Liquid Evil

Liquid Evil

By Ziauddin Sardar
Adbusters.org
June 20, 2016

There is nothing new about evil; it has been with us since time
immemorial.

But there is something new about the kind of evil that characterizes
our contemporary liquid-modern world.

The evil that characterized earlier forms of solid modernity was
concentrated in the hands of states claiming monopolies on the
means of coercion and using the means at their disposal to pursue
their ends, ends that were at times horrifically brutal and barbaric.

In our contemporary liquid-modern societies, by contrast, evil
has become altogether more pervasive and at the same time
less visible.

Liquid evil hides in the seams of the canvas woven daily by
the liquid-modern mode of human interaction and commerce.

It conceals itself in the very tissue of human interaction
and commerce.

It conceals itself in the very tissue of human co-habitation
and in the course of its routine and day-to-day reproduction.

Evil lurks in the countless black holes of a thoroughly deregulated
and privatized social space in which cut-throat competition and
mutual estrangement have replaced cooperation and solidarity,
while forceful individualization erodes the adhesive power of inter-
human bonds.

In its present form evil is hard to spot, unmask and resist.

It seduces us by its ordinariness and then jumps out without
warning, striking seemingly at random.

The result is a social world that is comparable to a minefield.

We know it is full of explosives and that explosions will happen
sooner or later, but we have no idea when and where they will
occur.

http://www.adbusters.org/article/liquid-evil