Corona
Making sense of reality – a spirit out of the bottle
Started with the climate crisis: Searching for how things work, how thing inter-relate instead of getting by with piece meal views
Corona triggers, to gain a picture of the reality of the world out there
Sense-making as coping with the experience of a new “upside down” world
Talking about Corona opens a can of worms, like in a fairy tale – you let the genie out of the bottle. Corona provides a basic theme that occurs concretely in the individual, uniquely practically in everyone here and in the world. It ranges from everyday occurrences to fates, the death of loved ones, existential worry and need, to global trouble spots.
This generalizability power, the “extrapolation” of what concerns one, what one overhears and learns in the media, makes the Corona situation for many a kind of “glass ball” or prism, by means of which one comes to think and does what was already difficult enough otherwise: to form a picture of the world and reality. That’s what “everyone” is doing at the moment. “Everything” is being talked about by “everyone.
“Corona and the consequences” is an inexhaustible conversation topic that can be casually run along or fully jumped on at any time.
Typical comments on the situation are that the world is “twisted”, “crazy”, “Sodom and Gomorrah” prevails or, in the positive case, the world is given the chance to turn around and repent. What is otherwise difficult to “imagine” and endure, Corona makes it sayable – while you talk about it with others in between or in the café.
Corona triggers to form a picture of life with and after Corona and about the world at large. The “whole” should come on the table and in a comprehensive
As a result, it becomes clear to most that there is no such single, sustaining picture of a reality. Attempts to hold a single picture lean toward “conspiracy theory.”
Theories on Corona and World Events as an Emergency Brake against Image Inflation and Arbitrariness
What is set in motion here is thinking in contexts. These kinds of “civilization exercises” allow us to put out feelers and to ground ourselves.
Psychologically, this is a kind of emergency brake against the volatility, arbitrariness and unmanageability of the multi-optional coexistence of culture. An attempt to find a foothold and orientation.
In this context, conversations rank around how this urge to “see things through” can tip over and become “scary”. This is also where theories about an “infestation” by the damage of global economic cultures come in. That only what is already “infected” as a system becomes invalid.
Overcomplexity induces crises modes
The frequent pessimistic assessments of the future are then derived from this – from the financial crisis, to the global economic crisis, to the capitalism crisis, to the climate catastrophe and sweeping images of a decline. All this while having a conversation.
Here the thinking things out turns into “short-circuiting” how to neither grasp nor move the “whole” – this usually reinforces the “sharing” of negative views “word of mouth” or in social media posts.
Picking the search for images and understanding up constructively in communication
What makes itself heard here, however, points to the lavishing volatile worry scenarios that otherwise remain “sealed” and kept flat in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
The energy that circulates in this “reflection” is a clear potential for engaging communication and brand strategies.