The Redefinition in your Hands
2020
We live in a time full of paradoxes. In this BLOG SHA. seems critical and combative at the same time. He addresses this text to himself - and to the whole cultural society - with a creative wake-up call: "Let's leave our comfortable, now state-supported positions and deliver innovative ideas and counter-designs to the stale everyday life of a pandemic time. They can be weird and they can be loud!"
The redefinition is in your hands
Corona is a natural disaster. We humans react differently to a natural disaster: some react with great skepticism and bitter criticism of the general, "majority" narrative, so to speak, that is given to us by politicians and the media. Others react with great discipline to advocate the rules and regulations we are given as being as sensible and purposeful as possible. What unites all people is fear. Let us detach ourselves from it for a moment:
Prime Minister Winston Churchill was asked in the midst of the greatest need - when the air war was raging over Great Britain - to cut the state's cultural spending in favor of the defense budget. Churchill refused, responding with the now-legendary phrase, "And what are we fighting for, then? This simple thought is a key source of inspiration for times of crisis.
What is it that makes us human? What makes us human when things get tight ... when it gets to our essence? And what does that say about our view of humanity when we put health above all else? What does it say about our society when we absolutely and by all means try to extend the human life span as much as possible and neglect the human quality of life, the actual content of life - the HOW?
A brief look at the current state of our social culture has a sobering effect: the cultural scene has been put into an artificial deep sleep. Its visitors are numb. Few complain, no one cries out. Whereas a year ago people still believed that the great, the important world issues were being negotiated in the theater, in concerts, in contemporary art, today the true significance of culture is revealed to be secondary, probably tertiary. The already many months lasting collective "détente of common experiences for our senses" is accepted as well as prohibitions, which became commandments:
Whereas a year ago it was a criminal offense to cover one's face in public life, it is now a legal offense not to mask. Whereas concerts, visits to the cinema and joint celebrations were part of our everyday life, these activities now no longer take place at all. The space for sinning together, discussing and conjuring up new ideas, which are urgently needed for many people to digest regulations that seem all too totalitarian, simply remains empty and unoccupied.
Indispensable became quite simply dispensable: While one had expressed oneself recently still completely clearly in completely Europe against genetically manipulated food, one sets today in the solution of the Pandemie everything on a mRNA inoculation, which induces as it were an artificial software program in humans, without knowing the long-term consequences.
The German government wants to use so-called "mass tests" to promote the idea of standing in long lines sorted like cattle to get a snapshot - completely ignoring the fact that here in Europe we have developed an individualistic social culture.
And while we put all our eggs in the #digitization basket in the economic solution to this crisis, a severe loss of sensuality is taking place. Can this cultural total loss be repaired or do we rather reflect on something new? Will this restructuring of society remain or will we return to our "old" values?
The Corona Crisis limits life more than any other crisis of our generation. How can one take good things from such a time? In any case, the winners will be those who go through everyday life mindfully and take care of their own lives. This much can already be seen today:
Only those who have the patience and stamina to fight their way through the jungle of new state aid and subsidies will actually receive them. Isn't it good to know that the state will stand behind us in an emergency situation and can afford to do so?
Only those young people who are already acting as independently and self-organized as possible will manage to perceive this long phase of distance learning as an opportunity to which they can always refer later as adults.
And only those employees who can deliver special services from the current home office will succeed in having this new form of work available as an equal option in the future.
How we develop as a society now depends on us, on each and every one of us. But this requires impulses and sources of inspiration. And that's precisely what I'm calling on the cultural scene to do: Let's leave our comfortable, now state-supported positions and deliver innovative ideas and counter-designs to the stale everyday life of a pandemic era. They can be weird and they can be loud!
"An optimist sees an opportunity in every difficulty,a pessimist sees a difficulty in every opportunity." (Winston Churchill)
All of us - and by that I mean politics and the media as well - could become aware in Corona time, in withdrawal, of what has made us humans what we are today: What role does culture play, what role does the special, the subtle, even the subtle play in your life?
The redefinition of the post-Corona time is in your hands.
