51
Danger at close range INTERVIEW
Frank Haas with Hartmut Rosa
During recent years, many people have experienced how their ties to the world have slackened. They no longer pursue their hobbies with the same intensity, they meet up less often with friends. Filling this vacuum is a growing sense of numbness and alienation, which supports one of Hartmut Rosa’s theories. For a successful life, it is indispensable, the sociologist believes, that we are open to our environment and interact with it – without, however, wanting to control it. In short: that we establish a resonance with it. But what if our willingness to do so has gone rusty? Frank Haas spoke with Hartmut Rosa about deceleration, social interaction and the consequences of social distancing. Mr. Rosa, the human race can now look back on two years in which we have had to greatly increase the distance between ourselves and others, and that has become the norm. What effect has social distancing had on us? “Social distancing” is actually the wrong expression. The point was not to separate people socially, but rather spatially. In the meantime, however, it has literally become that: a social distance to one another, particularly in physical encounters. That is, the other person is perceived as a potential threat. You have a genuine physical sense of danger when you are close to other people. Interestingly enough, our perception of space has changed as well. A new phenomenon arose during the lockdown phases: the feeling that the world exists around us in concentric circles. That used to be the norm. Our home was the center, it was our world, and then came the yard, and the street, and the local stores – it was all very confined, very familiar. Beyond that were the city limits or, depending on where you lived, the woods, the mountains ... all those were still accessible. Further beyond, things blurred: London and New York were completely inaccessible – in other words, uncontrollable. In the past it wasn’t normal to think: next weekend I’ll be in Vienna, after that, Innsbruck: the world is like an open atlas and I'm moving through its pages. That changed again during the pandemic.
Although we are now in a phase in which hopes are budding that we will return to normal, in the meantime I personally feel like the world is an inhibiting place. I’m finally being invited out again, but I’m thinking that I don’t really feel like going anywhere. Do you understand what I mean? Not only do I understand that, I can explain it as well. Your sense of the world being inhibiting follows from the kind of distance that has arisen between me and the world. As early as May 2020, I had the impression that this feeling was settling on society like mildew. Many people were saying that they didn’t necessarily want to accept invitations anymore, or that they were thinking, “I guess I could call a friend and talk to him or her about this, but somehow I don’t really feel like it.” Where does that come from? It struck me that you first need energy to jumpstart that move and interact with the world. By the way, that applies to all types of inter action, including going outdoors when the sun is shining. Here too, the second thought is, “I really don’t feel like it, though. I’m too tired or too exhausted, I’ll just stay here on the couch.” But energy is generated by activity, it doesn’t just dwell inside you. And that applies all the more to social interaction. The less social interaction people engage in, the less they seem to need it. We know this from research into loneliness. If people are alone long enough, at some point they no longer sense a need to talk to other people. The others then turn into exactly what we discussed earlier on, namely into potential risks, into a drain on their resources. Not until they overcome their lethargy and go out to play volleyball again or sing in the choir, or whatever it is they used to do, will they realize what they have been missing all this time and how much they need these encounters as an
“Not until they overcome their lethargy, will they realize what they have been missing all this time.”
