Next To Us, The Deluge

The bottom line is: we all know that we’re doing well in the West because elsewhere, most people aren’t doing well. We outsource poverty and injustice on a small and large scale. Stephan Lessenich’s provocative description of our »externalisation society« illustrates the social failures of the current world order.

Having it all and wanting more, protecting your own wealth by depriving others: this is the secret agenda in developed societies. We systematically shift the negative effects of our lifestyle to countries and people in other world regions – and we block out our role in this practice. The renowned sociologist Stephan Lessenich offers a very concrete and politically volatile analysis of dependency and exploitation patterns in the globalized economy. In contrast to what we might want to believe, not everyone profits from the free market. The truth is: if someone wins, others must lose. And each of us has a responsibility in this zero-sum game, whose losers are now knocking on our doors. This is why, according to Lessenich, our lives will change, whether we like it or not.