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For a long time Diana Kinnert, at the time still wearing a cap, was considered the CDU's young hope: young, migrant, lesbian.
Now she wears a slouch hat, is 30 and, according to her own statement, too old to have any hope for the next generation.
She is an entrepreneur, podcaster, restaurant owner.
She is also still active in her party, supporting Christian Baldauf's team, the CDU top candidate in the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate.
And she is something of a loneliness expert: not only since Corona did she see isolation as the great challenge of our society - and in combating it a future task for the Christian Democrats.
WORLD:
Ms. Kinnert, you say: 14 million Germans say they feel lonely.
Who are these people?
Diana Kinnert:
When I first dealt with the subject of loneliness six years ago, the focus was on one group: the very old, the very old.
I have worked politically in the UK on this issue.
Over 200,000 senior citizens in the UK had contact with family or friends less than once a month.
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The pandemic and the need to avoid contact have exacerbated this problem.
Only: the elderly are not the population group most severely affected by loneliness.
"The stop of public life is an extremely hard turning point for the young"
Source: Maximilian König
WORLD:
But?
Kinnert:
The surveys show a clear peak among 20 to 40 year olds.
The latest statistics show that millennials and the even younger Gen Z are particularly badly affected - i.e. those under 30 years of age.
The end of public life is an extremely tough turning point for the young.
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Usually they are with their peers in school and study, throw themselves into noise and commotion, in leisure time, activism, art and nightlife.
And now they stand there and are thrown back on themselves.
No intoxication, no abrasion, no identity.
WORLD:
Young people are extremely networked, especially online ...
Kinnert:
The smartphone as a symbol of digitality is
both
a curse and a blessing.
It is an instrument for alleviating loneliness.
My single father exchanges ideas digitally;
I reach my family in the Philippines in video chat.
For the elderly in particular, digital communication is a way out of loneliness, a door to social participation.
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There are paradoxical realizations with the boys: Total networking, constant availability, simultaneous chats - and yet the subjective suffering of not having a real feeling, not establishing a real connection, consuming relationships rather than experiencing them intimately.
WORLD:
Why?
Kinnert:
If one chat annoys me, I'll jump into another.
If I come across an unpleasant opinion on Twitter, I mute it and block the conversation partner.
I stage a filter bubble to avoid friction.
Confrontation is exhausting, but without abrasion there is no warmth.
Without confrontation there is no intimacy.
Contact becomes opportune.
It doesn't just stay in the digital world;
it translates into an analogue.
You make an appointment, but keep alternatives open until the last minute.
A multi-option attitude, a free social mentality, a nonsense of appreciation.
You sit together but don't look at each other.
Answer business e-mails, set filters for Instagram stories, slide in direct messages.
Total networking makes you invisible, the opposite softens.
The result is arbitrariness, arbitrariness and superficiality, a disturbed world of attachment.
WORLD:
That makes our generation lonely.
"My impression is that the young are increasingly turning to a new collectivism"
Source: Maximilian König
Kinnert:
We are overwhelmed and insecure.
This has primarily to do with our newfangled economy of total flexibility.
The social market economy used to be responsibility, trust, and vision.
Today it's about exit, exit, exit.
This short-term fetish translates: We are driven to agility and disruption - and on Tinder should I suddenly be reliable and caring?
Our generation is drummed in: Adaptation is a sovereign virtue.
Social commitment, emotional opening carries the risk of being hurt.
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WORLD:
How can this personal disconnection be tackled politically?
Kinnert:
My impression is that the young are increasingly turning to a new collectivism.
They mainly gather in left-wing clashes.
It is often not about discussing political arguments, but about being seen and accepted.
It's about social and cultural belonging and recognition.
Ultimately, however, this form of collectivism sabotages a democratic culture of debate.
WORLD:
Why?
Kinnert:
The private is
becoming
politicized: It's about the limitation of truth, the choice of science, the only sense of humor, the judgment of lifestyles.
What I perceive as satire, how I feed myself, whether I am flight ashamed of people - that is moralism, that is not a debate.
We can no longer stand to disagree.
Enemies become enemies.
On the right-wing and right-wing extremist side, the principle is the same: When there is nothing left in rural areas to hold the community together - no marketplace, no church, no post office, no pub - a vacuum of social longing for community spirit and belonging is created.
In turn, other compensatory collectives with pseudo-meaningful offerings come into play: the vigilante group, Pegida, the AfD.
WORLD:
How can you fill this vacuum better?
Kinnert:
We have to empower people to allow healthy social connections so that they don't become vulnerable to
pied piper
.
The fact that the young generation avoids intimacy, sabotages relationships, persists in disconnection has to do with economic pressure.
Anyone who is afraid of losing their job, threatened by rising rents and pressured by the boss cannot open up.
People only come out of themselves when they are firmly in the saddle.
I think we need a new culture of participation in the company, modern ways of negotiating contemporary employee rights, an update for works councils and unions.
"I almost only meet up with friends online"
In the summer, Corona parties made headlines again and again, especially in Berlin.
Are young people really more thoughtless about dealing with the virus than older generations?
A new study comes to a different conclusion.
Source: WELT / Katharina Kuhnert
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WORLD:
How can that work?
Kinnert:
We have to re-embed the social market economy in socio-political
terms
.
The market system we are currently breeding is unhealthy.
It does not rely on responsibility, trust and vision, but on hype and liability.
The elite of this new economic culture smashes solidarity and promotes loneliness.
CEOs offer the you, hand out free fruit, but disguise economic dependency.
Works councils are undesirable.
WORLD:
That sounds more like a workers' uprising than the CDU.
Kinnert:
The CDU has so far failed to strengthen the relationships of trust within the company.
We have also failed to rethink the economy in an ecologically clean and sustainable way.
This was the only way to create ultra-left guerrilla groups that discredit market-based systems.
I want social, cultural and, above all, economic participation for everyone.
This is a wish shaped by the Christian Democratic idea of subsidiarity.
WORLD:
How can this wish come true?
Kinnert:
With new participation
models
.
It is not enough to continue working linearly in the structures that industrial culture has created in Germany.
We need to take seriously and explore new phenomena like loneliness and fragmentation.
One consequence of our age of over-individualization and disconnectedness is that people no longer feel part of a political community.
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That is the democracy mandate that for me lies in the subject of loneliness: We have to make communities possible, because without communities there is no democracy.
Diana Kinnert and Marc Bielefeld published the book “
Die neue Einsamkeit
”
on Tuesday
.