fuck normal

A return to ‘normal’ would be the worst thing to happen for everyone.

Many things we accepted as normal were anything but.
To accept 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty.
To encourage people to drive alone in 1 ton metal boxes.
Burying waste in the ground or burning it,
making single use objects that can’t be recycled.

Being OK with 3 billion people beyond the reach of roads.
The use of fossil fuels for our main source of energy.
Increasing the temperature of the ocean enough to melt the ice-caps.
To eventually have more plastic in the ocean than fish.
To have most of the financial wealth of the entire world in the hands of 10 men.
To condone defunding schools and healthcare to fight wars and build armies.
Fuck normal.

As horrible as the COVID 19 pandemic has been.
It is a moment for clarity.
We all have an acute awareness of the delicate balance with which we are able to thrive on planet earth.

Being at home, 
located in one place.
To be constant, has had its challenges. 
But, it also has created insight.

Through not moving.
We have flattened our geography.
We see and can touch the world in which we really live.

Through the absence of routine
We flatten time.
Days roll together,
Yet we notice spring.
We comprehend growth.

Through the lack of interaction.
We’ve flattened our social graph.
We see fewer people more.
See each other more.
See more of each other.
People begin to be who they really are.

Celebrity is replaced by Commonality.
Spectacle is replaced by Normalcy.
Entertainment is replaced with Dialog.
Consumption is replaced by Production.
Observation is replaced by Involvement.
Government is replaced by Self Governance.

We already had the decentralized systems to cope with this, 
but they always had to fight with an older context.  
Now we can start from zero.
Slowly reveal life’s natural order.

Yes, we still have anxiety for the past
But we all see the glimmer.
The light of what is coming.And it’s brighter than before.

In this new future we see our connection to the world in very tangible ways.
Unobscured by our roles we see who we are.
Unobscured by relocation we see where we live and exist.
Unobscured by the scarcity of time we see new opportunities to invest. 
Unobscured by distraction, we see the simplicity of our own hopes.

In this new world we are both present at work from within home (flattened geography)
In this new world we teach our own children (flattened responsibilities)
In this new world we patch, mend make do and recycle (flattened resources)
In this new world we are the chef, the server, the customer and the bottle washer.(flattened roles)
In this new world we borrow, barter and seek out. (flattened supply chain)In this new world we have more time than we need (flattened time)
In this new world we make, we make, rather than purchase made. (flattened skills)
In this new world we value collective resources as if they were our own. (flattened community)
In this new world there is no magical abundance, everything must be calculated, sorted, noted and understood. (flattened information)

We eat
We make
We teach.
We gather.
We sleep.
We live.
We die.

This is life without any pretense.

And as the noise and panic subsides, we learn that everything is connected.
We see all the interdependencies, relationships.
The network has become entirely visible to everyone, all at once.

With this clarity.
We have an opportunity to reset the entire world of human understanding,
finally confront the fears that everything might fail with the fact that most did.

This may be our only moment to remake everything in the way it should have been made in the first place.

Restitute the decisions with which we didn’t have enough time.
Re-wrestle with the agreements that said “we can’t afford to” and replace them with the fact that we can afford to do anything we want if we just remember the rules of the past don’t count.

Fuck Normal.
It’s time to rethink.