How the corona crisis saved us
A Vision for the Future of Germany 2030
Keks Ackerman (aka Joana Breidenbach, Bettina Rollow, Stephan Breidenbach, Mike Lavigne)
Here’s the thing about visions for the future: they’re necessary in order to open up spaces of imagination, to give orientation, to marshall energy. But they’re also mostly wrong, for the future is no mere extrapolation of the past. In the melting pot of current dynamics, something entirely new is created: the future emerges.
If I now attempt to sketch possible scenarios for Germany 2030, then these are inevitably tied to my own societal bubble, as well as to my hope that some of the topics which I’ve been working on for a long time will have been realised “on the other side of the transformation”.
From the Inside Out — A new Structure of Feeling
It all started rather unusually. In the year 2020, most of us thought the world would change by us introducing new laws, founding new companies, or developing new technologies. But with hindsight it was actually a new emotional structure that marked the beginning of the transformation. That was the main reason we dared to take the leap to the other side of the transformation. Into a world in which supply chains and products follow the principles of sustainability and resilience: decentralised and agile, self-organised and repairable, resource-conserving and open source. Into a world, in which inner competencies are far more important than most qualifications of the pre-corona time. In which we already learn during childhood how to reflect on ourselves, to communicate transparently and openly, to take on multiple perspectives and adequately assess complex processes.
So what is it about, this emotional structure? It was Raymond Williams who, in the 1970s, spoke about structures of feelings, and meant by that feelings, moods and attitudes, which are characteristic for a specific era, and which significantly shape its behaviours and manifestations. And just such a highly specific emotional structure emerged in the year of 2020, triggered by the changes brought about by the coronavirus.
For those of you who were still very young, or who have forgotten what Germany 2020 felt like, here’s a short recap.
In the course of the (partial) lockdown, our radius of movement was greatly reduced. Our neighborhood gained in importance and we saw it with fresh eyes. What were these birds chirping in the trees? Why did so many in the neighborhood get their food delivered on bikes? Many of us felt much more “grounded”. At the same time, we experienced how interdependent our world is. We felt our universal vulnerability, and understood that “the world” is our relational space. It also became clear to us that these two experiences — the importance of the local and the global level — were not mutually exclusive. We are at home in both of them.
Many of us began to place more trust in our own judgment. What was important? What could we do without? What was harmful? In the midst of this new feeling for the essential, it became clear to us how feverish the world had become; how we had breathlessly been rushing between meetings, had pursued unreachable KPIs, had been driven by the fear of missing out. Instead, we relished the silence in the city, the empty streets, the bike tours.
We were astounded by how little money we spent. Instead, the contact ban showed us how important human contacts and authentic interactions are. Many a person asked themselves to what extent our excessive consumption was an attempt to compensate for our unfulfilled needs for intimacy and resonance.
Part of this reflection on what’s important was a new appreciation of essential or “system-relevant” jobs, from nursing staff to supermarket cashiers. By contrast, many of the high-paying “bullshit jobs” (David Graebner) appeared almost parasitic. We began to discuss who creates what value, and which control mechanisms could make sense for the economy.
The fact that many of us followed contact bans and wore face masks suggests that during the crisis we perceived ourselves less as individuals and more as part of a group. A new we-feeling emerged.
The push for digitalisation that swept through the country clarified how essential this medium is for local and global interaction, and many of us began to think about alternatives (oriented towards the common good) to the then reigning tech-monopolists.
Confronted with the systemic dynamics of a pandemic, more and more people began to understand what hitherto abstract terms such as “exponential growth” or “interdependence” really mean. This new understanding, as well as a new appreciation for science, would become essential in our handling of the climate crisis.
And lastly, the political reaction to the pandemic showed us that our society was capable of changing in the shortest amount of time. The status quo no longer seemed like an unalterable normality, we felt empowered: we could create the world as it seemed right, good and beautiful to us.
If we fast forward a decade, then we can classify these experiences as a turning-point. For, although there naturally were counter-tendencies — feelings of fear and overwhelm, regressive voices advocating for re-nationalisation and deglobalisation, egoism and greed, and attempts to find stability in familiar patterns — it was thanks to a fortunate mixture of visionary entrepreneurship, engaged civil society, and responsible politics that today, in 2030, we find ourselves on the other side of a successful transformation.
The new focus on one’s neighborhood and region lead to innovative and local solutions being implemented in essential industries like energy, food, and mobility. Many of these were already available in 2020, but they lacked the necessary capital for their implementation. The innovations were based on the principles of antifragile systems (Taleb), i.e. they were decentral, capable of repair and change, open source and environmentally friendly. Those include the now ubiquitous cooperatively run networks of energy suppliers, as well as city farms that use circular economies to produce local food.
As ever more people are not just intellectually seeing the world as one whole, but feel like world citizens, our handling of resources and responsibilities has changed. An ever growing proportion of citizens find it no longer acceptable that German electronic waste is dumped off the coast of West Africa, and that many islands and coastal cities are threatening to sink below sea level. We’re not just looking more closely and complaining, we’re also actively advocating for remedying these situations by, amongst other things, voting for the political parties that credibly act globocentrically.
The new sensitivity for the important things has reduced our feverish consumption. Instead, more people dare to feel their own vitality, through exchanges about essential topics, about their vulnerabilities, and about what gives meaning to their lives. They support one another in staying awake and authentic. Suffering and death are no longer taboo subjects, just as spiritual searching and human growth are no longer ridiculed, but seriously researched. We began to sharpen our quality control in this area, so that we learned to differentiate credible wisdom teachers and therapists from quacks and charlatans.
I’m especially fascinated by how our society now emphasises the importance to inner competencies. From the Enlightenment until 2020 our world was very one-sidedly fixated on material and outer phenomena. This led to what Byung-Chul Han so aptly described as the “burnout society”, in which many of us have internalised the capitalistic performance principle so completely, that we exploited ourselves without noticing it. Everyone carried their own workplace around with them. The larger societal consequences of this mantra of “faster, higher, further” showed themselves in the form of growing existential distress, the loneliness epidemic, the growing gap between rich and poor, and of course above all in the climate crisis.
A few years ago we began to better understand the deeper causes of this crisis. By concentrating on the outer dimensions of life—for example, by equating development and progress with the GDP, and by mainly teaching objectively describable facts in our schools—we developed a skewed perspective on reality. We may have thought a lot about what’s good for us, but we hadn’t truly felt it.
Through digitalisation we noticed that outer structures were gradually dissolving, creating a widespread feeling of instability. We understood that orientation and stability, in the digital-global age, has to come from within. And so we began to systematically occupy ourselves with our interiority, as intensely as we had previously studied chemical formulas and financial statements. Now, inner competencies, such as self-reflection, transparent communication, multiperspectivity and meta-cognition, belong to the school curriculum, and we also understand education as a lifelong process that includes the continuous psychic maturation of a person until their death.
Against the background of digital transformation and increased automation, there was a lively debate in Germany about who creates what value, and which control mechanisms are suitable to determine prices. Universal basic income, introduced throughout the whole of Europe in 2024 and financed through a wealth tax, has contributed to more people being able to make their individual contribution to society with dignity, as well as to the gap between rich and poor continually shrinking.
A critical mass of the population has, in the wake of the corona pandemic, understood that we must and can take radical political measures, in order to keep Germany’s contribution to climate change in line with a maximum global rise in temperature of 1.5 degrees. European regulations, among them a realistic carbon tax, led to Germany becoming an international leader in the fight against climate change, and the knowhow of German companies is now sought out globally. We have shown: high living standards and economies that respect planetary borders are compatible.
How did we manage the leap?
The leap sketched out above, from an expiring economic and societal model, which threatens the existence of the planet, to a vibrant, sustainable new paradigm, was only possible for Germany through the overhaul of economy, civil society, and politics. That’s why, here at the end, I would like to sum up the experiences of the last decade once more.
The entrepreneurial contribution
Some brave companies independently set out on the path of transformation. They understood that the economic system had to change fundamentally. And they developed proactively — while the old system still dominated — new sustainable and resilient business models, supply chains, and products. At the same time, they renewed their organisational cultures and introduced elements of self-organisation. They supported their employees in realising their potential while also driving the development of the company in a more innovative and self-responsible fashion.
Early on, these companies offered consumers an alternative. Many succeeded, because their products and services connected to the experience people had had during the corona crisis, and gave people the opportunity to express their new sense of life in their consumer behavior and lifestyles. Thus some of these companies became the champions of the current economic system.
The contribution of civil society
Through corona, however, the polarisation of society, as well as the tension between the new and the old system, became ever greater. Without the many effective initiatives of civil society that kept open a continual dialogue between the most diverse population groups, and initiated social innovation in fields like further vocational training, housing, and democratic education, Germany could have easily broken apart.
It is thanks to organisations like Karuna or the betterplace lab (stand-ins here for thousands of NGOs and social enterprises) that social innovation has become an export hit of the German social economy. Political movements like German Zero campaigned for and not against something: they delivered detailed law proposals for a climate-friendly Germany and Europe. Civil society organisations have especially shown their worth in the construction of the new digital infrastructure oriented towards the common good. Long gone are the days in which a handful of American and Chinese monopolists governed the internet.
The Primacy of Politics
These astoundingly positive developments, however, could not have come about without the energetic politics of the years 2021–25. Germany, in the year 2020, served primarily the interests of a powerful group of established companies. The success of these companies had been tied to skewed markets, environmental pollution, for instance, was not calculated into the production costs, but (as far as possible) absorbed by the taxpayer. In this environment, many companies simply weren’t able to offer sustainable alternatives while remaining competitive. This only changed with the disempowerment of the many lobbyists that had pleaded for the preservation of the old system. Some readers will still remember the finance minister at the time, who slammed the door on these “consultants” with the words: “The days of consulting the frogs before draining the pond are over.”
That’s how we paved the path towards the brave regulatory frameworks, which are now the envy of the world. It was reliable political regulations, such as the adequate taxation of CO2, that laid the foundation for a new generation of sustainable companies.
With hindsight, the corona year of 2020 was a critical stepping stone towards transformation. Many of the decisions made then could have been completely different. For example, a powerful group of experts, politicians and lobbyists spoke out in favour of subsidies for phased-out technologies and a relaxation of climate targets. Thanks to the massive and highly creative protests of the population, individual courageous politicians and entrepreneurs, as well as visionary artists, the world of 2030 is a better place to live in than ever before.
About the art work above
We are very happy to accompany this article with an art work — Kelim 1A / 6 — by Yehudit Sasportas. Yehudit is one of the most prominent and prolific Israeli artists working in the local and international art scene today. Her work is focused on site-specific installations, which include sculptures, drawings, video and sound works, and call for an intense and overwhelming sensory experience.
In different mediums and coming from different perspectives, we both understand evolutionary development as a process in which previously unconscious material becomes part of our individual and collective consciousness.
Kelim 1A/6 is part of Chapter № 2 of the Liquid Desert project. The essence of the Liquid Desert project deals with the archaeology of the subconscious and the unseen. The work space functions as a cinematic site and is built as a complex and unique architectural structure.
The Liquid Desert project embodies a purified, profound phase in Sasportas’s work; she has been engaged for years in mapping the personal and collective subconscious space through drawing, sculpting and sound works, which serve as fragments of a mute and essential testimony in space.
The vessel prints deal with different physical states of the mute witnesses through images of clay vases made by Sasportas, which are characterized by an eternal waiting dimension — a waiting for the moment at which information that has been repressed will be felt, confirmed and re-included in the emotional narrative of events, especially those which verbalize the personal as well as the collective historical timeline. The principal of returning what has been lost is deeply associated with the amendment path in traditional Judaism, and is at the basis of the artist’s creative thought and work.
