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Old or new is the wrong question when it comes to normality after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Because the reality will be that normality will no longer exist in the future.
That also has to do with the coronavirus.
But by no means exclusively.
Rather, disruptive processes play a much stronger role, as is the case, for example, with the economic lockdown or social isolation in the fight against Covid-19.
New technologies - such as autonomous mobiles, drones for the transport of goods, self-learning robots or artificial intelligence - as well as socio-economic changes - such as blended families, social media or online search, buy and share exchanges for everything and anything - ensure that normality is a term which describes a condition "as the general opinion imagines it to be the usual, right" (according to the definition from the Duden).
In the future, there will no longer be a broad consensus among the population as to what is "usual" or "right".
With disruption, society loses a reliable benchmark
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In a sense, “disruption” is the opposite of “normality”.
The rapid pace of structural, socio-economic and demographic change massively reduces the half-life of the familiar and the familiar.
The validity and durability of the regularities and generally applicable guidelines are shortened.
With disruptive developments, societies lose a reliable yardstick to clearly standardize what is “usual” and “right” and what is “unusual” or even “wrong”.
That is why it will not be the case in the course of the new year, when the government believes that the vaccinations have achieved herd immunization of the population, a switch will be thrown and a new normal will be proclaimed.
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There cannot and will not be a return to an old normal, but just as little the start of a new normal.
Uncertainty and insecurity are and will remain too dominant, changes and faults too abrupt and radical.
Nobody can and will be able to recognize what “normal” should mean in the future.
Normality fits a homogeneous society, i.e. a population whose behavior and evaluation criteria are “uniform, identical, similar or identical”, to include a few synonyms suggested by the Duden dictionary to explain “normal”.
Despite all the differences that naturally always existed within German society and which could sometimes be considerable, for the majority of the population in the last century there was always something like a jointly accepted consensus on what was "normal", i.e. what was economic, political and morally went and what not.
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A typical social and economic model with an “average German” whose biography reflected a more or less generally applicable normal case for the majority of people belonged to normality.
What family meant was just as clear to everyone as was the role they had to play.
The marriage served as a lifelong insurance community that lasted unbroken from the wedding until the end of life.
The man was employed and provided for the family income.
The mother stayed at home to take care of growing up and raising their children.
The change of job and region of residence, breaks in (employment) biography and reorientation were more the exception than the rule.
This view of things shaped the economy, society and politics and above all the understanding of what “the Federal Republic of Germany (as a) democratic and social federal state” (Article 20 (1) of the Basic Law) had to achieve well into the post-war period.
However, normality does not correspond to the essence of diversity, individuality and differences that will be characteristic of Germany and Europe today and especially in the times to come.
Demographic aging, socio-cultural and structural economic change have promoted a diverse diversification of life phases, employment and partnerships in the last few decades.
Immigration and new forms of coexistence beyond the traditional family model led to an erosion of what could be generalized as a normal case long before Covid-19.
Globalization and digitization, as well as technological progress, increased polarization in income development and employment opportunities.
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People with and without a migration background, urban and rural population, employed and senior citizens, families with and without children, people with or without (considerable) wealth drifted apart socio-economically.
Generally practiced patterns of behavior and values shared and supported by large parts of the population - in short: the big common whole - faded behind personal expectations and individual experiences.
Many did not want to see the end of normalcy
To put it clearly: You cannot promote diversity and maintain normality or try to recreate it at the same time.
Fundamental contradictions exist between the diversity of behavior and the unity of judging what is right or wrong.
Long before the corona pandemic, there was less and less normality - only many did not want to admit it.
Society and its politics bought an artificial sense of community through generous gifts of money, which was naturally no longer available.
The welfare state has to (te) repair what threatens to break apart.
Its financing was secured with the term “intergenerational contract”, which sounds cynical to some ears.
"Are still a long way from normality as we would like it to be"
For the first time, the number of corona deaths rose to over 1,000 within one day.
Health Minister Spahn is therefore not assuming that the lockdown will be relaxed on January 10th.
And RKI President Wieler warns of a high number of unreported cases of infected people.
Source: WELT / David Schafbuch
In fact, this “strategy of bought normality” obliges the children's children to one day have to pay the current promises of their ancestors in terms of retirement and care (unsolicited).
As an example, the debt-financed political calming of the most diverse interests and a social pacification of polarized moods are currently repeated in the fight against the corona pandemic and its consequences.
With hundreds of billions of euros, politicians are currently securing approval for a procedure that centrally decrees common behavioral norms from above, undermines individual fundamental rights and temporarily suspends them.
It becomes more difficult to seek consensus and compromise
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Federal competencies, which are supposed to take regional diversity into account, are also disregarded.
However, neither normality nor solidarity can be bought or even ordered.
They have to be lived voluntarily and naturally by the population.
How can a jointly supported policy be pursued in disruptive times when there is no longer any generally recognized normality?
The only thing that is certain is that “business as usual” cannot be a sustainable answer.
The political division that can be seen in many places in democracies as a result of the lost normalcy is a memorial enough.
It appears in the USA with Trump supporters and opponents, in the United Kingdom with Brexit supporters and opponents, in Southern and Eastern Europe with sympathizers for European community solutions and national (istic) forces.
Elsewhere, a fragmentation of the party landscape can be observed.
When the greatest common denominator of a population becomes smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult to find consensus and compromise, measure and balance.
Then democracies have to come up with something in order not to die out as dinosaurs from the industrial age in the age of disruption.
Thomas Straubhaar is Professor of Economics, especially International Economic Relations, at the University of Hamburg
Source: picture alliance / SCHROEWIG / RD
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