Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

Clarissa's Blog

The Liquid Generation

Published by

Clarissa

on

I often encounter articles where fussy old people of my age project their fear of the increasing liquidity of life onto the younger generation. They hide from their own anxiety behind misplaced and dishonest worrying about the young people’s chances at finding good jobs or managing to fashion a good life for themselves.

In itself, the belief that the young people will suffer and live in misery is a sign of nothing other than the terror of aging. The reality,  however, is that the young are super comfortable with liquidity. When students talk to me about their life plans,  it is obvious that they are not only aware of the liquidity but are joyfully embracing it.

We should just stop fussing and helicoptering and let the young people enjoy their liquid lives even if we can’t do the same.

20 responses to “The Liquid Generation”

  1. Ol. Avatar
    Ol.

    OK… but it is also good to have solidity and solidarity sometimes. Health care or affordable housing to begin with.

    It is equally good to control the liquid flow a little.

    Like

    Reply
  2. el Avatar
    el

    \\ When students talk to me about their life plans, it is obvious that they are not only aware of the liquidity but are joyfully embracing it.

    Could you give some examples, please?

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      They don’t understand or mind borders. They see the world as one big whole and not as separate parcels. Nobody dreams of spending their life in the same job or in the same region. Everybody – literally everybody – plans to live on a different continent for at least several years. And I’m not talking of vague dreams. These are actual plans with time lines, and all.

      And there is a growing number of people who are planning different careers for different stages of their lives. This is so infectious that I’ve started fantasizing about alternative careers, too!

      Like

      Reply
  3. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    I can definitely embrace liquidity — always have — although ideally I would have much more, or perhaps just a bit more. Last night I dreamed I was in with some army surveillance team, in a comfortable tank, watching the weird Christian lady preach on the street in a mostly chaotic and dirty city.

    Like

    Reply
  4. NancyP Avatar
    NancyP

    These seem like the fantasies of youth. La vie de Boheme. (apologize for no accents) Who didn’t want to bum around Europe or hike in the Himalayas or free-lance in New York City at some point early in college? The point is, once one faces the reality of debt, let alone the reality of being a parent, those fantasies go away and one is focused on just keeping enough money coming in to be able to pay the rent and eat and pay off the student loans.

    I suppose I ought to regret that I was so responsible in my youth – no bumming around, no fancy travel, I just got straight to work like a normal person. 😉

    Like

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      This makes me think of the movie Revolutionary Road…

      Like

      Reply
      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        “This makes me think of the movie Revolutionary Road…”

        – And the action in that movie was set when exactly?

        Like

        Reply
    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Who didn’t want to bum around Europe or hike in the Himalayas or free-lance in New York City at some point early in college?”

      – Me. And the students I’m describing. Many of my students have worked or are working overseas. We are in foreign languages, so there is nothing strange about this. Bumming and hiking are your own personal fantasies that have nothing to do with people I’m describing. I moved country and then state over 10 times in under 10 years. None of that included bumming or hiking.

      “The point is, once one faces the reality of debt, let alone the reality of being a parent, those fantasies go away and one is focused on just keeping enough money coming in to be able to pay the rent and eat and pay off the student loans.”

      – These are called projections.

      “I suppose I ought to regret that I was so responsible in my youth – no bumming around, no fancy travel, I just got straight to work like a normal person. ”

      – These, as well.

      Like

      Reply
      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        Weird how in Mike’s generation (he was born in 1945) parenting was not considered an inevitability.

        Like

        Reply
  5. John Hayden Avatar
    John Hayden

    Never thought about this subject precisely. I don’t think you’re talking about fatalism. Or acceptance. Liquidity has a specific meaning in the context of finance or investments. Not sure I ever imagined liquidity. Is it openness to whatever comes along?

    Might this concept be particular to your university, or to language students?

    I’m inclined to think that liquidity implies a certain level of prosperity or security. Or in the opposite direction, total poverty would make life liquid.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      No, liquidity is a term introduced by one of my favorite philosophers Zygmunt Bauman. It denotes the current state of the world where everything is constantly in flux, on the move. For instance, a few decades ago the best employees were the ones who stayed at the same company for decades. But today doing something like this practically buries a career. Unless you are prepared to get up and move at any given moment, you will not be successful in this liquid reality.
      Capital has also become liquid. It isn’t tied to a particular solid entity like a factory. Today, capital picks up and leaves in search of better conditions with extreme ease. This is what buried the labor movement. The capital has such a freedom of movement that it has no need to compromise with specific workers.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        By the labor movement I meant unions.

        Like

        Reply
  6. John Hayden Avatar
    John Hayden

    Thank you. Yes, things are constantly in flux. Capital investment used to mean a capitalist built a factory, hired workers, produced a product, and received a profit on the investment.

    By the late 1980s or early 90s, capital investment was increasingly replaced by speculation. Quick in an out, often without ever taken actual possession of the physical object of the speculation.

    Much capital is of course still held in real estate, such as farmland, residential or commercial structures. However, I imagine that a very large portion of the world’s capital is now held in paper, and subject to instant electronic transfer anywhere in the world.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “However, I imagine that a very large portion of the world’s capital is now held in paper, and subject to instant electronic transfer anywhere in the world.”

      – Exactly, exactly, exactly. We have seen the complete and resounding victory of liquid capital over solid capital in the real estate bubble of 2008-9 and the resulting global economic crisis.

      Capital has such a power that nothing can withstand it. Everything just follows its movement. If the capital chooses to be liquid, society will have to follow in all of its manifestations.

      I think I just said something very Marxist here. 🙂

      Like

      Reply
      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        And yet it doesn’t and cannot “choose” to just be liquid as evidenced by the fact that in the so-called “free trade” agreements, there are always limits set in terms of national interest. Consider, for instance, Japan’s vulnerable agricultural industry. It’s really not economically viable, but they still need it so that they are not subject to political blackmail through economic reliance on food coming from outside the country. The entity called Capital is given a limit by human consciousness.

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          ” And yet it doesn’t and cannot “choose” to just be liquid as evidenced by the fact that in the so-called “free trade” agreements, there are always limits set in terms of national interest.”

          – These are vestiges of the past. They are being swept away.

          “Consider, for instance, Japan’s vulnerable agricultural industry. It’s really not economically viable, but they still need it so that they are not subject to political blackmail through economic reliance on food coming from outside the country.”

          – The EU tried playing this game, protecting the agriculture. And soon discovered that it can only be done if the smaller peripheral European countries (Bulgaria, for instance) destroy their agriculture to serve this project. The Germans are happy but the Bulgarians less so. And to me it seems that capital would have arranged this much better: simply according to whose beets are better and not who got control of the EU bureaucracy sooner.

          Like

          Reply
          1. musteryou Avatar
            musteryou

            Yes, there could be cheaper beets. If humans can be reduced to cheaper beets, perhaps they will all wear rosy smiles on their faces.

            It may be rational that Capital will take a greater and greater hold, but there is no overwhelming reason why it should be deified and turned into the one unifying principle governing everything.

            Economic extremism has no place in a world that is becoming psychologically liquified, because we are going to see greater and greater variations in perspective and in governing principles.

            There’s not going to be one world order with one governing divine principle.

            Like

            Reply
            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              “there is no overwhelming reason why it should be deified and turned into the one unifying principle governing everything.”

              – Let’s direct all complaints on this subject to Marx. 🙂 This is his idea, not mine.

              Like

              Reply
              1. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Not exactly. Marx was dialectical, whereas libertarianism isn’t. It’s the principle of the market as God.

                Like

              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Libertarianism should be discussed in the threads dedicated to psychiatry.

                Like

Leave a comment

A conservative literary critic and college professor

Recent posts