When one era is ending, anyone who is within it can consider themselves to be at the end of time and deny the event or they can look beyond. It’s evident that the capitalistic model based on limitless profit, on growth and on the consumption of the planet has finished some time ago, even though the governments don’t want to recognise that. The war over oil started at least before the invasion of Iraq by Bush senior and carried on up until now with the occupation of Afghanistan and the aggression against Libya is only the most evident of the symptoms of our self-destruction. The model based on individual mobility and on the world transportation of merchandise, Chilean pears in Great Britain or Chinese tomatoes in Italy has no logical or economic motivation. No one stops to ask: “Does growth make sense? And what does it mean exactly? Growth is a new taboo, a modern Moloch that is adored as in the times of Jupiter and Apollo, with its modern priests: the IMF, the WTO, the ECB and its temples: the Stock Exchanges, the majestic headquarters of the banks (the new churches) in the city centres. We are so permeated by the myth of growth that we take it for granted as though it is ineluctable and we live it as an act of faith.
However, when the mirror is broken and the truth can no longer be put off, then, as written by Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and psycho-analyst in his book called "Living in the End Times", there is an elaboration of the mourning that takes place in 5 phases. To explain them, he associates the consciousness of the collapse of our economic and social model to the discovery of a terminal illness. The first stage is denial: the crisis does not exist and neither does the hole in the ozone layer, the glaciers have always been retreating cyclically, the overheating of the planet is an invention of the media, automobiles are necessary for the development of civilisation, the GDP is the alpha and the omega of the nations. The second step is anger: The “no-global” movements are the new barbarians at the frontiers, anyone who doesn’t consume is a pessimist and on the other hand anyone who consumes is a patriot, governments and the multinationals who see the basis of their power collapsing are thinking: “This cannot happen, it cannot happen to me.” (*) Thus the sick person tries to come to an understanding to put off the sad event of his death: new economic manoeuvres, a reduction of the public debt, cuts to social services, increase of every type of taxation, disappearance of pensions.
Economic Cobalt therapy. Then comes the phase of depression in which for whoever is in power, everything is permitted, a behaviour characteristic of the decline of the Western Roman Empire, alliances with criminal powers, widespread corruption, new wars. He thinks about enjoying the life he has left. “Après moi, le deluge.” The last stage is acceptance in which the “power” resigns itself, closes itself in its bunker and awaits the end. In general, the world is somewhere in between the first and the second stage, between denial and anger. In Italy we have moved forward and we are in transit from the third to the fourth phase, between “coming to an arrangement with reality” and depression. In a bit there will be the assault on the bunker. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

(* ) quote from Slavoj Žižek