The "New" Normal

My thoughts on where we are and where we're going.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

While the world was going through nearly three years of COVID-19, it seemed like nothing would ever return to normal. We could only hope that once lockdowns, mask and vaccination mandates, social distancing, and travel restrictions were lifted, a “new” normal would emerge. The big question was: What kind of “new” normal? Well, now we have it!

Polarization

We live in a world of polar opposites: light and dark, north and south, left and right, rich and poor, love and hate, war and peace, yin and yang, male and female (though that is now subject to debate). Everything else falls somewhere in between the two, forming what statisticians call a Bell Curve. This bell-shaped graphic can be used to indicate the probable distribution of, for instance, scholastic test scores, employee performance, returns on investments, national income, annual precipitation, etc. The highest point on the curve, or mean, indicates the most frequent outcomes; in other words, what is considered average or “normal”. Regardless of whether a Bell Curve shows a cluster around the mean or a wider distribution toward the poles, normal still remains in the middle. Or does it?

It’s now normal for people to line up on two sides, as they did during the pandemic into vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, only now they’re divided into which of two barely distinguishable political parties or political candidates they support, and which side of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza they’re on. This tribal identification with one side or the other extends to any contentious issue: abortion and reproductive rights, gender identity, immigration, climate change, policing, homelessness, drug control, etc. However, it is now normal to find the highest concentrations at the poles with a very narrow and deep sag in the middle, resembling a tube more than a bell.

As for how one side regards the other, it’s now normal for A to be categorically right and B categorically wrong, X to be intrinsically good and Y intrinsically evil, Us democratic and Them autocratic, or vice-versa, as if between the two poles lies an unbridgeable abyss or No Man’s Land. B may reluctantly acknowledge A’s existence, but recognizing A’s right to exist, let alone the validity of its positions, ideas and needs, would be not only a sign of weakness, but an absolute betrayal of your team. Instead of X respecting Y, it is normal for each to regard the other with mockery, contempt and hostility. This kind of extreme polarization makes it impossible for the two sides to engage in rational, constructive dialogue, let alone any serious negotiations.

The polarization that is now normal among the general public is standard among politicians and world leaders who are in the habit of forming tight elite groups who consider themselves belonging to a higher order and who act essentially like crime syndicates. Although politicians, even whole governments, claim fiercely to revere the law, it is normal for them to break laws with impunity, going so far as to commit or facilitate murder, all the while accusing their enemies or detractors of committing the same crimes, or worse. It is normal now for these elites to make rules, regulations and laws solely for others to follow, and to use legal institutions to bring others to justice, often with full-throttle vengeance.

Narrative

In order to maintain polarization, it is now normal for each side, and particularly for the more powerful side, to construct an acceptable “narrative”. This is normally accomplished by inventing, fabricating, distorting, misrepresenting, and omitting actual facts, and by lying shamelessly. It is now normal not only to simply make shit up, but also to believe, or at least appear publicly to believe, the shit that your side makes up so that it can be sold to the faithful and gullible as candy. To quote George Orwell:

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

To give “pure wind” more substance and appeal, it is now normal to embellish speeches and statements with noble concepts such as democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law; to elevate what would otherwise appear dubious or insignificant with hyperbole and grandiose exaggerations (e.g. the most moral army in the world, “I am running the world”); and to minimize what would otherwise appear significant and possibly alarming with euphemisms (e.g. collateral damage, enhanced interrogation measures, safe zones). It is now normal to say in many words absolutely nothing at all, and to make your side look good by making the other side look bad. By employing language to demean, depersonalize and dehumanize the other side as terrorists, sub-humans, animals, human animals, vermin, Nazis, and Untermenschen, Y is at liberty to threaten, censor, persecute, imprison, ethnically cleanse and exterminate X.

Once the official narrative has been concocted as the gospel truth, it is normal to have the corporate mainstream media preach it. In The Corporate News Media at Work, Jonathan Cook makes the following point:

But our herding into oppositional camps isn’t really about choice. The camps are there to keep us divided, so we can be more easily manipulated and ruled. They are there to obscure from us the deeper reality that the state-corporate media is the public relations arm of an establishment that needs us weak.

Truth is no longer something an individual must search or dig for; truth is a commodity one tribe, and one tribe only, already knows, and owns. Truth is dished out like cheap, tasty, easily digestible, fast food, or administered like an addictive, fast-acting, euphoria-inducing opioid. Anyone who questions, contradicts, criticizes or dares to disprove or debunk The Truth regardless of contradictory facts and hard evidence is censored, vilified, defamed, defunded and destroyed. (Anyone heard the words, antisemitism, used lately?)

Although this normal misuse and abuse of language deserves lengthier treatment, I will give Krishnamurti the last word on the subject:

Propaganda can never tell the truth; truth can never be propagated.

War

It is now normal to see on a daily basis exhausted, bewildered people who cannot fathom how the world stands silently by, cheerleads or actively enables the terror, death, deprivation and destruction that they are subjected day after day. It is now normal to see dead, dying, starving, orphaned, traumatized children live-streamed on a daily basis; wounded civilians with minimal or no access to medical care or humanitarian aid; weeping mothers and grieving wives, helpless fathers and shell-shocked husbands clutching the limp bodies of their dead children; displaced families running for their lives from one unsafe corner to the next unsafe corner, only to be bombed, burned, shot and torn limb from limb; cities, towns, neighbourhoods, agricultural lands razed to rubble and contaminated with sewage and pathogens. And while it is normal to express knee-jerk sympathy for the unfortunate victims, it is more normal now not to get too terribly upset over all the suffering because you have to live your life, there’s really nothing you can do, this has been going on since time immemorial.

Should you, however, participate in public protests, student encampments, peace marches, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, even go so far as to withhold your vote in protest, it is normal for no one in power to listen, let alone give two hoots about what anyone but their donors thinks, feels or says. In fact, it is quite normal now for the authorities to send in the police who, dressed in riot gear and equipped with military-grade weapons, assault, harass, intimidate, brutalize and arrest non-violent protestors. It is also normal to refer to peaceful demonstrators as terrorists, antisemites, and Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Martian agents. In the case of college and university students, it is normal for them to be expelled for speaking out, and denied their degrees and/or future jobs in their fields of study. The same applies to wayward faculty.

It is now normal for Western politicians to vehemently condemn violence on the streets and campuses of their countries, yet to speak glibly about war as some kind of jolly sports event in which there are only winners and losers, and to appropriate millions of tax dollars to the military not only to perpetuate current conflicts but to prepare for a world war that will benefit only weapons manufacturers and their satanic shareholders. It is normal now to flirt casually with nuclear war as an quick, effective way to eliminate enemies once and for all so that the illustrious victor/s can then go about the business of running the world, assuming there will be anything left of the world to run. At the same time, it is normal not to give a moment’s thought to the millions of people and other living creatures that will die or suffer horribly until they take their last breath, and the extensive damage to our already ravaged environment. Where humility, sobriety, imagination, compromise, compassion and wisdom are desperately needed among leaders, it is now normal to see an abundance of hubris, frivolity, fantasy, intransigence, heartlessness and pure insanity.

Where to from here?

But what am I talking about? Is this New Normal really so new? Or does our upside down, inside out and backward world appear normal only because we are exposed to what’s going on every day, day after day, on our TVs, smartphones, and laptops? Does this normal seem new only because polarization, narrative, and war are so much more out in the open and in our faces that we think we’re seeing everything for the very first time?

What isn’t normal about the depravity, brutality, indifference, inertia, self-interest, ignorance, and greed that have afflicted human beings since time immemorial? Is there any point in using words like “normal” or “new”, or would we not be better off to delete them from our vocabulary? The only “new normal” that I can conceive of is a world in which human beings live collectively in peace, harmony, mutual respect, balance and spiritual awareness. But is that even possible? Not if you look at human history.

To make my “new normal” come true, we would have first of all to focus on what human beings have in common—family, hopes, dreams, existential needs— rather than on what makes people different because a. these differences—race, gender, nationality, language, religion, class, physical or mental ability, political affiliation—are really only superficial, and b. diversity not only enriches humanity, it is essential to our survival. One might argue, I suppose, that our Western societies have become more inclusive and diverse, but apart from good intentions and lots of talk, measures to include “others” amount to no more than political window dressing. And why, if you don’t mind my asking, are We “including” anyone else unless We are running some kind of private club? And who do We think We are to be handing out special rights, as if human rights were membership cards?

Before we can put what unites Us with Them above what divides Us from Them, everyone has to take personal responsibility. No team/side/tribe/group/camp will do the hard work that each individual must do to find meaning in life and a place in the world. No narrative will provide easy answers to the difficult questions you and I need to ask ourselves, nor will it save you and me the trouble of searching for truth. No war will free anyone from suffering, deprivation, enslavement or hopelessness unless each of us liberates him/her/themselves. To quote Canadian philosopher and theologian Jean Vanier:

To be free is to know who we are, with all that is beautiful, all the brokenness in us; it is to love our own values, to embrace them, and to develop them; it is to be anchored in a vision and a truth but also to be open to others and, so, to change. Freedom lies in discovering that the truth is not a set of fixed certitudes but a mystery we enter into, one step at a time. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an unfathomable reality.

We mortals still have a very long way to go, and the steps that each of us takes will determine our collective path into a better, kinder, fairer, healthier world or into oblivion.

(The beauty of writing on Substack is that you, the reader, can have your say. As one small voice, I encourage you to add your own thoughts, knowledge, expertise, and experiences in the comments. The more, the better!)

So far everything I've published can be read, commented on and subscribed to for free, and will remain free going forward. This does not mean, of course, that I wouldn’t appreciate a small gesture of support in the form of a "cup of coffee". I won’t promise that to buy a cup of coffee, but I will put your donation to good use.