The “new normal”
It´s terms like the “new normal” that make second languages
difficult to learn. They originate from events and circumstances that may not
apply in other languages: the irony, innuendo, metaphor, and so on all play a
part in the creation of language terms. The idea behind this term is that the
way we did things or behaved have now changed to something new. Maybe even in a
new way that would have been inconceivable in the past.
The new normal does not mean that this normal is better or
worse than the past, but that it is actually happening now. And it is happening
not without an element of chagrin or concern although things might very well turn
out to be better.
Indeed the Wikipedia entry for “New Normal” in a business
context starts by referring to the 2007-2008 financial crises and the aftermath
of the 2008-2012 global recession. Someone more recently mentioned the CVOID-19
pandemic. But it does not have to be a major event to qualify for the change.
This idea or concept of the term “new normal” is not new
although I am not going to make any claims as to its origin. The concept has
been in use for many years in the fashion industry and we can go back to that
“little black dress*” by Coco Chanel in 1926. This dress broke all taboos for
women’s fashion, according to WHITE Communications GmbH., by making a taboo
colour, i.e. black, fashionable for young women. The little black dress doctrine
restored black to fashion and has been so ever since. A few years earlier we
had Ford’s mentality of “any colour you want” for your car as long as it is
black.
Thus it is very common in fashion circles to read or hear of
people talking about yellow being the new black, or blue the new black. A quick
look at a search engine will show the scope colours play in fashion over the
seasons. Fashion is not the scope of my essay, but of course to point out the
use of this term across disciplines and how our term can also be used
positively in a given context for a given discipline. If a fashion designer can
introduce a colour to a style and achieves the acclaim of “x the new black” we
could say that the designer has “made it!”
So what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of
something to achieve the claim of being “the new normal”?
One of the most important necessary and sufficient conditions
is that the new normal must actually be in existence. By definition if
something is normal, never mind the new normal, it must exist otherwise it
would not be anything. If yellow is the new black then there must be women
buying dresses that are yellow and fashion designers creating couture in yellow
colour.
More challenging is when does something become normal and
how old must the ‘new normal’ be to retain the title: new normal? If today we
talk about the COVID-19 as the new normal we are talking about two normals in
effect: the new normal regarding how we deal with a rolling pandemic and the new
normal post pandemic. Even if at the time of writing the post pandemic periods
looks a long way away and, therefore, we can hardly meet the first necessary
condition of existence.
In GHS Index: Global Health Security Index October 2019**
the United States of America and the United Kingdom were listed first and
second respectively in the overall score index of preparedness for a pandemic.
Today during an actual pandemic the US is the worst performing country so far
and the UK is the worst performing country in Europe. We can safely assume that
the viruses do not discriminate against nationality but only on susceptible
conditions of the individual.
My argument is that the COVID-19 pandemic is not the new
normal. We’ve been having pandemics over the ages with various degrees of
turmoil to society. Indeed the flu season is one serious pandemic episode that
happens every year. But we’ve become complacent to the annual flu epidemics: we
have vaccines, the flu mostly affects the elderly and most of us recover. The
fact that the US and UK have the worst death figures for the COVID-19 pandemic**
in May 2020 suggests that the fail factor is the management of pandemics and
thus there is nothing new about COVID-19.
A mitigating argument is that COVID-19 is a new disease one
that we have never experienced before, but this corona virus is a member of a
family of viruses which were already around in the 21st century. And
the business of viruses is to invade people to reproduce and by circumstances infect
people and many die as a consequence. No surprises there hence the GHS Index.
The mitigation applies to the extent that this variant of the virus is very
aggressive and quick acting but not to mitigate the international spread of the
virus.
There seems to be no new events on how the rolling COVID-19
pandemic is progressing. What is different is that the previous new normals,
the once that put the health care systems on alert for pandemics all those
years ago have failed miserably. We also know that both the US and UK had
recently abandoned their level of preparedness for pandemics. Hence, the
COVID-19 is not a new normal but a massive failure of all the preparations we
had done and the knowledge of virus we have accumulated. And all this without
even knowing how the virus found itself in the public domain in the first place.
How the post COVID-19 pandemic “normal” will be is a
different matter. Will a post pandemic normal be business as usual; maybe we
have to wear a mask, something we should have been doing for years, and accept
a high levels of unemployment and some
people might die from COVID-19. Do we in the main continue to dismantle
healthcare systems, stop providing universal free healthcare, channel corporate
money through tax havens and continue doing business with unscrupulous regimes
in the post pandemic normal? As I argued the term new normal is not a moral
judgement, hence the post pandemic might be a worse version of the normal pre
pandemic. Or will the next new normal be something for the better as a change.
Will the new post pandemic normal be a black car, take it or
leave it. Or will the post pandemic new normal be a little black dress simple
in style and with a kick up the backside to dogma and taboo?
*(Black Dress) Coco Chanel
*(Black Dress) REBEL TURNED CLASSICTHE LITTLE BLACK DRESS
WHITE Communications GmbH.
**Pandemic at Wikipedia
**GHS Index: Global Health Security Index October 2019 (PDF
file)
Best and take care
Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 24th May: The New Normal
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