Symptoms of transformative societies and practices for dealing with change

The current era is a period of great transformations.Globalisation, digitalisation, the struggle over decarbonisation, and other drivers are pushing sequences of social change, which fundamentally reshape patterns of contemporary social ordering.For most people around the globe, these developments increase subjective and collective feelings of uncertainty and threaten the stability of the social fabric.While globalisation questions the nation-state as the legitimate political framework, digitalisation transmutes patterns of public communication and thus what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) have termed the social construction of reality.As a consequence, the optimistic image of the world as a "global village" (McLuhan and Powers 1995) is slowly being replaced by the image of a fragmented and competitive world populated by more or less isolated gated communities.The closer look inside societies reveals a similar pattern, as relationships between individuals and among social groups are also characterised by fragmentation.For instance, with regard to the material conditions of human existence, some perceive climate change as existentially threatening the habitability of the planet and demand not just a change in thinking but a restructuring of social systems and practices.Others neglect the severe consequences of human action for nature, wildlife, and climate and support a status quo protecting conservative politics seeking to return to a romanticised glorious past.While the experience of crisis may seem universal, the symptoms of these critical developments are perceived differently.This observation is important insofar as it helps us in understanding that individuals may respond to crises by either turning away from or towards democratic solutions.