In one way or another, I feel that we have reached the end of the world, which is not only a moment but also a state of being, and this is why we find it so hard to grasp its essence. We have more or less accomplished all that we can in a world that has exhausted most of the material and immaterial forms it could give us. Of course, history goes on, but it is starting to repeat itself. It does so because, for the moment, it has no grand quest to offer us that would go beyond an imagination that appears to have reached its limits, despite all the efforts of Hollywood. How will we react when we have fully digested the fact that our fishbowl has nothing left to reveal? Can we humans still endure if our perspectives do not go beyond the management of a planet that has given up all of its secrets? How will we cope with this finiteness?

The film Interstellar, quoted in this book's epigraph, probably was the very first movie to depict a departure from Earth in such a realistic and dramatic fashion, unlike the traditional space operas or survival movies that went before. What struck me most in this story was the melancholy, sadness and all-pervading apathy filling the hearts of a future society that looks so similar to ours. In the movie, the impending environmental disaster threatens humankind at the very moment when it is in fact ready to leave, weary of life on Earth. As their automated remote-controlled tractors harvest the fields, the farmers at world's end have nothing else to do but sit back and watch. This oppressive atmosphere exudes an apocalyptic air, the virtualization of the body and collapse of human desire that I seek to describe and which, without any possibility of adventure, can only lead to the depression of all humankind.

Depression. There, I’ve said it. I have already used the word, in fact, to prepare the reader for that which I believe is the hidden reality of our current pathology: humankind is depressed. If God were a doctor, His diagnosis would probably also include the phrase “bears suicidal tendencies.”