When Zygmunt Bauman wrote about a 'liquid society', he had come to realize fully the new social reality perceived by people at the time, so much so, his books became best sellers. Today, when we think upon how new technologies define us even better than social or economic relationships, we're on common ground: We're quick to perceive ourselves as liquid, or "amoral". But this paradigm is ever more detached from how things are really, and how they evolve in contemporary life.
Technology, in its own right, has become a social paradigm with the sense of connection becoming a primary instinct. And for two billion people on earth, this connection – fusing reality with the virtual – is giving rise to an entirely new way of thinking. In fact, one tends to regard technology today as a prosthetic to individual empowerment. Individuals tend to perceive other aspects involving rights, duties and social-economic context far less as their context has all but collapsed.
The world at large, instead, tends to look at technology as a new, powerful driver; a driver for a new social order. In short, that what people tend to perceive as real, is none other than virtual reality substituted for real life. In the end, it's as if we're all living in an intersubjective dream state, with no regard to any limitations, without the cumbersome burden of actually looking for one's purpose in life.
Read full excerpt at Luiss Open [Italian]