This monographic work (TCC) deals with the theme of malaise in modern and
postmodern society, as well as the reasons for human unhappiness in this civilizing
process, as stated by Sigmund Freud in his work “Civilization and its discontents” and
Zygmunt Bauman in “Postmodernity and its discontents”. Other important works were
also consulted, such as “All that is solid melts into air” by Marshall Berman and “The
origins of postmodernity” by Perry Anderson, in addition to other important thinkers that
deal with the subject in question. Initially, a brief summary was made of the historical
contextualization about modernity and post-modernity, or liquid modernity, as Bauman
preferred to call it lately. According to Freud, all the imposition aimed at the construction
of civilization causes several disorders to the human being, precisely because culture or
civilization produces a malaise by imposing “such great sacrifices, not only to the
sexuality of man, but also to his aggressiveness”, it is due to such frustrations, in
sacrificing their drives, that lies the great difficulty of living and being happy in this
civilization. Still according to the psychoanalyst, the happiness of man “is not included in
the plan of 'Creation'” and happiness is something fleeting or sudden, that is, only
moments of pleasure, or perhaps, at least so that we do not have moments of displeasures.
It is important to note that Bauman re-reads by developing a constant dialogue with the
Freudian text mentioned above. The Polish thinker makes a counterpoint between a solid
society and a liquid society. Liquidity characterized mainly by insecurity, uncertainties,
the disposable and the feeling of failure of rationality or ephemeral happiness. While
Marshall Berman defines that one of the characteristics of modernity is to live a life of
paradox and contradiction, Bauman, affirms that we live in a scenario of uncertainty,
calling attention to a constant search for exacerbated consumption, as well as
vulnerability and fluidity in interpersonal relationships. The Polish thinker comes to the
conclusion that in the structure of a civilization focused on security, more freedom
represents less malaise, on the other hand, in a civilization where the structure has chosen
to limit freedom in the name of security, the more order the greater the malaise. Bauman
infers that there was only one change of place, because the malaise of modernity “came
from a kind of security that tolerated too little freedom in the pursuit of individual
happiness” whereas in postmodernity the malaise arises from a kind of freedom to seek
pleasure that tolerates very little individual security. For, "postmodern men and women
have exchanged a share of their possibilities of security for a share of happiness".
Therefore, Bauman asserts that individual freedom, in our times, is only a sensation of freedom, that is, a pseudo-freedom, concluding that there is an impossibility of harmony between freedom and security.
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