Introduction
Blog posts 129 and 130 argued that several characteristics of contemporary societies appear to strengthen ontology hardening. Partial dislocation increases dependence on continuity systems. Continuity systems become invisible and experienced as universal normality. Affective polarization encourages disagreement to be interpreted as threat. Digital technologies increasingly amplify activation, conflict, status anxieties, and symbolic distinctions.
Taken together, these mechanisms seem to point toward a troubling conclusion. Personal ontologies should become increasingly rigid. Continuity systems should become increasingly defensive. Alternative interpretations of reality should become increasingly difficult to appreciate.
Yet blog posts 131 and 132 pointed toward a paradox. If ontologies are becoming more hardened, how is leeway possible at all? Why do people remain capable of appreciating experiences they have never lived? Why do moments of curiosity still emerge? Why does ma sometimes become possible? Perhaps the answer lies in a feature of contemporary life that appears to pull in the opposite direction.
Identity fragmentation
One of the observations underlying blog post 129 was that the reflexive modernity envisioned by thinkers such as Anthony Giddens never fully materialized or has expired at some point. The expectation was that traditional structures would gradually weaken while individuals would increasingly construct coherent and reflective identities of their own. Identity would become a conscious project. Yet everyday experience often suggests something different.
When asked who they are, many people do not spontaneously provide elaborate accounts of their values, principles, beliefs, and life projects. They describe their social and economic roles rather than ontology.
This does not imply a lack of identity. It suggests that identity may often be less integrated and less consciously articulated than theories of reflexive modernity anticipated. This is in line with Bauman’s concept of fragmented identities: in our fluent times our identities are like pieces of a puzzle but without the box containing the image to construct (see also: blog post 41).
Continuity without completion
Blog posts 129 and 130 proposed that continuity systems provide enough stability for people to get by. Perhaps continuity systems do something else as well. They may provide the appearance of coherence without requiring complete coherence.
People experience themselves as relatively stable persons. They know how to navigate everyday life. They know who belongs to their world and what feels normal. They get by. Yet this does not necessarily mean that their ontology exists as a fully integrated structure. Much of what appears as ontological certainty may actually be continuity maintained through routines, relationships, habits, narratives, and recurring social interactions.
The continuity is real. The coherence may be more partial than it appears.
Hardened and unfinished
This possibility introduces a paradox. The same conditions that make continuity systems necessary may prevent ontologies from becoming fully complete. Partial dislocation encourages people to defend continuity more strongly because continuity becomes more valuable. Yet the same fluidity that creates this need for continuity may continuously expose people to new situations, experiences, contradictions, ambiguities, and perspectives. As a result, contemporary ontologies may become both hardened and unfinished. They are hardened because they are defended. They are unfinished because they are never fully settled.
This may explain why people often appear simultaneously certain and uncertain, defensive and curious, rigid and adaptable.
A source of leeway
If ontologies remain unfinished, then leeway becomes easier to understand. Leeway does not require people to abandon their ontology. It merely requires that their ontology remains incomplete enough to encounter reality beyond itself.
The possibility of appreciating another person’s experience may arise precisely because one’s own ontology remains under continuous construction. A person may defend an interpretation while simultaneously sensing that reality contains more than that interpretation.
The continuity system provides stability. The unfinished ontology preserves openness. Perhaps leeway emerges from the tension between the two.
Curiosity and unfinishedness
This possibility also sheds light on the observations discussed in blog post 132. If ontologies were fully articulated and internally complete, curiosity would serve little purpose. Encounters with difference would simply confirm what was already known.
While the hardening seems to present a barrier to curiosity, this barrier seems low enough to be overcome. Be it doomscrolling out of boredom or other negative inner states, or be it any other frame that keeps individuals captive and promises encounters with experience-based narratives – the hardening may remain porous enough for curiosity to emerge.
In that case the leeway could lead both to escapism and to ma. The leeway could result in openness to anti-democratic extremism and to democratic autopoiesis and participation.
Realness
The emerging image might give rise to the idea that fragmented identities simply become more gullible. Yet another interpretation seems possible.
If contemporary identities remain unfinished, then they may remain unusually sensitive to expressions that appear connected to lived reality. The attraction is not necessarily to truth, evidence, expertise, ideology, or authenticity as such. It may be to what appears real.
This openness is neither inherently democratic nor inherently anti-democratic. The same opening can lead toward conspiracy theories, populism, extremism, participation, dialogue, or democratic renewal. The difference may not lie in the existence of the opening itself but in the environments that shape what enters through it.
Fragmented identities may therefore not simply represent a vulnerability. They may also preserve a capacity that more complete ontologies would lose: the possibility of being open to and curious of reality.