Ask Lemmy

Wait until November 2024 and I'll let you know.

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).

Crazy is the new normal

Too early to say. Crazy has been modestly rebuked and it's only making them more crazy. Even if main crazy is punished, we might see fringe crazy respond in a variety of obviously undesirable ways. If they do, then normal crazy might step back out of a desire not to be seen as associating with fringe crazy, but that doesn't mean that crazy will have passed. Crazy will just change tactics and lightly rebrand to new crazy.

The only way to end crazy is to thwart crazy's plans at every turn and make crazy nonviable as a means for gaining power.

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.

I’ll take shitstorm for $100, Alex.

Elections are still coming. “Inflation” hasn’t been tamed. We’re also waiting for the next pandemic. Planetary thermal events are in progress. Mega drought in the American Southwest threatens to cripple hydroelectric power generation and agriculture for millions.

Normal? That’s just what they want you to think.

I couldn't tell you- It's either slipping into crazy or I'm just paying more attention to how fucked it always was.

Hell, I don't know. My baseline is shot. I'm just trying to survive with virtue at this point.

I go outside, talk to my friends, my extended family, it feels normal and stable.

I go online, and apparently the US is dying.

I think ita just an online thing.

We're just experiencing quantum immortality. Most earths died in their reality in 2012. So the state of our universe grows more and more unlikely as time goes on and we avoid the worst possible outcomes of potential world wars, scientific experiments going sideways and pandemics.

Just imagine how the universe must look like for the people who didn't have covid 19.

Going "back to normal" is homeostasis. We don't do and have never done that. We do allostasis: adapt to the new thing.

People do indeed seem to be adapting to the new thing. You can tell because they are still here.

Its because majority of the politicians are dying off. Their brains are shutting down.

Normal is, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder....

Oh wait, that's truth, normal is what the majority accepts... we're domed, just don't look up.

The way I see it, things are continuing down the crazy path but it feels more normal because people aren't denying it completely like they were a decade ago.

I think normal died around this time in 2019 for me.

To give some context, in Judaism Rosh Hashanah (which coincidentally just ended) is the new year. There's a superstition that whatever you do on Rosh Hashanah will be a reflection of the upcoming year. For example, if you nap you'll have a lazy year.

Anyway, that year, my younger son and I were at Temple for services. We noticed someone sitting behind us who seemed odd, but didn't think much of it. At some point, he left so we focused on the service.

Midway through the service, my rabbi suddenly shouted NO with the same force as Gandalf addressing the Balrog. Then I saw why. The "odd guy" was running down aisle shouting happy new year to everyone. He was wearing a t-shirt. And ONLY a t-shirt.

He reached the front and tried to get up the stairs to where the rabbi, cantor, and torahs were. Only, my rabbi clotheslined him back down the stairs. The ushers rushed in and dragged him off. My son was smart and looked away. I wasn't as smart and got "visual confirmation" that he wasn't wearing anything below the waist. It was only for a moment but it burned into my brain.

So remember how I said "how Rosh Hashanah goes, your year goes?" I joked with my wife later that hopefully this wouldn't mean we were going to have a crazy year.

Then 2020 hit.

Only I think this got stuck somehow and now EVERY year is crazy.

Definitely crazy. But when things get weird, they usually get even weirder as a response before settling down. I think things will start to settle down soon, into a new normal where it's not absolutely nuts out there.

Yes.

You have to provide more context..

It feels like news, politicians and people I swear to god have to be literal NPCs, are all trying to insist that everything's going back to normal. Everything's fine, everything's gonna work itself out, just calm down, take a deep breath and it'll be fine. But then they turn around and talk about how the world is ending. Everything's horrible, the world is collapsing. Then they turn around again and say, "seriously though, everything's fine, I swear."

Then you look around and realize everything is very much not fine. Things are very much getting worse and there doesn't seem to be a rational, peaceful solution to it because the people causing problems are whipping each other into a frenzy. They desperately want violence. They desperately want blood. They've been told it's the only way to have a good life or get into heaven, and they'll be damned before they'll let you stand in their way or try to show them who the real enemy is.

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.

The people that ask this question are always boomers drowning in confirmation bias