What will be the new normal?
Wird die Welt nach Corona jemals wieder so sein wie sie einmal war? Wie wird unser Leben nach der Pandemie aussehen? Werden sich unsere Denkweisen ändern? STEPHEN ARMSTRONG hat drei Zukunftsforscher befragt.
ADVANCED
permanent now. Overall, however, it’s far better to use past behaviour to predict the future than to look at short-term, immediate changes. Unless there are significant incentives for change, we will, in the end, return to the way things were before.
There will be some small-scale differences — you can be confident that more people will be working from home. City centre office space won’t be in such high demand and a lot of companies will need to restructure spending around that. The effect of physical distancing measures is uncertain, as it isn’t yet clear how long it will be before those restrictions are removed. Predictions are tricky. People talk about a vaccine next year, but there’s no reason to believe they are correct. Even when there is a vaccine, rolling it out to millions of people will take a long time. Social distancing could feature for the next decade.
What I think may be enormously different this time round is the social division this crisis could create. Take, for example, the UK leaving the EU. Most people didn’t really care about the issue — but then they had to pick a side and positions polarized. It’s possible that people will react the same way to the extension of any stay-at-home message. That message currently has people disproportionately scared to the risk involved. Some people will be angry and others careless. Society may divide along those lines — or in other ways.
For instance, the virus is not affecting young people, but they will have to pick up the tab for a long time afterwards. The previous 30 to 40 years of growth have all been appropriated by older people. The lockdown is protecting them, but the recession is damaging the employment prospects for the young.
The other concern with the resulting recession is that in past recessions, jobs that have been lost have eventually been replaced. With the forthcoming recession, there’s a significant chance that it will be used to deploy AI and technology to replace jobs in the future — we may come out of this with a large body of angry, unemployable people. There’s also a danger that the situation will turn into social unrest. There’s a limit to how long we can all be in it together. ”
Richard Bentall
“So far, it seems that the population is fairly resilient — in mental health and political views. Dramatic events that affect everyone actually tend to produce less traumatic reactions than those affecting individuals. There are factors such as neighbourhood cohesion: neighbourhoods are supporting each other better in some parts of the world. That’s important because the more that people belong to their neighbourhood — or groups such as football clubs, political clubs, book clubs, religious groups — and trust their neighbours and group members, the better they respond to stress. In other words, the more groups you belong to, the better your mental health.
Whether this resilience will be retained or lost depends on what happens to individuals. Broadly speaking, frontline health workers, people with pre-existing mental health conditions, people who have had the virus — especially those who have been hospitalized and mothers at home with young children — will be the most damaged. Another factor is the quality of life experienced during the lockdown, such as the quality of housing, the number of people squashed into houses and the quality of pre-existing relationships within families.
With kids, the outcomes are more complex. Adolescent boys, for instance, don’t want to comply with social distancing rules. Although parents are worrying about the effect of social media on their children, we’ve found that social media are only an adjunct to kids’ social lives, but not necessarily their only social lives — with the exception of a small group of kids for whom social media are a
substitute or replacement for friendship. All things considered, social media come across as positive in this crisis. The main thing that concerns us with kids is how far their education will be damaged.
As the lockdown eases, we’re likely to see a split between post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-traumatic stress growth. The latter is often observed after a tragedy — I nearly died, it was awful, but when I came out, I realized my priorities and have been pursuing my goals. In other words, some people will benefit from the crisis.
All of this is influenced by government decisions. People who have lost income, have increasing debts — and there are a lot of them — are the ones who will be badly affected. If governments mismanage the way we come out of the lockdown, it will make this situation worse. Transparency is key. People are more resilient if they have the correct information. There were three waves of the global Spanish flu pandemic back in 1918 and 1919. The second wave was the worst. Governments must ensure that doesn’t happen now, but if it does, the muddled information we saw at the start of this crisis will increase stress and mental health problems.
Politically, roughly 30 per cent of most populations have broadly left views, 30 per cent have broadly right views and 30 per cent can swing one way or the other. Threats to a group or society can increase sensitivity to right-wing authoritarianism. It’s interesting to see the divide at the moment between populations who are more frightened of migrants during Covid and those who are less frightened. The 30 per cent who could swing don’t seem to have made up their minds. Countries may become more polarized — some more tolerant, some less tolerant. At this stage, it’s hard to be sure.”
Geraldine Wharry
“Covid is having a huge impact on everything from workforce and jobs to social interactions to the products we design. We’re seeing a huge change in how people come together, and I worry we may be jumping to conclusions. There’s a lot of discussion around designing for a future where, for example, no one touches each other socially and we all stay home. Prior to the Covid pandemic, there was already a buzz in the fashion industry around the digitization of fashion through avatars, digital showcases, 3D pattern making. The pandemic is driving this further. But fundamentally, the supply chains were already in desperate need of change — with automation and AI expected to take 30 per cent of jobs in the next decade.
This crisis is fast-tracking conversations we’ve been needing for a long time. I worry that we’ll jump into new technology without thinking — chasing data, automation and digitization instead of valuing artisanship. We need to rethink, do some damage control, but consider the long term. What is the purpose of the industry? Traditionally, fashion is about emotion and we are an innovative industry representing the pulse of society — but in many ways, we’re so short term in our thinking.
There’s a risk that we may be entering socially unstable times. When we see bailouts, some people will be rewarded, while others get poorer. I’m not sure how much patience people have left. We’ve already seen the Gilets Jaunes and Extinction Rebellion protest movements. I think there’s more to come. If we don’t, as an industry, focus on the well-being of future
generations, we’ll become irrelevant. Fashion needs to become part of creating a healthier world and a new philosophy of business. It can take the lead in debates when it comes to automation versus humans. Fashion understands the value of the artisan. Can’t we pioneer a combination of digital and handmade approaches?
We need to accept that we must tax those companies that are hurting the climate to the point where it doesn’t make sense to operate in a toxic way. We must lead on conversations about universal basic income and different ways of working — so that people can excel, but the vulnerable are supported. After all, if you’re struggling to survive, you don’t care what you look like. We’ve had long-standing issues in terms of impact on the environment and overconsumption, and yet we’ve done close to nothing about them. Covid is an opportunity to put the brakes on what isn’t working and to turn the volume up on our plans for a better society and planet.”