The New Normal

Destroy the old to make way for the new – the new reality, the new normal, they say. The thing is, this new is but a rearrangement of the old. It’s made up of the same old pieces and no matter how much you scramble them, you get almost the same thing, the differences being irrelevant, be they only nuances.

Every new order of things is doomed to be worse than the one before just because it claims to avoid the wrongs of the previous one. It claims to do good and only good, and by force when necessary. And it always is. Any self claimed force of good in the human universe has proven to be an agent of hatred and evil. Every man wearing on his sleeve his kindness has been at least an irredeemable idiot dedicated heart and soul to a demented cause, crushing skulls and burning books for the better good.

The new normal has proven to be just that: the old one, rebranded. It’s still abusive, still demeaning, still CONTROL. It’s just better advertised, claiming to be for your own protection. Not social, but sanitary, health-related. In the 1980 you were giving up your freedom of not being seen for fear of looting and mugging. In the 1990 you were giving up the freedom of privacy of your own digital activity for the fear of computer viruses. In the 2000 you were giving up the freedom of travelling at ease for the fear of terrorist. Now you give up your freedom of going wherever you like wearing whatever you enjoy wearing and touching whatever you cared to touch for your own health. And that not because of an external agent that could intentionally harm you in response to your own behaviour, but because of a still unknown cause of death. A disease spread by a virus that might or might not kill you, that might or might not be transmitted to others and kill them as well (or not).

The new normal does not imply an agent to inflict damage to the individual; it well beyond that. Now the individual inflicts damage to themselves, so they must be protected from themselves.

Welcome to the new normal, where you are both the victim and the aggressor. Where the mind has to dissociate between one state and the other, and must agree to both. Must accept the possibility of being an unwilling aggressor and simultaneously an ignorant victim, and being punished for both.

The new normal has created a new form of thoughtcrime, where the thought is not even necessary. It is enough to exist.