We zipped right past Utopia

Zygmunt Bauman has noticed that in 2017, we no longer look to the future with any kind of optimism. Mostly, we look to it with fear. For reassurance, we look fondly backward, to some imaginary time when everything was great, especially the future.

Retrotopia is an entire book reinforcing this point. Bauman cites hundreds of people in tracts, speeches, papers and books to show western society is crumbling, and taking our hopes with it. We are now all rivals, we are all on our own, and our best friends are guns. It’s a regurgitation of all the usual suspects: nationalism, globalization, automation, safety net removal, lack of community, loneliness, inequality…. The future just ain’t what it used to be for western society.

Bauman limits his research to the societal. The elephant in the room however, is the environment. While societies might be able to adapt to the Me era, the destruction of the ecosphere can no longer be overcome, and that has billions of people more than also a little concerned about the future. Lower pay, fewer protections and more solo battles are as nothing compared to an inhospitable planet.

Retrotopia just keeps making its one point, over and over, from different angles and sources. If you met Bauman at a party and he went on and on like this, you would consider him the biggest bore in the world. In a book you can put down, it is not nearly as bad, but really, beyond the introduction, there is little to recommend it.

David Wineberg