“I can’t think of any period in human history when people were really certain what to do, had no surprises and no unexpected developments. What is novel is not uncertainty; what is novel is a realization that uncertainty is here to stay… [Therefore], we are challenged with a task, which I think is unprecedented — and the task is to develop an art, to develop an art of living permanently with uncertainty.”
— Zygmunt Bauman, The Trouble with Being Human These Days, 2013
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What a precise quote for our times…
Is there a logical contradiction here? Is Bauman trying to make a certainty out of uncertainty? No matter how postmodern we try to be, we are still addicted to finding some certainties.
“living permanently uncertainty” itself is a certainty. When we think about “living permanently uncertainty” it means living temporarily certainty. Here “permanently uncertainty” change into certainty. and it seems searching for certainty is not a permanent uncertainty.