Hypernormalization

New terminology is needed to describe unprecedented global collapse.

I’ve struggled for years to try to motivate people to resist the conditions that are are fueling this collapse. I grew up in a Quaker community that worked against injustice. Where men and their families refused to participate in the militarism in this country, knowing they would likely be imprisoned. And many were.

My first sense that things were changing was when few of my contemporaries followed that example. I was a draft resister (1970) and that decision had a significant impact on the course of my life. Helped me believe we can make a difference.

Another sign that change was happening was when I could not convince anyone to reject the automobile culture. Most people blame the disinformation from the fossil fuel companies, which made them believe cars didn’t have much effect on our environment. But one had to work hard to convince oneself that the clouds of smog (prior to catalytic converters) that caused them to choke, and their eyes to burn, wasn’t a significant problem.

Those are two of many examples that gave me the context to continue to resist injustice when I could for the rest of my life. In esence, helped me resist hypernormalization. Now, more urgently than ever, we need to wake up from this malaise of hypernormalization. How, is the question.

Where I have found resistance to hypernormalization is with my Indigenous friends. And my Mutual Aid community. Both reject the hierarchies of power that enforce the hypernormalization that keeps people locked into patterns they know aren’t good for them, but feel they can do nothing about.

Polycrisis

One of the new terminologies is polycrisis. I saw it was such a useful concept that I created a website to share what I was learning. (See: Polycrisis Center). Polycrisis encapsulates the conditions that are being minimized by hypernormalization. Which means nothing significant is being done to correct them.

The cascading and connected crises we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2023 demand a new descriptor to define the scale of the problems the world is facing.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 uses the term, to explain how, “present and future risks can also interact with each other to form a ‘polycrisis’ – a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part”.

The world is facing connected risks that threaten a polycrisis.
The cost-of-living crisis is the most immediate and severe global risk.
Climate-related risks are the biggest future threat facing the world.
A polycrisis could have catastrophic consequences including armed conflict.

We’re on the brink of a ‘polycrisis’ – how worried should we be? by Simon Torkington, World Economic Forum, Jan 13, 2023

Hypernormalization

“HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, knew that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase “HyperNormalisation” to describe that feeling.

I thought “that’s a brilliant title” because, although we are not in any way really like the Soviet Union, there is a similar feeling in our present day. Everyone in my country and in America and throughout Europe knows that the system that they are living under isn’t working as it is supposed to; that there is a lot of corruption at the top. But whenever the journalists point it out, everyone goes “Wow that’s terrible!” and then nothing happens and the system remains the same.

There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don’t seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe they’re manipulating you but you’re not quite sure. It’s all slightly odd and slightly corrupt.

The antidote to civilisational collapse, The Economist, Open-Future, 12/6/2018

Hypernormalization video: https://youtu.be/W4BczuzNSZg

The Takeaway

Water is running short. Food is running out. The Earth is getting hotter.

All this, and more, will lead to civil unrest, national and international wars, and the largest mass migrations we have ever seen.

If you think you’re ready for collapse, think again. Because unless you realize that you’re already in the middle of it, then you’re just burying your head further each day in the sand.

The Frightening Reality of Global Collapse. It’s not just theory anymore by Angus Peterson, medium.com, Oct 31, 2023