Critical work.

The term “systemic importance” originates from financial policy. Under the impact of the pandemic, its meaning expanded to all those sectors and professional groups that ensure the supply of essential goods and services to the communities, for example in the areas of food, health, public safety, logistics or energy.

This has created quite a problematic criterion for differentiation, which contains the potential to constitute a valuation and to evoke social divisions. For “systemic importance” always implies its downside: “systemic un-importance”, that is to say everything that is considered dispensable. But what would a society look like if everything “systemically un-important” – stories and humour, fashion, sports shows and favourite playlists, questions of existence and broadening one’s horizon – was dwindling away?