How having more fun can help us to get out of the crises

When does the corona crises end, asked this New York Times piece.

The answer? When the fear ends. The fear does not often cause direct health harm, but it cripples the economy even when the regulations are lifted. It’s necessary to minimise the impact of the disease to people and to companies, but that is not enough.

So here’s a four step program to revive the economy, according to an old meme:

1. Minimise the impact of the disease to health
2. Support the hard hit companies
3. ???
4. Profit

Interestingly, a whole program of joyful politics is hidden in those three question marks. I’ll name the third step and draft some content to go with it in this blog post.

Current economic crises is unlike something we’ve seen before. While the “economy” in the “economic crises” usually means the macroeconomy, including but not limited to companies, banks, central banks and stock exchange, this time the crises has a very clear microeconomic component or cause. The virus changes the way people interact and transact. Economy is based on these beneficial interactions that are now changing.

Thus, fixing the institutional or macroeconomic issues is not enough. Avoiding bankruptcies with direct funding and loans, increasing the circulation of money with fiscal investments and other more traditional political acts and fixes only take us the half way to solving the economic crises.

Undercurrents of beneficial interaction

The nature of the current economic problem lies in the fact that face-to-face beneficial interaction is banned. But lifting the ban is not enough: the disease has also changed the norms of interaction. Norms of interaction are the backbone around which all economic interaction is built on. The behavioural norms, e.g. shaking hands, talking towards the person who is listening, networking in crowded places, consuming food products in the table with friends, etc., are typically quite rigid and difficult to change. But now governments and individuals are doing everything they can to change exactly these norms.

The health interventions changing these norms are destructive, not constructive. They only tell what should not be done (thy shall not shake hands) but not really what should be done instead. This naturally forces people to consider the reasons behind these suddenly visible norms and behaviours, rendering some of them obsolete. Simultaneously, it offers massive opportunities to reconstruct other norms.

This reconstruction changes the conditions of economic activity. The new arrangement of these norms might destroy whole industries, such as organising very large events or travelling for weekend holidays, and it destroys corporate processes, such as ways of doing sales or working with clients.

Moreover, it is possible that the reconstruction of changed norms will take widely different directions in different places. While in some places the old ways will return quickly, in some other places they might not. And what comes instead is almost completely random. Returning the old behaviours is a health risk: not all interaction can be considered safe. New, more passive and distant behaviours might severely damage the economic activity and the societal fabric itself, creating loneliness, passivity and forced self-isolation.

A conscious action could guide these norms to directions that support sustainable and healthy behaviour. It’s known that creating new consumption patterns or behaviours is a very slow process and very difficult. For example climate activists have been trying to change consumption patterns with all the imaginable ways with some success, but it has taken them ages to do so. However, this time the situation is different. The deconstruction of the old ways offers a short time window to argue for specific ways to interact, transact and collaborate.

The third step: a political project to enable safe interactions to enable economic transactions

Instead of the three question marks, the third step should read “Create a basis for safe new interactions”, or in short, “Have fun”. This sentence includes several questions: Why new and what is safe? Who is responsible for enabling the new ways to interact?

Why new and what is safe?

We should not protect old behaviours. Some interactions are indeed against the safety of the people. Cabs might be a problem, as might be a long dining session indoors. Tourism has to change too, and that is not only because of the health reasons. Cultural preservation and climate change were already at odds of that industry. There is a need to show people how they can enjoy their lives without these harmful ways.

Another reason for reconstructing the interaction norms is that they had developed during a very different era. Many behaviours passively maintain or actively encourage gender differences, discourage participation by the quiet or put people in uncomfortable situations.

Safety is not only about health, but also a sense of comfortable co-living without overburdening social stress.

Regarding health safety, the understanding on the virus is constantly improving. According to the Finnish health authorities, the possibility of getting the virus increases from spending a lot of time indoors with the same people. Singing and shouting together seems to be a bad idea.

At a short glance, it seems that we have to give up quite a lot. But this is exactly where the design of new behaviours comes in. The natural fabric of interaction can be designed in ways that it encourages more and better interactions between people despite the limitations. This design of interactions cannot start from designing economic behaviour. Instead, it should cover all behaviours of people, providing opportunities to interaction, peripheral participation, curiosity, safe and peaceful co-living and so on.

Because of this, the new ways to interact are not created with regulations, or by economic actors. They are created via art, participation and via positive examples.

Whose responsibility?

Who can enable new behavioural norms? You. The city you live in and the country where that city is based can stop you or let you do you, but they shouldn’t tell you how to act and behave (if you are not threatening anyone’s safety). Depending on how agile they are, it might take a certain level of civil disobedience to make the point, but no one else can do that for you. There’s no political program for you to follow except this: behavioural norms are at the core of your freedom as an individual and member of whatever group you want to belong to.

Luckily the summer is here. You can take over the parks and streets, move the restaurant table to the parking space, sell wine from the window, turn streets to terraces, create outdoor clubs with lots of dancing space, move funerals from church to grave yard and yoga and birthday parties to parks, put up bicycle cinemas in forests, found tailgating festivals, rooftop sunbathing discos, silent collective-yet-distant reading events…

The real enemy of the economy and wellbeing is passivity. The more we go outside and do things, the better we will do in the long run.

There are just a couple of rules. Whatever you do, think about safety. There’s never a 100% safety, but there can be a reasonable level of safety. This is not difficult to guarantee: Be outdoors. Limit the number of participants. Allow peripheral participation from further away. Let people copy your idea and implement it elsewhere. Communicate your rules. You know, basic stuff.

1. Minimise the impact of the disease to health
2. Support the hard hit companies
3. Have fun
4. Profit