“Making the Familiar Unfamiliar” by Baumann is a profound and unsettling discussion of societal change from the Renaissance, post-WW II to the Big Data era. His insightful analysis serves as a wake-up call, leading readers to reassess their priorities and values.
Fear, rooted in the awareness of our own limitations and inadequacies, is degrading from a communal to an individualized experience. Baumann astutely highlights the way how market forces have fragmented societal solidarity, fostering competition and rivalry at the expense of collective bonds. Market dynamic has left individuals isolated, facing uncertainties alone with anxiety. In the meantime, we falsefully look upon the market as a source of security.
Baumann encourages intellectuals to adopt a more balanced perspective where government and public interest regain their rightful place alongside the market. He pleas for mindfulness about the forces shaping our world (fate), as well as our responsibility towards them. Please always remember who the real enemy is. Market is the principal in the first degree, goverment becomes the second.
Baumann often expresses a sense of frustration over the limited impact his work can have within a lifetime. His introspection and openness about this struggle are marked with sincerity and honesty in confronting the complexities and the pace of societal progress.
“Making the Familiar Unfamiliar” indeed provokes my reassessment of the trend of “Breaking family ties((断亲)” which has become a notable social change in China. The concept of breaking family ties, while often seen as a move towards individual freedom and personal development, is also a means to break collective bonds, leading people from one dangerous situation to another. Capitalism is no longer content with the family as a unit of consumption; it seeks to turn every individual into an isolated entity, thereby maximizing human insecurity and fear of the unknown. If no children are born, no next generation of consumers can be created, so for now, existing families are broken apart to create demand.
In the classic Pixar animation ‘Monsters, Inc.’, just as the fictional company harnesses children’s screams for power, the capital market is depicted as feeding off human fears and anxiety, turning them into a source of continuous profit. Modern capitalist systems strategically weaken family and community bonds to create a more fragmented society. This fragmentation serves the market’s interests by transforming individuals into isolated consumers, heightening their sense of insecurity and vulnerability. It implies that in a market-driven world, human emotions, particularly fear, are commodified and exploited for economic gain.