Beyond the Breakdown: Three Meditations on a Possible Aftermath by Franco “Bifo” Berardi. "The Earth is rebelling against the world, and the agents of planet Earth are floods, fires, and most of all critters." "Human history is over, and the new agents of history are the “critters,” in Haraway’s parlance. The word “critter” refers to small creatures, small playful creatures who do strange things, like provoking mutation. Well: the virus." "Why are you giving money to a dead body? Can you revive the body of the global economy by injecting money into it? You can’t. The point is that both the supply side and the demand side are immune to money stimulus, because the slump is not happening for financial reasons (like in 2008), but because of the collapse of bodies, and bodies have nothing to do with financial stimulus." "We face two political alternatives: either a techno-totalitarian system that will relaunch the capitalist economy by means of violence, or the liberation of human activity from capitalist abstraction and the creation of a molecular society based on usefulness." "The sky is clear in these days of quarantine, the atmosphere is free from polluting particulates, as factories are closed and cars cannot circulate. Will we go back to the polluting extractive economy? Will we go back to the normal frenzy of destruction for accumulation, and of useless acceleration for the sake of exchange value? No, we must go forward, toward the creation of a society based on the production of the useful." "What do we need now? Now, in the immediate now, we need a vaccine against the malady, we need protective masks, and we need intensive care equipment. And in the long run we need food, we need affection and pleasure. And a new culture of tenderness, solidarity, and frugality." "In a pandemic, conjunction is forbidden—stay home, don’t visit friends, keep your distance, don’t touch anybody. An enormous expansion of time spent online is underway, unavoidably, and all social relations—work, production, education—have been displaced into this sphere that prohibits conjunction. Offline social exchange is no longer possible. What will happen after weeks and months of this?" "What if the overload of connection breaks the spell? When the pandemic finally dissipates (assuming that it will), it’s possible that a new psychological identification will have imposed itself: online equals sickness. We also have to imagine and create a movement of caressing that will compel young people to turn off their connective screens as reminders of a lonely and fearful time. This does not mean that we should go back to the physical fatigue of industrial capitalism; it rather means that we should take advantage of the richness of time that automation emancipates from physical labor, and dedicate our time to physical and mental pleasure."