It's May 20, we are somewhere in the Corona pandemic. How do you experience the situation at the moment?
It's very ambivalent and controversial. On the one hand, there is peacefulness inside me, in the home and some kind of like restriction to more local and familiar settings. On the other hand, there is some expansion and hectic, especially online. I feel like my eyes are getting square because I'm spending so much time on screen.
We are now two and a half months, maybe three months in lock down to various degrees. When you look back at this time, is there anything you learned about yourself or the society or the city you live in?
I learned on several levels. The first of all, I learned to trust my children more, to trust their autonomy, to trust their capacity to adapt and to learn by themselves without being guided in every step. So they did huge leapfrogging in autonomous learning and independence.
I learned about myself that. I was able to let go and to give in to the situation without feeling anxious or frustrated. And I was just able to to watch and to care.
And if you look at the society or your city, is there anything you learn there or anything that you observe?
Well, what I observed is, is that it is difficult to see where it's going to go because, there are a lot of problems and distress. I mean, with enterprises crashing, a lot of independent workers fearing for their existence and reading the horrendous amounts of money that are being shuffled around right now. It makes me feel uncertain about the future and the way we are going to handle all of this.
I feel a little bit like in the calm before the storm. I feel that the first the first huge winds of the storm are coming because the climate, the social climate is getting more tense. So I watch with sorrow, the demonstrations that are going on and the polarizations that are happening. And the insistent questioning of scientific expertise. And I think the fight for clear and good news is going to be difficult.
On the other hand, I hope that this polarization is not going to gain much momentum right now. I witness it more like a small seed in society. And I feel that the bigger part of society and in my immediate surroundings, people are more keen to leaning into gentleness, into solidarity, into sticking together. Most people I know are are OK with the rules and believe science. And believe also that the decisions are made with good intentions. Nobody can say that they are the best decisions but that they are made with the best intentions.
Now, I want to invite you to turn your gaze to the future, to a time where we might have learned to live well with the virus. What do you want more of or less of your life or in society.
I want less of unnecessary consumption. I want more of slowness. I want more of space and time for everybody to strive for important things.
And anything else regarding that question?
I hope that we will not feel entangled and struggling with the recession in a way that everything will seem impossible... To open up for and look into a brighter future. I hope that the progress towards something new will not stall. But that there will be a huge leap towards also technical innovation, digital innovation, that will enable us make better decisions. And to have better ways of life.
So I think it's a huge, huge project that has already started, but that should be pushed now. And I hope that digitalisation, for instance, will really be the great enabler that it can be. And that this potential will not be diminished by too many issues related to the dangers of digitalization. That we will be able to go for the opportunities because we will need that if we want to get out of the nowadays classical ways of working and producing.
Thank you. So taking this as a jump off point, when you think of the future, what does your wildest dream, what don't you even allow yourself to dream sometimes?
I always said when I was a kid, a student, a young adult, I wanted to travel all around the world and to do a great world tour. And I did see a little bit of the world and did travel a little bit, but never, never did I do the big world tour. And I really wish to be able to do that tour but not rely too much on flights and stuff like that.
So my wildest dream is that there will be new, terrific ways of transportation and travel that allow us to get to stay open to the world, to see it and to go to every country I can in a sustainable way. I want to do that in my lifetime.
Anything else that needs to be said?
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And I feel sorry for the many casualties, the many people who are victims of what is happening and my thoughts are with them every time I see numbers. And I feel like it's our duty and our responsibility to live up to our possibilities since we are alive and not touched yet by the pandemic.
And it's time for... A lot of people are having those idealistic words right now, make the world a better place, reinvent the future. Stop the capitalistic car crush we're running into. And it's a good moment to have those big words and those big visions and to feel like if we don't believe in them now, when then?
Beautiful. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the invitation.
