Context
Corona and Being-Getting-Done Big Picture

COVID-19 as the ‘viral’ embodiment of a perceived turn of time into a ‘Terra Incognita’ of being done. It illuminates long-term social factors.

COVID-19 and the Pandemic of Being-Getting-Done

Impact factors that connect COVID-19 with ongoing cultural and social driving force since ever, ‘age’ is the period in life when one goes from doing to being done.

To change from doing into getting done is currently the big bracket of future trends – if one refers it to the way of active ‘ddoing’ something valid ‘since living memory’. In the coming change of automobility from driving to becoming dangerous, “autonomous driving”, IoT, digitalization and AI in a comprehensive sense as an image and as a framework for it.

COVID-19 comes ‘in between’ here, as a pandemic ‘being done’, as restrictions of basic rights, lockdown up to meticulous instructions for behavior. Subliminally it becomes an amplifier and distortion of the upheavals. To an unimagined and disturbing extent concrete for the individual and globally. In this respect it is also coincidental that this shock of ‘being done’ hits ‘the old’ (and weak) and their protection twice as hard. And as a consequence, ambivalent to negative feelings about ‘proportionality’ and ‘impact assessment’ are aroused.

SUV as mainstream vote for individual ‘whenever, whatever

SUV dominance in traffic and the COVID-19 pandemic have brought out the force of the forces currently colliding like a blueprint. SUVs have provided the individual with mobility that is ‘unrestricted’ in image. Wherever, whenever, off-road. Own ways, with plenty of space and room for all situations, for family, everyday life and work, for hobbies, interests and vacations, etc. An all-round format for individual freedom and potential.

They are the segment that continues to grow and that has virtually ‘cloned’ all segments in all shades, marking the lifestyle today.

And in whatever situation – whether in traffic, off-road, or in life – they realize that it is possible to “get through” one’s own feelings and traditional image.

Felt restricted freedom of movement also draws its dynamic from the “free road for free citizens” history and the still booming SUV preference. The “driving forces” of both are similarly strong – the first on the loser’s side and the SUV on the winner’s side.

COVID-19 is a counter image

A counter image to these cultural patterns of this individual freedom. Instead of large scale ‘self-control’ and decision making, one is decided by law.

With this decreed ‘self-limitation’, for the first time it becomes possible to experience ‘publicly’ and concretely on a personal level what one has been used to ‘doing’ and how strongly our culture (and ‘autonomy’ and ‘DIY’ culture) is built on ‘doing it yourself’ and ‘being at the wheel’.

Perspectives

Letting go needs concepts for transition

The current lack of transitions is also evident in the protests over restrictions on fundamental rights. In them, the unspoken restlessness about the general change to “being done” is moving without known answers to where ‘the journey’ is going.

This results in insights into new solutions for products and markets – from design to social responsibility.