Planet under Pressure

RESILIENCE
since we’re no longer able to embrace
or meet each other. However, this crisis
also presents us with an opportunity to
discover the other resonance axes.
One of them is the relationship to objects
or things, such as a piano or a paintbrush.
Then there’s the axis of existential
spheres, such as art, nature, religion. And
the last axis is the self axis: feeling and
perceiving one’s self. The deceleration
is also having an impact on nature. The
canals in Venice are clear again, and the
first dolphins have been spotted off the
coast of Sardinia.
Could these changes also have a positive effect
for the future?
I’m skeptical here. Dolphins off the coast
of Sardinia will lead to people going to
Sardinia to see the dolphins. That’s the
mode of wanting to make things reachable
and available. You can’t switch it off
just like that. We can directly see the way
climate change is changing the world.
Yet, so far it has had zero effect on the
way we live and act. I’m also skeptical
because we have this compulsion to
want to go higher and faster and further.
The institutional logic of society is that
it can only maintain the things it has
– state pensions, healthcare, incomes,
jobs – through constant expansion and
growth. So we can’t just up and say,
“That’s enough.”
Why do you believe that?
I think it would lead to a crisis. That’s
why the great unknown right now is
not just how we want to live as human
beings, but also how we are going to
manage to do so institutionally. The
economic side of things is going to play
a decisive role here. For the time being, I
expect there to be a huge economic crisis.
After that, we’re probably going to want
to stimulate growth again. People are
going to have to consume, spend money,
produce – back to acceleration. But
maybe there’s hope yet of a change in
the way we think. We ought to see the
crisis not only as forced deceleration,
but perhaps also as a collective pause.
Would you have thought that this kind of
global deceleration was possible?
I myself, as a sociologist, am surprised
that all of the things I talk about are
suddenly apparent for all to see. The
deceleration is upon us in a way no one
would ever have dared to imagine. I find
this monstrous unavailability particularly
interesting. Suddenly there’s this
virus we don’t have under control. That
leads to a disruption in our relationship
to the world, to alienation. It’s hard to
say what the end result will be and what
it’s going to do to us. My hope at first
was that this forced deceleration would
be a great experience. But when I talk
to other people, I notice that it certainly
doesn’t feel like that.
Hartmut Rosa
One of Germany’s foremost
sociologists
Friedrich Schiller University,
Jena, director of the Max-Weber-
Kolleg, University of Erfurt.
Global Goals Yearbook 2020
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