I saw her today at the reception
in her glass was a bleeding man
she was practiced at the art of deception
I could tell by her bloodstained hands

you can't always get what you want / stones

"Shopping is not just about food, shoes, cars, or furniture items. The avid never-ending search for new and improved examples and recipes for life is also a variety of shopping, and a most important variety, to be sure, in the light of the twin lessons that our happiness depends on personal competence but that we are... personally incompetent, or not as competent as we should or could be if only we tried harder. There are so many areas in which we need to be more competent, and each calls for 'shopping around.' We 'shop' for the skills we need to earn our living and for the means to convince would-be employers that we have them; for the kind of image it would be nice to wear and ways to make others believe that we are what we wear; for ways of making new friends we want and the ways of getting rid of past friends no longer wanted; for ways of drawing attention and ways to hide from scrutiny; for the means to squeeze most satisfaction out of love and the means to avoid becoming 'dependent' on the loved or loving partner; for ways to earn the love of the beloved and the least costly way of finishing off the union once love has faded and the relationship has ceased to please... There is no end to the shopping list. Yet however long the list, the way to opt out of shopping is not on it.

from
Liquid Modernity
by Zygmunt Bauman
Polity Press, July 2000




On the Frailty of Human Bonds

"There are solid enough grounds to see love, and particularly the state of 'being in love,' as -- almost by its nature -- a recurrent condition, amenable to repetition, even inviting repeated attempts. When pressed, most of us would name a number of times when we felt we had fallen in love and were in love. One can guess (but it will be an informed guess) that in our times the ranks of people who tend to attach the name of love to more than one of their life experiences, who would not vouch that the love they are currently experiencing is the last, and who expect there are more such experiences yet to come, is growing fast. If the guess proves right, one should not be amazed. After all, the romantic definition of love as 'till death us do part' is decidedly out of fashion -- having passed its use-by date because of the radical overhaul of the kinship structures it used to serve and from which it drew its vigor and self-importance. But the demise of that notion means, inevitably, the easing of the tests an experience must pass to be assigned as 'love.' Rather than more people rising to the high standards of love on more occasions, the standards have been lowered; as a result the set of experiences referred to by the love word has expanded enormously. One-night stands are talked about under the code name of 'making love.'

This sudden abundance and apparent availability of 'love experiences' may (and does) feed the conviction that love (falling in love, soliciting love) is a skill to be learned, and that the mastery of the skill grows with the number of experiments and assiduity of exercise. One may even (and one does all too often) believe that love-making skills are bound to grow as the experience accumulates; that the next love will be an experience yet more exhilarating than the one currently enjoyed, though not as thrilling or exciting as the one after next.

This, though, is another illusion... The kind of knowledge that rises in volume as the string of love episodes grows longer is that of 'love' as sharp, short and shocking episodes, shot through by the a priori awareness of brittleness and brevity. The kinds of skills that are acquired are those of 'finishing quickly and starting from the beginning'.... It is tempting to say that the ostensible 'acquisition of skills' is bound to be... the de-learning of love; a 'trained incapacity' for loving."