right strategies. It's also psychologically important because it removes anxiety and hyper vigilance or a related PTSD. Maybe it's worth just for the clarity knowing whether one owns or not - instead of irrational ambiguity. I wonder what would be a "working" alternative to ownership? Resources are limited.