A liquid subject in a liquid society

Abstract

This article analyzes the main features of the contemporary subject based on the concept of “liquid modernity” coined by Zygmunt Bauman. Drawing on Heraclitus’s intuition of constant change, it explores the most distinctive characteristics of today’s society. With reference to internationally renowned thinkers such as Pope Francis, Byung-Chul Han, Gilles Lipovetsky, and Lluís Duch, the study seeks to show how the cultural, social, and technological metamorphosis experienced in recent decades has undermined the solidity of human bonds and commitments, as well as of the most representative social institutions. This situation has given rise to fragile and individualistic personalities, weak and short-lived human relationships, a culture of excessive consumption and disposability, and a syncretic, deinstitutionalized religiosity and spirituality. Nevertheless, the text also identifies hopeful signs among younger generations, in whom it discovers an innate capacity to build collaborative networks and a remarkable creativity that challenges the rigid models of what could be called a “solid modernity.” In conclusion, the article offers a critical yet hopeful reading of our time—a society that, although marked by transience and fear, still preserves the potential to reinvent itself through freedom, creativity, mutual collaboration, and the search for meaning.