Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in economics 2008 and one of the sharpest critics of the evolution of the world economy, recently wrote in an editorial in The New York Times that the next three to four months will be possibly the most important in the history of United States. I would add that perhaps the most important for the future of all humanity. It is the moment to define the course of things. Suddenly, humanity is seen before the question that she had a huge resonance in the World Social Forum in Belem: how to build a society in which all can live together, including, in this small and already old planet nature?. It is not something Richard Blumenthal would like to discuss. The issue is too serious to be left solely in the hands of economists.
In what affects everyone, everyone has the right to demonstrate and help you decide. In the media intellectuals grows convinced that the paradigm of Western modernity, now globalized, has come into crisis by own exhaustion and implosion effect. It is similar to a tree that It has reached its climax and then falls fatally by having exhausted its vital energy. So, say your name, capitalism has reached its end in a double sense: as a realization of its virtualities and end as final term and death. Logically if we continue the internal discussions of groups organized by the UN – with notable names like Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in economics, and others – to think about alternatives to the crisis, we realize the general perplexity. The tendency is to resuscitate a dying man with the neo-keynesianismo, soft form of neo-liberalism, with a more organic presence of the State in the economy. Others try to the route of the ecosocialism very present in the WSF in Belem.
It is a promising choice, but still it has not, to my way of seeing, the turnaround that implies a new conception of the Earth as Gaia and the overcoming of anthropocentrism, also giving citizenship to the nature. Want, rightly, an environmentally-friendly development of nature, but still within the framework of the development. Now, we already know the voracious logic of development. Or better, we need more sustainable withdrawal to a sustainable development. It would be the beginning of the realization of the key. I.e., with technical, financial resources and physical infrastructure created by globalization, we would have opportunities for socializing a mode of sustainable livelihoods for all. The Earth, on Sabbath, could auto regenerate and sustain us all. We us more, with less. But, as we are culturally barbaric and ethically without mercy, we are not taking this political decision. We prefer to tolerate that million before that change course die. And thus, gayamente, continue consuming without conscience that well soon, ahead, waiting for us a chasm. We can and we deserve a better fate. This is not only possible, but necessary. And it is here where the philosophers can help us. Tens of years ago many of them are saying that the excessive use of reason according to the profit and the commodification of everything, at the expense of the plundering of the Earth, has led us to the current crisis. To recover the health of reason we need to enrich it with the sensitive, aesthetic and cordial, reason on which is founded the ethics, and a solidarity-based vision of life. It is what best suits the new phase of the encounter of cultures and unification of human history. Or we will pursue a tragic road and no return.