Modernity knows of no other life but made

The modern romance with progress – with life that can be 'worked out', to be more satisfactory than it is and bound to be so improved – is not over, though, and is unlikely to end soon. Modernity knows of no other life but 'made': the life of modern men and women is a task, not a given, and a task as yet uncompleted and relentlessly calling for more care and new effort. If anything, the human condition in the stage of 'fluid' modernity or 'light' capitalism has made that modality of life yet more salient: progress is no longer a temporary measure, an interim matter, leading eventually (and soon) to a state of perfection (that is a state in which whatever had to be done would have been done and no other change would be called for), but a perpetual and perhaps never-ending challenge and necessity, the very meaning of 'staying alive and well'.

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polity Press, 2012) p. 134