Managing Economic, Cultural and Mental Crises Caused by COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The techniques for material and, more importantly, informational exchange across virtually all borders that have emerged and spread worldwide in recent decades, have led to a phenomenon known as globalisation. Not only certain pesticides or exhaust gases such as CO₂ as substances introduced by humans into the environment, are spreading globally and changing the ecology of the planet. There is a close parallel to ideas spreading globally, be they dreams of a happy and peaceful world community that begins to dissolve existing nation states and cultures or, alternatively, Malthusian nightmares as results of an anticipated climate catastrophe, or a sequence of pandemics that, like the plague or leprosy in the past, paralysed entire societies and plunged them into an existential chaos. SARS-CoV-2-related crisis, or “coronacrisis,” as we usually call it, is an excellent example. The speed with which a tiny virus, which primarily affects the respiratory tract of humans, has spread and the serious consequences for economic, social and political conditions would be inconceivable without the ever-closer interconnected world that has developed over the past two–three decades. A ruthless analysis of the positive as well as negative dreams of modernity is a prerequisite for revealing the very different economic, political and social theories of the present that are mistakenly considered and treated as independent but have obviously fallen out of time. Only then can a concept be developed for the coexistence of largely self-sufficient “fractions of humanity” that do not tear each other apart in competition for modest living conditions. A few thoughts on improving the resilience of the species running out of control round off the anamnesis of the infected human patient in this Chapter.