THERE IS
NOTHING NEW
ABOUT THIS
NORMAL

That's it. I'm calling bullshit on this emerging idiom. It is clearly an engineered, focus-tested phrase, that preys on praying idiots-with-faith-in-power. The world as it's shaping up to be for the next decade, is not a new one, a normal one, a normal new one, or even (and I hope by the end of this rant, I will be less annoyed with hearing it) a new normal Decoded Phrase NEW NORMAL: ORIGIN & WEAPONIZATION Originally a financial term from 2009/2010 — used by PIMCO's Mohamed El-Erian to describe post-GFC economic stagnation as a permanent condition, not a temporary slump. From there it migrated to management consulting, then to political speechwriting. By 2020, it had been deployed to frame the COVID pandemic's disruptions as something to adapt to rather than fix — shifting responsibility from institutions to individuals. → Wikipedia: New Normal one.

And now, with your consent, let me tell you why.

NEW FOR A GIVEN VALUE OF NEWNESS

This is, at least on the surface, a semantic argument, but everything about humanity in the last three centuries has been some kind of "new" or another. On geological timescales humans are a fart in the wind, a speck of dust on the lens. Everything is new and it's been new for generations now.

Granted, humans have short lives and shorter memories. However, for a good long while now, we've been systematically unraveling our mechanisms of collective memory and replacing it with propaganda that deigns to call itself history Decoded Concept MANUFACTURED HISTORICAL MEMORY The author is reaching toward what historians call "invented tradition" — the process by which powerful groups construct narratives about the past to legitimise present arrangements. The classic text is Hobsbawm & Ranger's The Invention of Tradition (1983). Related: Walter Benjamin's argument that history is always written from the victors' perspective, suppressing counter-narratives. The author's point: what we call "normal" is often a story about the past engineered to make current power structures seem natural and inevitable. → Wikipedia: Invented Tradition → Wikipedia: Historical Revisionism . I can confidently say though, that for most of the time that we monkeys-in-shoes have been running about and playing with fire, humanity hasn't looked anything like 21st century life. Everything is new. The UN isn't even a century old yet. Decoded Reference UNITED NATIONS: 1945–PRESENT The United Nations was founded on 24 October 1945 — barely 75 years old when this essay was written. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, lasted from 1920 to 1946. The global financial architecture (IMF, World Bank, Bretton Woods system) was also established in 1944–45. The author's point: the institutions we treat as permanent features of civilisation are younger than many living people. None of them have survived a real civilizational stress test yet. → Wikipedia: United Nations → Wikipedia: Bretton Woods The global financial system hasn't been around nearly as long as its predecessors. Almost none of our current infrastructure, anywhere in the world, has stood any true test of time.

On top of that, for decades now (or at least the decades that I've been alive and conscious of my not-deadness), every damn day there is some "new" thing being sold, be it a product, a service or a concept… "New" has been a marketing go-to since before people called it marketing (and before people started making careers for themselves as marketers).

So what is new? Every-damned-thing-under-the-sun.

And what about this reality of uncertainty that everyone is running around calling the "new normal"… it isn't new. I would argue that it's the old normal. Survival. Mortality. Uncertainty. That's some old shit right there. People in power messing things up. Old shit. Poor folk having a hard time. Old shit. Having to deal with the risk of disease every time you walk outside. Old as the human race Decoded Concept HUMANITY'S ACTUAL AGE & NEAR-EXTINCTIONS Modern Homo sapiens have existed for roughly 300,000 years. For the vast majority of that time — disease, starvation, violence, and environmental catastrophe were everyday realities. Genetic evidence suggests the human population may have been reduced to as few as 1,000–10,000 breeding individuals around 70,000 years ago (the Toba bottleneck hypothesis). The "normal" of stable, disease-free suburban life is an anomaly of the last ~70 years in wealthy countries — less than 0.02% of human history. → Wikipedia: Toba Bottleneck → Wikipedia: History of Disease …

It's only "new" to us because we've had a few generations worth of propaganda blasted into our brain holes telling us that this world is forever and forever the same. Except for the folks who research and study things about the world… but most folks don't listen to them (to be fair, they're pretty boring when compared to all the things that tell you to buy, buy, buy).

Civilization is old. But it ain't as old as humanity. In the grand old scheme of things, all of this is new… and almost none of it is normal. Except sex, violence and food… oh, and taking a shit far away from the food… that's pretty normal.

But I'll get to the normal in a bit… But before I do…

BUYING IN TO BULLSHIT IS ONLY USEFUL TO FARMERS

That's a lame joke, but I beg no forgiveness. Bullshit abounds and, instead of carting it off to some faraway field to feed the worms, most humans eat it up. The why is a bit too long a detour for us to depart on here, but suffice it to say that we eat it because we must. We're drowning in it, too much, too often, piling on and on and on. It is the sustenance of civilization, bullshit begotten by bullshitters. The effort of sifting through it, wading through it, ploughing through it, in the hopes of finding even the teensiest nugget of sustenance for our souls, is task that bleeds us dry. And so we eat it, until we become food for the worms.

That last paragraph is bullshit. I'm not asking you to eat it.

I am asking you to think. Think about the parts of human life that are not bullshit in a candy wrapper. None of those things are products of the 21st Century, or the 20th for that matter. The things that keep us going, that truly nourish and sustain our souls, the salves for our selves, and the cures for our communities… they're as old as the hills and humanity itself.

What about science and medicine and technology? All iterative, incremental processes of building on top of the wisdom that came before. Not bullshit. Not new. Normal is debatable.

I'm not looking to rain hellfire and brimstone upon the good people all around the world working hard to do good things in it and to it. Good people are not the problem. The bullshit is.

And for the purposes of this autofellatory exercise in imagined oratory, I shall restrict my bullshit-about-bullshit to this "new normal" bullshit.

This "new normal" bullshit, is a desperate appeal to keep shoveling. Adapt to what? A system held together with duct tape and prayers to the moneygod Decoded Concept FINANCIALIZATION & LATE CAPITALISM The author's recurring term for the quasi-religious status accorded to capital accumulation — where profit functions as both metric and moral justification. Economists call the broader process financialization: the shift in developed economies from productive industry to financial instrument returns. The moneygod "system held together with duct tape" is a reference to structural contradictions exposed by 2008 and COVID — sovereign debt, zombie corporations, asset bubbles inflated by quantitative easing. → Wikipedia: Financialization → Wikipedia: Late Capitalism ? A system that not even the powerful seem to have faith in?

Enough with the scatology, but not yet time for eschatology.

There is nothing new about this normal. But I don't believe I have convinced any beyond the choir yet. Am I preaching? I hope not.

OH, THE NORMALITY!

I almost forgot… I fully intend to bitch about the concept of normal too. Thanks for reminding me.

Read Snuff, by Sir Terry Pratchett Decoded Reference TERRY PRATCHETT (1948–2015) British author of the Discworld series — 41 novels of comic fantasy that consistently used absurdism and satire to interrogate real-world politics, economics, religion, and human nature. Often described as the best-selling author you weren't taught in school. Snuff (2011) is the 39th Discworld novel, featuring Commander Sam Vimes on a forced holiday that becomes a murder investigation touching on class, slavery, and the nature of law. Pratchett was knighted in 2009. He was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's in 2007 and wrote publicly about dying until his death in 2015. → Wikipedia: Pratchett → Wikipedia: Snuff . Read everything that man ever wrote (for sanity in such times as these, consider this sentence a friendly PSA). The plot of Snuff doesn't have any major bearing on the next phase of the ranty rant… but it is still well worth the hours. What is relevant, is this quote:

Normal is a fluid concept, bound by collective sense of time, and defined according to criteria set by a group of humans. Accepted norms are the yardsticks of culture. Culture is the fabric of society. And society makes up the fleshy, squishy bits of civilization. What we call "normal" is, in effect, whatever we damn well choose, for as long as other humans around us agree to call it normal too.

A good, healthy chunk of political discourse centers itself around negotiating what should and should not be considered normal. Normalization Decoded Concept NORMALIZATION: POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY In political science and psychology, normalization describes the process by which extreme, harmful, or previously unacceptable ideas or behaviours become gradually treated as ordinary. The Overton Window describes the range of policies considered politically acceptable at any moment — normalization shifts the window. After 2016, the term gained widespread use to describe how political rhetoric previously considered beyond the pale was brought into mainstream discourse through repetition and incremental escalation. → Wikipedia: Normalization → Wikipedia: Overton Window is an activity we homo sapiens engage in, be it intentional or not.

So, perhaps, instead of asking whether this is normal, or that is normal, maybe we should ponder who wants this to be normal or that to be normal. In our present circumstances, who wants this normal that they are determined to call new? Who wanted the old normal, for that matter? Whom does this new normal serve?

And there's the rub.

This "new normal" is mostly the old one, with a big ol' heaping of desperation thrown into the mix.

I get it. I do. Things were working out pretty well for a lot of folks before it all went to hell in a hand basket. And then folks had the privilege of having a prominent voice in the public discourse. "Normal" served them well. From their perspective, normal was safe, predictable and dependable. It was normal.

Their normal, is the ongoing mass extinction of Mother Earth's biodiversity Decoded Concept THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION Scientists call it the Holocene extinction or Sixth Mass Extinction: the ongoing, human-driven elimination of species at a rate 100–1000 times the natural background extinction rate. Previous mass extinctions (including the one that killed the non-avian dinosaurs) were caused by asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, or ice ages. This is the first caused by a single species. The WWF Living Planet Report 2020 estimated a 68% average decline in monitored vertebrate populations since 1970. → Wikipedia: Holocene Extinction → Wikipedia: Biodiversity Loss . Their normal is sitting silently while "shithole" countries suffer. Their normal is growing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Decoded Reference GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH A gyre of marine plastic debris in the North Pacific Ocean, estimated at twice the size of Texas — approximately 1.6 million km². Not a solid island; more of a suspended plastic soup at various ocean depths. About 80% comes from land-based sources. It has been actively growing since plastic production scaled in the 1950s. The Ocean Cleanup project has attempted partial remediation since 2018. → Wikipedia: Garbage Patch daily. Their normal is donate to charity, pat your back and check that your asset and stock portfolios are still doing what they're supposed to. Their normal was, in the grand scheme of things, very new, very unsustainable, and awful for the rest of us.

Normal as defined and understood by the "new normal" crowd, is shit.

Normal is not what we need. And "new normal" is just normal with a mask on.

So no… fuck that shit. Toss it in the wildfires and burn it to the ground. Make it motherfuckin' worm food.

We don't need normal. We need whole lot of new, and a good dose of old too.

We need, as a species, to reckon with what our hubris has wrought on our home. It's the only one we have right now. How can we be trusted to venture forth to other worlds, when we simply destroy the one we're already on?

Humans have been around for 200,000ish years… we've faced extinction a few times and survived. We were here when the Sahara was still green Decoded Reference THE AFRICAN HUMID PERIOD / GREEN SAHARA Between approximately 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert was a lush, lake-filled savanna — the African Humid Period. Humans and megafauna (hippos, crocodiles, elephants) thrived across the region. The shift to desert conditions was caused by a shift in Earth's orbital cycle reducing monsoon intensity. Cave paintings in Algeria and Libya depict the environment. This periodically-green Sahara allowed human migration out of Africa along routes now buried under sand. → Wikipedia: Green Sahara → Wikipedia: Prehistoric North Africa . I don't know about you, but the things that got humanity this far might be worth remembering, because putting all our trust in our toys and the moneygod… that is too new to be declared fully tested. And as far as the planet is concerned, it is abnormal AF.

We don't need a "new normal"… we need to catch a wake up and start fixing shit.

Mama Earth is pissed. Rightfully so, in my opinion. The reckoning is here, and it ain't gonna be letting up any time soon.

So let's dispense with the pretense that a "new normal" is anything but a bland brand put forward in desperation by the people whom the "old normal" served.

The politicians will play their games, the rich will guard their wealth, the media will yell about anything if it sells ads, and businesses will sell any bullshit that folks can be convinced to buy. That's why there is nothing new about this normal.

And this normal is about to die.

We're in for a wild ride kids, but we're the homos that survived. We'll survive again. If we don't, these words matter even less than they do now:

Keep the community alive, and the community keeps you alive.

Make that your "new normal"… maybe then you'll make it. There is always hope.