Alternatives are not lacking in the world. What is indeed missing is an alternative thinking of alternatives.

Whenever it is said that there are very interesting things happening in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Western answer is that developed countries do not have the same problems, and as such the West does not need their kinds of solutions. There are two inferences from this.

First, the understanding of the world is much broader than the Western understanding of the world; this means that the progressive transformation of the world may also occur in ways not foreseen by Western thinking, including critical Western thinking. Second, the diversity of the world is infinite; it is a diversity that encompasses very distinct modes of being, thinking and feeling: ways of conceiving of time and the relations among human beings and between humans and non-humans, ways of facing the past and the future, and of collectively organizing life, the production of goods and services, as well as leisure. This immensity of alternatives of life, comforts and interaction with the world is largely wasted, because the theories and concepts developed in the global North and employed in the entire academic world do not identify such alternatives.

When they do, they do not valorize them as valid contributions towards constructing a better society. The knowledge of the South is dubbed as outmoded and considered as no knowledge at all.