FOCUS Online Mr green forest, on the one hand, we yearn for the limitations of the Corona-pandemic return to normality. We want to get back to work as normal, meeting friends, go on vacation. On the other hand, the crisis has politicized many of them. It was demonstrated against the Lockdown and the Corona-policy, now thousands against racism and police violence take to the streets. What the last months have done to us?
Stephan Grünewald: The experience in the corona crisis have made us aware of injustices, the ferment already a long time in our society. Even before the Lockdown, Germany was in a troubled mental state. To many people it went well and they saw their country as an island of prosperity in a world of crisis breaks. Nevertheless, it rumbled: The social Cohesion waned, radical parties were on the rise, more and more citizens had the feeling that the future could only be worse
By the Lockdown in the crisis was dug up out of our troubled society, so to speak, one. We are experienced in the fight against the Virus, suddenly, a whole-of-society shoulder-to-shoulder. Politicians, virologists, citizens were all ready, the Virus with unprecedented restrictions oppose. Now we have entered a kind of Auswühlungsprozess. The acute threat is averted and all the problems and conflicts, Polarizations and Schisms in our society come to the surface – also because the corona crisis has exacerbated many of the social fault lines.
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FOCUS Online What are the fault lines you mean?
green forest The Lockdown has been revealed, how big are the class differences in Germany are actually. We have to get in front of your eyes, that life in the cities is not barely financially viable, and that students have in our educational system the same opportunities, that system relevant professions are chronically underpaid.
From our psychological in-depth interviews we also know that it has come in the past few months, to a significant expansion of the life really. One half of the population has experienced the Lockdown as a wonderful time of relaxation and idleness. Financially secure social groups – be they civil servants, pensioners or students, who were supported by their families – suddenly had a lot of time and leisure for the garden, Hobbies or Netflix. For them, the Lockdown was a kind of Biedermeier Idyll, which can last a few months longer would have.
On the other hand, many people have experienced this time as a tremendous imposition. They suffered conditions, in confined living under Homeschooling for their children, the fear of bankruptcy or loss of job. In short: For this group, the Lockdown was a kind of limbo.
death of George Floyd: “Corona-anger is projected on to the racist state power,”
FOCUS Online : at The Moment, a lot of people seems to be a totally different topic umzutreiben. You go to the streets to demonstrate against racism and police violence. How do they fit together?
green forest For this theme are sensitized large sections of society already for a long time. The Video of the violent death of George Floyd’s has hit the current nerve of many people, because of the suffocation floats since the Corona as a kind of sword of Damocles over all of us.
If we now see on television that this is arbitrarily managed by a state Power and brought power to us in this Phase, of course, to an even greater extent angry, or stunned than usual. In addition, the tragic event offers many people a possibility to project your feelings of powerlessness and anger at a visible To the sinister, racist state power.
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After Lockdown: “We live in a kind of in-between world, and our life feels like a mind game”
FOCUS Online a few weeks Ago, the target of this anger was the Corona-policy of the Federal government. Thousands demonstrated against the restrictions of the rights of freedom, conspiracy theories had a boom.
green forest : In this second Phase of the lock downs increased polarisation set in. Many people displaced by the threat of the invisible enemy to the state. They saw him as the real Aggressor, which robs us of the freedom and us incapacitated. Corona has been trivialised, even the climate with each other intensified. Similar to the refugee crisis, the wars in families, faith, friends, and colleagues played.
The one has been accused of acting as a health Apostle, risking the collapse of everyday life and the economy, the other were seen as a potential angel of death that would endanger their imprudence to the common good. All of these Polarizations, which helped to humanize the invisible threat. Because it is difficult to deal with an enemy you can’t see and touch.
FOCUS Online : you say, we are now arrived at the third Phase of the crisis. How does it look like?
green forest : The increasing openness has led to that actually all of them are disappointed. Those who had arranged with the Lockdown well, are disappointed that the public life to start up again. And those who hoped to be able to as quickly as possible back to their normality return, to find that this is possible.
We live for an indefinite period of time in a kind of in-between world, the braked strange and damp works. The masks that we all wear, to push like a Filter between us and reality. Our life no longer has the intensity and drama as Corona and feels a bit of a mind game in the Bundesliga.
Actually, now would be the time to take to grieve and to say goodbye to our old picture of reality. A time in which we release and develop creative ideas can want to about how we live in the future. But many of them turn their disappointment now in anger and Spite. They go on the road, complain, and try by all means to the old situation.
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FOCUS Online Has made us Wutbürgern the crisis?
green forest Corona has made us, at least, angrier than the many crises before. A few months ago we felt potentially all-powerful. With our index finger on the Smartphone, we were able to move the world, travel book, transaction, and Tinder the Partner for life. Then this Virus came and showed us to our limits. The powerlessness we experienced in the corona of a crisis, is a source of anger that we now see on the streets.
FOCUS Online : If people are demonstrating for their freedom rights and against violence against minorities is a sign of a vibrant democracy. A new kind of civil society emerging?
green forest : The Chance that our society tackles, according to Corona, the major problems of our time together, are good. We were made aware of the Lockdown of gender inequalities and social vulnerabilities, which we can solve now. However, the “How” is crucial.
the question is: is the politicization that we are experiencing, in the future, in the civilized context of a culture of debate, or we entrench ourselves in extreme positions, which are not negotiated, but their claim to be absolute in the digital car castles, and echo spaces to the boil. The danger is that people are not ready to understand the positions of the other, has become through the corona of a crisis is greater. And if we can no longer argue in a civilized manner, flies us to the communities around the ears.
FOCUS Online How can we prevent it? the
green forest : people need guidance, especially now. You need to have differentiated positions, behind which you can provide and a type of the future, a compass, an idea of where it goes in the future. A promise, in old patterns and life-worlds to return, would be too little.
For the policy, the following applies: you should offer instead of a big koalitionärer harmony and lack of alternatives, divergent positions. Because contrary points of view in the middle of the society to open a civilized dispute the context in which the voters can locate.
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