Apr, 2021

WAS THE "OLD NORMAL" NOT NORMAL AT ALL?

If you could exactly restore the "old normal" - the state before Corona - with one magic stroke, would you do that?

Of course, most of all will spontaneously say: Immediately! Absolutely! But by that we may mean less the old state itself than the innocence of the feeling. The carelessness before the crisis. The "ability to do anything at any time".

Were we really carefree at the "old normal"? And did "being able to do anything" feel really good?

Do you remember those overcrowded business lounges full of nervous business people? The endless traffic jams around Zürich? The over-booming tourism? The never-ending parties, festivals, trade fairs that got bigger and bigger, more important, weird, shriller from year to year? And maybe somehow - dreary?

The uneasy feeling that somehow it can't go on like this?

Does Corona has drastically warned us that we have long been in a crisis of prosperity? Did we live in the "old normal" but in an above normal, which gradually turned into a shortage?

Over-tourism: More and more flights every year at cheaper and cheaper prices.

Over-meat: Every year more and more pigs in the stables and slaughterhouses, under terrible conditions.

Over-pleasure: Every year more people drove to the drinking paradises Ballermann, Ischgl and so on. Venice was so full of people that it was on the verge of sinking.

Over-connectivity: More and more heated real-time information, feverish yelling, spiraling excitement and doom hysteria.

Were we caught in the hedonistic treadmill? The saturation crisis of a prosperity that had no more direction than the constant more. Since every increase in enjoyment has a decreasing marginal benefit - every additional schnitzel and even more champagne becomes bland at some point - a deep inner emptiness, a raging dissatisfaction spreads.

Does the corona virus has drastically transformed our satiety crisis into a crisis of longing? Today, we long terribly for everything that we used to have in abundance - party, vacation, noise, enjoyment, sensuality, availability. Even stress. But at the same time, longing forces us to look at our own desires from a new perspective.

Longing reveals what we really miss. Do we really want what we used to have? Wo we really want what we want? Or is there something else what we miss?

SAGE