Main description:

The coronavirus pandemic forces us to rethink our contemporaneity. It has brought to the surface dimensions of human fragility that partially contradict the euphoria and human hubris of the fourth industrial revolution (artificial intelligence). It has also aggravated the social inequality and racial discrimination that characterize our societies. The book argues that the virus, rather than an enemy, must be viewed as a pedagogue. It is trying to teach us that the deep causes of the pandemic lie in our dominant mode of production and consumption. The systemic overload of natural resources creates a metabolic rift between society and nature that destabilizes the habitat of wild animals and the vital cycles of natural regeneration whereby pandemics become an increasingly recurrent phenomenon. In trying to take seriously this lesson the book proposes a paradigmatic shift from the current civilizatory model to a new one guided by a more equitable relationship between nature and society and the priority of life, both human and non-human.

Contents:

Preface

Part One: The 21st century presents itself
1. The pandemic and the contradictions of contemporaneity
2. Abyssal capitalism: The pandemic as business
3. The open veins of inequality and discrimination
4. Community resistance and self-organization
Part Two: The future starts now
5. Three scenarios: Between hell redux and kairos
6. Towards an insurgent, intercultural and cosmopolitan declaration of human rights and duties
7. The paradigmatic transition: A world to accommodate many worlds
8. First steps of the paradigmatic transition

Epilogue: What if we failed? To be read in 2050
References
Index