On our Doorstep. Simmel, Weber and the Making of Reality
Whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, 2020 will be the year that future historians will choose to mark as the advent of a new era. The pandemic did not simply hit us harder than any previous crisis – and God knows we had a few since the beginning of the XXI century! It left us disoriented and stranded, orphans of too many promises and proclamations, while showing us mercilessly the limits of our knowledge and the extent of our hybris, a mixture of inebriation and arrogance often found in Greek myths, where it leads heroes such as Icarus to ruin. The most powerful technology put to shame by an invisible… what? Thing? Living being? We just don’t know, four words that we’d better keep in mind while reading the following pages. The virus hasn’t fit within our worldview right from the start and still there it is, paralyzing global economies and exposing the flaws and shortcomings of the neoliberal ideology. It makes it clear that no one survives on his/her own, that “free” markets bring forth indecent inequalities and scientists hold no definite truth, but argue and squabble about numbers and theories.
