The World Health Crisis: A Historic Chance for a New Global Political Project

• Main Author: Emil Constantinescu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva 2020-07-01
• Series: Cadmus
• Online Access: http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-4/issue-2-part-2/world-health-crisis-historic-chance-new-global-political-project

In order to understand “What the world will look like after the pandemic”, we must first understand the present we inhabit and learn from the lessons of the recent past. The COVID-19 pandemic is merely the latest—if, unfortunately, greatest—of the various crises that have continuously eroded the foundations of our global representative democratic system since its creation in 1956. Yet unlike its predecessors, it striking athwart the various sectors of society serves to highlight their respective shortcomings and occasions an objective, ruthless and thorough examination of the economic, political, social and moral implications and consequences inherent to their revival. We are thus afforded a historic opportunity to fundamentally recalibrate the essential pillars of global society along fairer, more sustainable, more inclusive and more transparent lines. This Herculean task will require the collaboration of countless specialists, scholars and leaders across all sectors of society, whose sage input – based on collective millennia of accumulated expertise and wisdom in a “society of knowledge”—will prove invaluable to elaborating new societal guiding principles appropriate to the realities of the new millennium. This new cultural model must not only countervail the oncoming societal, cultural, and economic shocks of rapid technologization, globalization and worldwide development but also safeguard a vision of hope and confidence in mankind’s chosen path forward—while allowing for ad-hoc recalibrations of its constituent parts when proven ineffectual. The existing global networks of power, capital, knowledge and wealth can thus be reshaped into a new framework within which each of the world’s countless citizens can not only be, but also become.