This chapter examines how humans deal with events that exceed their usual framework of thought and management. Through the figures of Creon and the Bastides Blanches, it shows that everyone acts according to the morals and rules of their own community, but they find themselves helpless in the face of unforeseen disasters or imperatives from elsewhere. Each then justifies their choices by necessity and conformity to the laws of the moment. He thus questions the relevance of certain major economic projects, often presented as essential for development, but which obey particular interests and a short-term logic. Two levels of temporality clash: that of everyday life, governed by urgency, private interests, and conformity, and that of a broader perspective, where short-term issues become futile in the face of the imperatives represented by the future of humanity and the Earth. The text concludes that the contradiction between these levels cannot be resolved without a global paradigm shift. Western civilization has entered into a lasting contradiction with the reality of the Earth, incapable, as it is, of repairing the damage it causes. Like other societies before it, it risks disappearing unless it substantially transforms its behaviors, values, and relationship to time and existence.