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Undoubtedly, the first feature that stands out in this 2030 Agenda is its evident messianic character, far removed from the anthropological and social reality of human beings. It is one thing to propose general or specific actions that seek to alleviate or reduce hunger, promote production, increase productivity or improve the distribution of the goods produced, and another to ‘free humanity from the tyranny of poverty and deprivation’. If this document had not become the guide for the conduct of dozens of countries in the world – theoretically hundreds – and especially of the European Union, it would be nothing more than a text written by an enlightened person to whom we should not dedicate a single second of our time, but the truth is that an infinite number of public actions, tax systems, punitive systems, large investments and the whole phenomenal set-up of development aid have been implemented and continue to be planned on the basis of statements such as the above.
Humanity will never free itself from poverty and deprivation. Just as there will always be floods, volcanic eruptions, sudden frosts, prolonged droughts; there will always be murders, criminal groups, thieves, fraudsters. Of course, the philosophy that transcends this Agenda is that man is naturally good to the highest degree and that it is only realities external to him that subject him to this tyranny of poverty and deprivation. But reality in no way justifies such a claim.
From religion to biology, all serious human thought is opposed to this conception of man and community life. Political action cannot be constructed by theoretically denying the most intimate realities of human beings. The world cannot be managed from an excel table that eliminates the main premises of behaviour in the political community.
The 2030 Agenda not only has this messianic character but also an evident apocalyptic component, in a secular sense of the term. When it is said that what is sought is to ‘put the world back on the path of sustainability and resilience’, it is challenging human life on earth; or is it not the case that human beings have been striving since the first Neolithic settlements to master the land, increase production, improve living conditions, security and public health? There is a constant invocation of a supposed destruction of the planet and of human life on earth, as if mankind were walking towards self-destruction and only a privileged few, the writers of the text, were aware of this and capable of ‘redirecting’ the world.
The sum of this apocalyptic and messianic vision of the world leads the promoters of this agenda to attribute to themselves a unique, exclusive, excluding solution, which must be imposed on all individuals and all peoples, considering the objectives and goals as integrated, indivisible and indistinguishable. Take it all or leave it, they seem to say. Well, actually, you take it all, because otherwise you will appear as an enemy of humanity, of the planet, of justice and equality.
From a political economy point of view, it is obvious that the political model being pursued is not based on the freedom of individuals and groups or on the democratic contrast of respective opinions. There is undoubtedly a totalitarian and all-encompassing element that leads to considering as an outcast anyone who opposes even one of the objectives or goals. An outcast who can be subjected to cancellation, censorship, repression.
What room for freedom is left to individuals, families, companies or states? That is the question to be asked: what model of society is being drawn? A society that lives in self-contemplation and self-hatred; that rejects itself for all that it has built up over the centuries. What kind of freedom is left to people in a world where a few, self-styled elites, design a universal, unrenounceable, indivisible plan of action to save man from himself? Is freedom a danger to man himself? It seems that this is what the 2030 Agenda draws, which literally says that its intention is to apply a new concept of freedom, which, moreover, it does not define in any of its pages; so that man’s freedom will be to submit, in everything, to the Agenda.