Visions for Europe: Srećko Horvat

There was once a conversation between Max Brod and Franz Kafka
about the state of Europe in the last century.

It perfectly captures also the current state of Europe.

Kafka said that: "humans are perhaps the nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God's head. Perhaps, humanity was only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his".

When Max Brod then asked if there is any hope at all?
Kafka smiled and said "Oh plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope - but not for us".

Today, the situation might be even worse than Kafka's nightmare. There is perhaps still hope for us, but what if there is no hope for the generations to come?

Just take the summer behind us, record breaking temperatures, wildfires from the Amazon to Africa, rapidly melting Arctic ice, Brexit and rise of authoritarian politics across Europe and the world, refugees still dying in the Mediterranean Sea while captains who help them are being put in prison; microplastics in the Oceans and thousands of species going extinct ; so many signs from the future which seemed like science fiction only a few years ago.

Yet, the next 20 years will be the epoch, perhaps the last epoch, in which there was still hope for us.

Perhaps there is no infinite amount of hope, but Greta sailing over the Atlantic was an act of hope,
the Green New Deal gives hope that a different economic model, using the already existing technology, could really exist in 21st century,
people uniting and protesting authoritarian politics and people helping refugees - bring back hope.

In the next 20 years, as global challenges (from geopolitics to climate crisis, from technology to sovereignty) will come with even higher stakes, Europe will have to radically re-invent itself or it will disappear.

In the next 20 years, as the climate crisis becomes worse and sea levels rise, Europe will be faced with millions of climate refugees mainly from the global south, will the answer be more walls and more borders?

Europe obviously has to go through a profound political, economic and democratic transformation if it wants to survive.

There is no infinite amount of hope, but there is still hope for us and we have the responsibility to create hope for those to come.