We are experiencing a period of epochal changes that involve not only a revolution of our, as citizens of a Western country, world but also a reshaping of global power relations with risks for the very survival of the human species. The planetary emergencies are three, they are growing at an alarming rate, and they are interconnected: war, climate change, and inequality. Fully understanding what is happening before our eyes is difficult not only because the information coming from mainstream media (hereinafter the Main Stream Media – MSM) is often distorted by various interests and often constructed with the intention of confusing the public, but also because a period of such great changes as the one we are experiencing requires new conceptual lenses to interpret the present and envision the future. And this is what we must deal with because the three emergencies mentioned above correspond to an unprecedented political and cultural crisis.
The war in Ukraine represents an epochal event, a watershed that marks a before and after. The end of the Soviet Union closed the era of the Cold War that began in the post-war period. The great economic growth of China and the recovery of Russia after the catastrophe of the 1990s are emerging realities that are changing global balances and are at the root of the instability of the “unipolar” world in which the United States has been hegemonic for three decades. Meanwhile, the massacre in Gaza is rapidly triggering a regional conflict with uncertain and frightening outcomes.
It is not surprising that the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one is accompanied by political crises and armed conflicts. However, this transformation of the political and economic landscape is accompanied by two global emergencies that concern in particular the countries of the collective West.
On one hand, long-term climate change, which is intensifying, is unequivocally attributable to human activities: the historical contribution of Western countries far exceeds that of other countries both in absolute terms and per capita. On the other hand, a handful of super-rich individuals are multiplying their fortunes at incredible rates: the five richest men on the planet have doubled their wealth from 2020 to today, with a growth rate of 14 million dollars per hour, while the poor are becoming poorer due to inflation. In Italy, the richest 1% owns 23% of the wealth (and controls much of the mass media, especially those newspapers that are “climate change deniers”). The first trillionaire (a trillion is 1,000 billion) will appear in the next decade.
This concentration of wealth has transformed the idealized capitalism where, according to the dogma, competition and the market would have produced the best possible distribution of resources for everyone, into the triumph of financial turbo-capitalism dominated by colossal oligopolies or, in some cases, monopolies, hidden behind the veil of the “free market.” Clearly, this has only happened thanks to a political power subordinated to the great oligopolies: if someone can earn 14 million euros per hour, it means that someone else is exploited, and this is possible only with legislation that allows it. It also means that the possibilities of tax evasion and avoidance are numerous and easily implemented.
As a result of this situation, liberal democracies have turned into oligarchies, liberal only for civil rights, where the barriers to entry for political careers are surmountable only by multimillionaires with wealthy donors behind them. Moreover, the relative decline of the United States entails a tightening on the domestic and foreign policy of those countries, like ours, that have been militarily occupied at the end of the Second World War and that have since enjoyed limited sovereignty.
In the collective West, the promise of the advent of meritocracy has been instrumental in justifying the possibility of a few winners and many losers. This ideology has been pervasively and omnipresently disseminated both in MSM and in social media (which in a disorderly and disorganized manner represent the only valid source of information and debate), and above all, in academia. The intellectual decline of academia, the lack of diversification of ideas, perspectives, and research are at the core and the cause of the current inability to understand what is happening in such a devastating and sudden way. And this is the ground from which we must start to build that bridge towards the new generations who, deprived of political and cultural references, wander aimlessly between a real world without a future and a nihilistic virtual world
Francesco Sylos Labini 