What was so great about "Normal"?
It seems like everyone is desperate to get back to "Normal". I'm curious to know what different people miss so much, and why. Obviously those who have lost jobs or loved ones have top priority and all my sympathy, but lots of others who have so far come through this unscathed are also yearning for Normalcy; why? Just missing physical contact with others? Virtual meetings don't suffice? A lot of the pleasures of Normalcy, like flying to vacation spots around the world, are bringing on a much worse catastrophe; is that just Somebody Else's Problem? Would a permanent UBI be such a terrible thing? Which parts of Normal would we be better off to leave behind us?
Answers ( 1 )
What was so great about normal was that we knew pretty much what to expect:
“What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together”-Sir Terry Pratchett
There weren't new death tolls due to a virus we didn't even know about a year ago; there weren't another million or so applying for unemployment benefits this week, alone; there weren't yet more riots stemming from peaceful protests stemming from continued bad policies AND optics regarding policing of POC. Every day, our new normal, whilst becoming normal-normal, is also usually more disturbing with its pain in the ass masks and temperature checks and death rates and inability to plan a vacation and egregious pronouncements of treatments and cures and kids having to learn school work on a laptop at home and sportsball teams who stand down for social justice and a Federal-level government that cannot stop playing politics long enough to help its constituents and, mostly, the uncertainty about the future- a future- at all-- it's just all too much and it's an Energizer Bunny that keeps going and going.
It isn't like the yesterday of this week, or even this start of summer, and nothing like this past January- everything is different, and even if not different in detail, different in large scale, and even if not different in large scale, different in detail- and in urgency.
We are so exhausted with and from living re-actively rather than proactively.
And, some of us capable of living in different time zones, may be considering what our upcoming new normal- after this Time of Covid, after this upcoming election for President- may be like, and nibbling around the edges of figuring out our approach to the changes. Wouldn't it be nice to find this new normal was the start of Andrew Yang's basic income? Or a new approach to work which emphasized work from home a couple days a week, at least? Or true thought was put into our housing policies- from local zoning to Federal involvement in the lending community? Or the end to overcrowding on airplanes? Or a new respect for those essential workers- a respect that translates into the businesses which employ them considering them just that- essential, and worth the money they are paid, rather than as "human capital" which is easily depreciated? Wouldn't it be nice if we as a species learned something not just new but good out of this?
Won't know till we get there- and, unlike the normal that went before, it won't be like yesterday, or last week, or last month- or even last year. It will be a new normal.