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Looking Beyond the Vortex of Crises and Debt

 
Ajda Pistotnik Stas Kleindienst

Staš Kleindienst, A Landscape with Stray Dogs, 2019. Oil on canvas, 130 x 200 cm. Courtesy of Moderna galerija, Ljubljana.

Normality as a problem

Today, we can no longer criticise the domination of authoritarian policies and the rollback of democratic freedoms for the sake of stronger markets and higher economic growth without taking into account the links between the global economic system and the increasing emergence of viruses (including COVID-19). The global industrial agro-food system in capitalist economies that drives the global trade in (wild) animals and destroys natural habitats at an accelerated rate is the driving force behind the growing number of diseases, one of many shortcomings of modern society that was so bluntly unmasked by the pandemic. Once again, countries chose to focus only on the consequences of the crisis rather than its root cause – an economic system based on the principle of endless growth.