Is corona preparing for a major transition?
Even though we live in the middle of the Corona epidemic, there may be some value in starting to reflect on what is happening after the greatest global crisis in modern times. This is because we as humans have the ability to make sense of the conditions that prevail and thus influence the development going forward in a constructive direction.
According to Gunilla Almered Olosson, Professor of Human Ecology, the prevailing pandemic is paving the way for the major change that climate scientists have long called for. She believes that it will not be business as usual after the crisis, but that we will wake up to a fundamentally changed society that offers new opportunities. Corona not only puts infected individuals in quarantine, but also creates a “consumption quarantine”. This means that the Sustainable Development Guidelines stipulated by the UN Global Sustainability Goals and other Agenda 2030 and which the world has not succeeded in putting into action, now suddenly become the new normal.
Li Edelkoort (Trendorakel in the Fashion World) predicts a new social system that is based on people’s working and living conditions.
The pandemic forces us into sustainable patterns of behavior where we are forced to scale down, live more locally and significantly simpler. The reduced mobility is difficult for many to get used to as we get used to being able to transport ourselves between different cities, places, countries and continents as a natural and obvious part of everyday life. When this no longer goes, we are forced to discover what we have in our immediate area and how little we really need. These new habits, combined with the relatively high awareness of the need for a fundamental change in our behaviors and our lifestyles that were in place even before the current crisis, which makes it difficult to imagine that we will revert to old behavioral patterns when the Corona crisis released the grip on the world.
Of course, everything depends on how long the crisis lasts, but if it lasts long enough for the established system to fall apart and the imposed new living conditions become the new normal, it will signal that we have entered a new paradigm in human history and that we begins to form a new story about what life on earth should be about going forward.
The paradigm shifts are never smooth and never easy to go through. For those who live in the midst of such an upheaval, losses are often great on different levels. Then it is important to see the bigger picture of what it means to be a human in the world salt and try to find the feeling of curiosity and adventure desire as a positive impetus for coping with this stressful and yet so evolving and dynamic time.