“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
First, I want to tell you what a pleasure it is to speak with you again and how much I look forward to it every time I sit in front of the blank screen. After all this time of doing it, it feels like I am talking to an old friend and there is nothing I have to do in the way of an introduction.
I have been thinking about the idea of normal and what a strange term it is. At the moment, Covid is winding down and getting back to normal is being batted about, as if it is a slow pitch right over the plate with your name on it. Any day now, we are going to give up the masks and crowd each other without any consideration for our personal space. We have been avoiding any contact for over a year and a half, a kind of touch deprivation. You fist bump and even a hand shake feels like unprotected sex. Every interaction feels like the first time you asked a girl to dance at a party, an awkwardness I remember all too well.
I want to continue this idea, because at some point it will be relevant. I gotta to be honest and tell you I think we are likely going to have a set back in the Fall. Too many of us have not been vaccinated and I personally don’t give a shit about your choice, but I think after all of the summer social fornication, we are going to experience a bump once again. The fact that the wealthiest nations haven’t given a shit about those with less, is going to add to the contagion, believe me.
At some point, whenever the hell it becomes statistically relevant, there will be talk of getting back to normal, getting back to the way it was before Covid, the Good Ole Days. Believe me, I have thought about this a lot, because it is just my nature to think about shit like this. What can I say? Whenever it happens and it will, there are two ways to explore this idea of normal, small and big.
Just in terms of my own life, I think about where I was around a year and a half ago and what mattered to me at the time. You know, when you get to be up in my age range, you can’t help but be less casual about the passage of time. I think about where I was then and where I am now and it is not the same, not for a minute.
I guess the first thing to address is the illusion of constancy. So, about a year and a half ago, I can’t possibly say that I was ensconced in some unchanging place, each day the same as the next, because that is complete bullshit. Let’s go back to somewhere around January 2020, when Wuhan was just as easily a typo as a place. I was thinking about the vision metaphor that comes with those digits and I even wrote about it. There was some hope of increased clarity for me.
Without warning, the fog of Covid invaded my consciousness. The shock of how low we had sunk in terms of our sociopolitical dialogue was rupturing my mind, each day bringing with it a new bottom. I had never before experienced the level of divisiveness and stupidity that greeted me each morning. It felt like a kind of intellectual epidemic, dropping IQ points with each sunrise.
The pandemic hit hard early in 2020 and standing on my head each morning was no preparation for this upside down way of the world. All our lives are constructed on a bed of quicksand, but most of us choose to ignore it. Our security is a balm to cover moment to moment unpredictability, but #19 threw us all over the cliff in a free fall of not knowing.
Nearly a year ago, I decided bearing silent witness was just not good enough for me. I wanted to talk about what was going on and I didn’t care if it was only a monologue, something I just shared with myself. So, I created a podcast, giving voice to my concerns and I start each one with my saying, “ A lone voice in the Universe.” I guess that is probably the biggest change for me, in response to what has been happening. I know it’s a small thing.
Hopefully, I do have some control over my behavior, because whether I like or not, I own it. When it comes to everything else, I can bear witness, but I have no say in it, really. At 76, I have been around for a while and I can say I have never witnessed a time of more divisiveness than now. Facts no longer exist, everything is now not what it seems.
In the not too distant future, we are no longer going to wear masks. We will get back to doing what we have always done, but the world has changed. This Covid thing has exposed our worst, an immaculate mirror we can’t look away from. While we have been frozen in our mask mania, our planet has been dying a horrible death. This pandemic has exposed our incredible selfishness.
There are some dudes making billions, while all of us struggle and people from countries you have never heard of are starving to death, not going without a meal, starving to death.
We are not going back to normal, because there is no such thing. Time has not frozen in the last eighteen months, because that’s not how it works. We are not where we were and where we are is not a good place to be. We are fighting amongst ourselves, while we are all losing what truly matters.
Time doesn’t stand still, waiting for us to catch up with it. It is quite the contrary. Sure, at some point we are going to ditch the masks and do what we used to do, but it is not the same. The world is not waiting for us, it is screaming for help. The voices come from those of us in need, from the animal world, whose species are evaporating as the temperatures rise and from Mother Earth herself, home to the avarice of a few at the expense of the many.
Normal is what we choose to do for ourselves and others and for this home of ours. What’s it gonna be?
My podcast: Mind and the Motorcycle
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459
Foster and Feinstein on Youtube
Sounds pretty grim, dude! Unfortunately I have to agree with you although I think we’ll see the roaring twenties again before the crash. You can see the orgy of spending and crush of tourism taking place on Kauai right now. That also includes spending money we don’t have by the “govment”. Three trillion dollar deficit this fiscal year alone. If we could spend our way out of economic downturns then we would never have any right? History repeats itself.
I think it might be years and years of advertising messaging or simply human nature. I remember the first time I saw a foreign film and it didn’t have a happy ending. In America, we love our happy endings, a fake mythology that always turns away from what is actually going on. We are even rewriting our own history to downplay the role of slavery. The internet was supposed to be this incredible gift of information access, which it is, but it has been manipulated to be totally monetized and made into a tool of sociopolitical opinion swaying. We are spending money we don’t have and treating the climate and nature as a bank with unlimited credit and our children’s children are going to have to pay for it all. We also tend to think we are the world, but there is shit going on in places like Burkina Faso, with child soldiers and starving refugees on every continent and rulers, who only care about lining their pockets. The climate is a global problem and the likelihood of global solution is just another make believe happy ending. Grim doesn’t come close to how I feel, but I want people to read my stories and not turn away from them, so I tip toe around the mine field of our making. Yes, of course history repeats itself and there is nothing in our past that indicates our patterns will change and here we are!