The future after a pandemic and the ethics of responsibility

Abstract

What happens during an emergency situation? And which ideas about the future stem from these events? The COVID-19 pandemic offers the opportunity to reflect on human actions occurring with a dimension of solidarity only in situations of emergency. We will start from Sorokin’s intuition, which can be summarized in the statement:The future of humanity is in the hands of humanity itself. We will assume that collective damage requires collective strategies, reinforcing and renovating networks in the community. To highlight the necessary changes to turn individual and collective dynamics towards resilience, we follow with the consideration that it is necessary to rediscover the positive values of individuals. This, in turn, leads to further reflection on the problems of choice and the ethics of responsibility that permits individuals to embrace the concept of “common good”, something that they experience as members of a community and that they can only pursue from the standpoint of solidarity. The latter, indeed, is what gives meaning to human action and the very development of humankind.