Who would have thought that tears would once become our common language?, exclaimed from his microphone a reporter for the Turkish television after the tsunami that struck the East coast of Sumatra at the end of 2004 and that, according to official figures, took 230,000 lives. These words were his comment before reconciliation, at least during the catastrophe, in the enemistada region of the Indonesian archipelago and Southeast Asia. Large global misfortunes such as climate change, financial crises or terrorism make them disappear antagonisms and unite us in a single joint action to save the world. Ulrich Beck, sociologist German and scholar of globalization processes, coined the term in the risk society to explain the transformations that have given rise to the beginning of postmodernism from the fall of the Berlin wall in 1986. The concept acquires significance by the unquestionable progress of modernity, especially during the 20th century. Milestones that have had indirect and partly unexpected consequences such as the insecurity and the new dangers for which nobody has already remedy.
We live in a world of porcelain that threatens to shatter into a thousand pieces because of the proliferation of risks unknown in the past but undeniable in the present. The media are responsible for putting the cry in the sky to keep cracks of the planet United. Social movements, protest and ask for explanations by the passivity of States and multinational corporations, both always guilty of planetary emergencies. But who decides what is an extensible risk for all mankind? Perhaps, also, own makers propose patches for the stitching given the absence of definitive solutions. Noxious health hazards such as electromagnetic fields that produce the antennas of mobile telephony, the flu avian identified as the most likely source of a future human pandemic or prolonged exposure to the rays of the Sun as the main cause of the skin cancer are real risks that condition the lives of citizens under a veil of fear.
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