Instead of using terms like normal or crazy, I’ll instead use terms like stability. Things are pretty unstable where I live right now. The economy is unstable; high gas prices, high rent and home prices, high mortgage rates, high homeowners insurance rates with some leaving the state, the closure of small and local businesses are increasing, etc. My state also has a political crisis, a restrictions of rights and extremism from the far right.
There’s always been some craziness but I feel like it’s growing more crazy every month. One of the superpowers started a war it can’t win, the other 2 are slowly going into a cold war, the climate is becoming more and more unpredictable and there’s always some kind of disease lurking around the corner. At the same time there’s some cool progress in technology and science (and even that comes with its own issues).
We can’t shift back to normal. It was never normal. It was just a different flavour of crazy. Sure, it’s easier to see this new crazy, but it’s also more honest. Sliding back is nothing but regression, and THAT scares me.
Those who actually push for regression are scary. But they don’t truly push for regression, they push for a cherry picked and misremembered version of the past. And the bits they would like to keep vs rollback are different from how I would choose. But a lot of the elements of what we have now are not improvements on the past and I think we need to figure out how to undo some of the damage we’ve done.
And I think part of the reason we have so many scary regressive people is because they feel the ways that the world has gotten worse, even if they misdiagnose it.
