Liquid Life

People living in a liquid-modern society have liquid lives. Liquid life is the kind of life people have to lead who find themselves living in a society that can't keep its shape and that never stays on course. Liquid life is an uncertain life, and the most acute and stubborn worries that haunt it are the fears of being caught napping, of failing to catch up with fast-moving events, of overlooking the 'use by' dates and being saddled with worthless possessions, of missing the moment calling for a change of tack and being left behind. This contradiction exists in liquid-modern life: it ought to be a (possibly endless) series of new beginnings, yet precisely for that reason it's full of worries about swift and painless endings, without which new beginnings would be unthinkable. Among the arts of living in a liquid-modern society, getting rid of things takes precedence over acquiring them.