While the states continue to orient themselves to national solutions, a virtual digital society has long since been formed in the virtual world.
Digitalization and the resulting networking of people have created a virtual international and transnational society.
This virtual society faces the challenge that it is oriented on the one hand to the norms of its real environment, and on the other hand to the norms in the virtual world in which it was created. For it exists in both worlds at the same time.
This is both an opportunity and a challenge for the international community. Because its citizens no longer orient themselves only to their immediate surroundings, but also to what they see, feel and discover in the virtual world.
The opportunities lie in the fact that understanding for the challenges of our time can be strengthened and joint solutions developed via the international virtual society. It is up to policymakers to seize this opportunity.
Swiss politics is stuck in 20th century thinking, while the rest of the country is much further along.
Society, business and science have arrived in the digital 21st century. But Swiss politics works and thinks in structures of the past analog century.
Researchers, professionals and entrepreneurs from all over the world are drawn to Switzerland to find their fortune here, to pursue their vision and to find solutions to the challenges of our time. In this way, Switzerland as a society benefits from the experience and knowledge that these people bring with them, as well as from the international networking that goes along with it.
However, these developments have not, or hardly, been taken on board in politics. On the contrary, instead of facing up to the reality that an internationally networked Switzerland, which wants to maintain its prosperity, has to make an appropriate contribution at the inter- and transnational level, the myth of Switzerland as an island continues to be presented (and then complaints are made when other states create facts, to Switzerland’s detriment).
Switzerland must accept the challenge that the 21st century requires new solutions, both internally and externally. With the courage of the successes of the 20th century behind us, we can also meet this challenge.
