Authored by: Menna al-Tellawy
In a time when modernity melted from a solid state into a liquid one, terms were replaced, values changed, human ties became weak and materialism triumphed. This study discusses the aspects of liquid modernity and its manifestations in family relationships in the Egyptian society based on Bauman’s ideas. It mainly focuses on the deterioration of social ties, especially the phenomenon of divorce, which destroys the smallest and most crucial cell in building societies, namely the family.
Modernity went on distorting original pristine human values. It changed love and the desire to keep and defend it into a fast transient fragile social relationship that is closer to the concept of commodity. Then the study deals with the rest of distortions resulting from the state of liquidity and its manifestations in society such as the ongoing war between the two sexes, which leads to nothing but widening the gap in the possibility of building a peaceful sound family that contributes to the construction of a cherished society.
The study goes on listing loose relations, which surpassed man and wife to man and oneself. It analyzes the modernity desired-person isolated from his religion, family and society. He is self-sufficient, absorbed in his pleasures, suffering from a loss that he cannot escape from. Modernity makes him see that luxury is the only way out. Thus, it drowns him into a sea of nothingness without any landing places and imprisons him in a golden jail. Further, it makes him forget his real freedom for the sake of shopping freedom. It makes him replace his life choices and human battles with choices among various products in a crushing market that changes its face a hundred times a day. Finally, he ends up in an empty struggle where he fights against fashions and the latest products. Thus, modernity wins and man suffers from going astray repeatedly.
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