He mentions housing construction, the nitrogen problem and asylum reception as examples. Due to the nitrogen crisis, fewer homes can be built, as a result of which there are not enough houses to accommodate status holders and the asylum system comes to a standstill. “When there are many crises, there is the temptation to do nothing. That is what has happened with all these files. Politically, too little has been done in recent years to solve things, while the problems continued to grow. worse and worse.”
Many of the crises we are in are an example of a so-called creeping crisis, zeg Boin. This is a crisis that you could have foreseen a long time ago, but with which nothing has been done. “I can name ten of them where that is now the case. Look at Schiphol. Nothing has been done about it for years and years and the airport was able to do its thing. That is now paying off.”
Doomscrollen
Behavioral psychologist Sabine Jansen sees that all messages about crises can have consequences for people’s well-being. “Those who are sensitive to this experience more stress or anxious feelings.”
She notices that two camps are emerging among those people. “You see a group that has decided not to follow any news at all, in order to experience less stress. The other group is just going doomscrollen† Those people want to know as much as possible about a subject, in the hope that it will develop positively so that the stress decreases. But because of the amount of news you read, you often get more stress and you end up in a negative spiral.”
Believe in the government
According to Boin, the various crises that the Netherlands is in also have different consequences. “People lose faith in the government’s ability to solve problems. If it turns out every time that the government is too late, that they ‘didn’t see it coming’, then we no longer believe in it.”
According to him, this is a task for Prime Minister Rutte and the rest of the cabinet. “The only way this can be solved is to do something that they don’t feel like doing in The Hague. Rutte has to do something he doesn’t like: develop a vision. He has to be much clearer about where choices are made.” and why.”
The cabinet should start doing this soon, if it’s up to Boin. “The longer that takes, the greater the consequences. At a certain point, no one listens anymore.”
–
