Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

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INTERVIEW

Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”

The Polish-born sociologist is skeptical about the possibilities for political change

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25 ENE 2016 - 10:47 CET

Video: Zygmunt Bauman interviewed in Burgos./ Video and photo: Samuel Sánchez

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Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

Zygmunt Bauman has just celebrated his 90th birthday and taken two flights from his
home in the northern British city of Leeds to get to an event in Burgos, northern
Spain. He admits to being tired as we begin the interview, but he still manages to
express his ideas calmly and clearly, taking his time with each response because he
hates giving simple answers to complex questions. Since developing his theory of
liquid modernity in the late 1990s – which describes our age as one in which “all
agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice” – he has
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become a leading figure in the field of sociology. His work on inequality and his
critique of what he sees as the failure of politics to meet people’s expectations,
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along with a highly pessimistic view of the future of society, have been picked up by
the so-called May 15 “Indignant” movement in Spain – although he has repeatedly
highlighted its weaknesses.
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Born in Poland in 1925, Bauman’s Esta bebida azucarada perjudica

gravemente su salud
parents fled to the Soviet Union
following the German invasion in 1939. “We’re still in the age of
In 1968, after he was stripped of his Versailles, when the
Iggy Pop publicará un disco con Josh
post as a teacher and expelled from the principle of each nation’s Homme de Queens of the Stone Age
Communist Party along with thousands right to self rule was
of other Jews in the wake of the Six-Day established. But that’s a
War, he left for the United Kingdom, fiction in today’s world”
taking up a post at Leeds University Los españoles, entre los que menos
gastan en comida rápida: 42 euros al
where he is now Emeritus Professor of año

Sociology. His work has been awarded

numerous international prizes, among
George Kembel: “Se aprende
them Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award, in 2010. haciendo, y no escuchando a un
profesor”

He has outlined his pessimistic world view in books such as 2014’s Does the
Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?, which argues that the world is paying a high
price for the neoliberal revolution that began in the 1980s and that wealth has not
trickled down to the rest of society. In Moral Blindness, published last year, he and
co-author Leonidas Donskis warn about the loss of community in our increasingly
individualistic world.

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Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

QUESTION. You have described inequality as a “metastasis.” Is democracy

under threat?

ANSWER. We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of

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People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its
Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”
promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global
phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not
Earthquake measuring 6.3 rocks Andalusia region
designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of and Melilla
democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.

Bullfighter slammed for holding infant daughter while in

the ring
Q. In which direction is the pendulum
that you describe between freedom
and security swinging at the PSOE, Podemos fail to agree on negotiations to form
government
moment?

Youths film themselves crushing 72 piglets to death

A. These are two values that are in Almería

tremendously difficult to reconcile. If you

Zygmunt Bauman /Samuel Sánchez
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want more security, you’re going to have EU warns Spain of imminent “political risks” to its
economy
to give up a certain amount of freedom;
if you want more freedom, you’re going
Ten Spanish cities where the tapas are free and plentiful
to have to give up security. This
dilemma is going to continue forever.
Catalan pornography joins the fight for independence
Forty years ago we believed that
freedom had triumphed and we began
Is legislation needed to tackle cramped airplane
an orgy of consumerism. Everything
seating?
seemed possible by borrowing money:
cars, homes… and you just paid for it
Why did Hitler bomb four villages in Castellón in 1938?
later. The wakeup call in 2008 was a
Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

bitter one, when the loans dried up. The

catastrophe, the social collapse that
followed hit the middle classes
particularly hard, dragging them into a precarious situation where they remain: they
don’t know if their company is going to merge with another and they will be laid off,
they don’t know if what they have bought really belongs to them… Conflict is no
longer between classes, but between each person and society. It isn’t just a lack of
security, but a lack of freedom.

Q. You say that progress is a myth, because people no longer believe the
future will be better than the past.

A. We are in a period of interregnum, between a time when we had certainties and

another when the old ways of doing things no longer work. We don’t know what is
going to replace this. We are experimenting with new ways of doing things. Spain
tried questioning things through the May 15 (15M) movement, when people took
over public spaces, arguing, trying to replace parliamentary procedures with a kind
of direct democracy. This hasn’t lasted long. Austerity policies will continue, nobody
could stop them, but they could still be relatively effective in finding new ways to do
things.

Q. You have argued that the likes of 15M and the global Occupy movement
know “how to clear the way, but not how to create something solid.”
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A. People set aside their differences for a while in the public squares for a common
goal. If that goal is negative, about getting angry with someone, there is more
chance of success. In a way it could have been an explosion of solidarity, but
explosions are very powerful and short-lived.

Q. You also believe that by their

nature, there is no room for
leadership in rainbow coalitions. “Most people use social
media not to open their
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Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

A. It is precisely because such horizons wider, but to

movements lack leaders that they can lock themselves in a
comfort zone”
survive, but it is also precisely because
they lack leaders that they cannot
convert their sense of purpose into
action.

Q. In Spain, the 15M movement has helped create new political forces.

A. Changing one party for another will not solve the problem. The problem is not that
the parties are wrong, but that they don’t control things. Spain’s problems are part of
a global problem. It’s a mistake to think you can solve things internally.

Q. What do you think about the Catalan independence project?

A. I think we’re still following the principles of Versailles, when the idea of each
nation’s right to self rule was established. But that’s a fiction in today’s world, when
there are no more homogeneous territories. Today, every society is just a collection
of diasporas. People join the societies to which they are loyal and pay their taxes,
but at the same time, they do not want to give up their identity. The connection
between where you live and identity has been broken. The situation in Catalonia, as
in Scotland or Lombardy, is a contradiction between tribal identity and citizenship.
They are Europeans, but they don’t want to talk to Brussels via Madrid, but via
Barcelona. The same logic is emerging in almost every country. We are still
following the same principles established at the end of World War I, but there have
been many changes in the world.

Q. You are skeptical of the way people

protest through social media, of so-

“Our democratic called “armchair activism,” and say

institutions were not that the internet is dumbing us down
designed for dealing with with cheap entertainment. So would
situations of you say that the social networks are

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Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

interdependence” the new opium of the people?

A. The question of identity has changed

from being something you are born with
to a task: you have to create your own
community. But communities aren’t created, and you either have one or you don’t.
What the social networks can create is a substitute. The difference between a
community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs
to you. You feel in control. You can add friends if you wish, you can delete them if
you wish. You are in control of the important people to whom you relate. People feel
a little better as a result, because loneliness, abandonment, is the great fear in our
individualist age. But it’s so easy to add or remove friends on the internet that
people fail to learn the real social skills, which you need when you go to the street,
when you go to your workplace, where you find lots of people who you need to enter
into sensible interaction with. Pope Francis, who is a great man, gave his first
interview after being elected to Eugenio Scalfari, an Italian journalist who is also a
self-proclaimed atheist. It was a sign: real dialogue isn’t about talking to people who
believe the same things as you. Social media don’t teach us to dialogue because it
is so easy to avoid controversy… But most people use social media not to unite, not
to open their horizons wider, but on the contrary, to cut themselves a comfort zone
where the only sounds they hear are the echoes of their own voice, where the only
things they see are the reflections of their own face. Social media are very useful,
they provide pleasure, but they are a trap.

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Interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English | EL PAÍS

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