For our culture is one marked by plastic people who believe they can make and remake themselves at will; and by a liquid world in which, to borrow a phrase from Karl Marx, all that is solid seems continually to melt into air. The coincidence of these two things—plastic people and a liquid world—is central to the issues we now face in our culture, from identity politics and LGBTQ+ rights to the growing impatience in some quarters with traditional freedoms such as those of speech and religion.
