Sochi, September 15, 2020, 06:15 local time: Russian President Vladimir Putin is awakened by an urgent phone call from the Defense Minister – an unidentified, cube-shaped luminous object has appeared on the terrace of the Vorontsov Palace in Yalta that night, and no weapon of the Russian Army is able to destroy it. The object has penetrated the communications backbone networks, taking control of the entire information space of the country. Putin goes on television with a message: if the object does not disappear from Russian territory by 12:00 today, 45 ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads will fall on America and its allies: “Mr. Trump, you and I have 56 minutes to save our civilization.
Hares Youssef’s book “Gaiia” begins with a dynamic narrative: real names and facts are intertwined with frighteningly plausible fiction, forcing the reader to follow the events of the novel with passion, but as the plot develops we realize that the entertaining plot is only a shell for the more important content. “Gaiia” is a kind of literary symbiosis that defies genre categorization: tense action escalates into a double-bottomed utopia, the author shares his model of an ideal society, and these ideas pleasantly surprise with depth and innovation-all countered by conservatism and our own intellectual stiffness.
The novel presents us with an alternative way of development of human civilization, a new economic model inspired by cognitive psychology and linguistics: language shapes thinking, influencing the worldview of its speakers – it itself can tell people the right direction in interpreting the most complex phenomena.
“Gaiia challenges modern values by calling the familiar family model an “appendage of the economic system,” proposing a change in the approach to education and child-rearing, a breakdown of the shadow financial model of the global economy, and an end to gender discrimination: “You see for yourself how nations degrade when women have no meaningful status in society. Even the most developed nations on Earth do not have such a status.
The author not only reveals the flaws of modern society, but also proposes a way to transform it, presenting complex philosophical ideas in the most accessible form. However, this simplicity risks becoming not only an advantage, but also a disadvantage of the novel – the universality of the chosen literary language absorbs the speech features of the characters and the individual style of the narrator, but we hope to hear his voice in the next parts of the book.
Overall, philosophy in Youssef’s work is not a static science that has been trying to make sense of the world for centuries, but a guide to action that boldly takes on the multiple challenges of modernity: “I am convinced that there must be some idea that can unite the planet, an idea that could make all the people of the world wake up from their consumerist sleep and see each other.
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