The West: A Bygone Utopia?

  • 14 maggio 2017
  • 18:00
  • Chiesa San Francesco

DISCUSSION

With the support of Coop Alleanza 3.0

The complex system of values ​​we commonly associate with the idea of ​​”the West” is one of the most acclaimed utopias of contemporary history: a social project born in the aftermath of war and destined to guarantee, at least in this part of the world – “our world” – democracy, individual rights and democratic international institutions. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, we believed that these values ​​could become universal and durable. An unbridled collective euphoria prevented us from seeing how fast the pace of change taking place in our globalized world was, so fast as to make it incomprehensible to many and thus insecure and hostile. At the dawn of the third millennium we see that the standing of the Western model, with its political culture based on the principles of liberalism, is in decline: democracy has become demagogic, basic freedoms and de facto equalities are threatened.  Slogans invoking “sovereignty” have become widespread. The decline of Western hegemony has been declared, and we, who once believed ourselves to be at the centre of the world, are becoming peripheral: are we destined to become the West of the East?

Ospiti