Forget the "new normal" - nothing is "normal" any more

Joe Andrew has a trenchant thought about change and human progress, which is particularly applicable to the ongoing riots and protests sparked by the death of George Floyd.  They are only one facet of a deep-seated societal change that's happening around us as we speak.

Traditionalists want to get the world back to normal. Modernists want to get the world to the new normal. What they are both missing is that there won’t be a normal — the old one or the new one — for a long time, if ever ... We cannot expect that all things around us will be typical or expected if they are changing faster than we can adapt to them.

But more important than any substantive trend is this process point: acceleration is accelerating itself.

. . .

... with the advent of the easy to use smart phone and the underlying democratization of ideas that came from it and wide use of the internet ... change in most areas dramatically began to accelerate around 2008 ... Our very ability to adapt to all the change happening around us was the key trend of our time.  If the crisis created by COVID-19 is accelerating trends, then it is clearly accelerating the trend of increased change.

The age of cellular service coincided with the beginning of ... a Fourth Industrial Revolution that has brought the mechanical, biological, and digital sciences together and where the speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. Changes in medicine, physics and technology are evolving at an exponential rather than linear pace. You can make fun of these concepts, but that laughter is hiding the anxiety that we are feeling as we experience the quickening pace of change all around us in the real world ... and we — as individuals and societies — are struggling to react. And that was before the current global crisis.

Those who are in the business of predicting what will happen next ... were often too conservative about the rate of change before the current crisis. As change accelerates, we are learning something about the world that lies in wait for us. We are learning that there will not be a next new normal, but rather a new dynamic.

. . .

Our biggest challenge will be to adapt to this dynamic and find ways to live in the moving river, not beside it, as it overflows its banks and swamps our expectations of what is normal.

While we never know what will happen next, we now know that the challenge of our times is how we adapt to what happens next.

There's more at the link.

That article brings to mind a book by Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst, titled "The Revolt of the Public".

In a recent video interview, he spoke about his theory.  It's only about ten minutes long, and well worth your time.  If you prefer to read rather than listen, he covered the same material in a recent podcast, the transcript of which is here.

In a recent blog post, Mr. Gurri noted:

Increasingly, the post-truth landscape has come to resemble a science fiction nightmare.  In a fractured universe, multiple “spheres of truth” reach blindly for domination – but when they collide, every claim for every truth is nullified, and nothing is validated.

I think that's a particularly useful insight in relation to the riots and protests going on all over the country right now.  Both sides are sticking to their version of the "truth", ignoring the factual, empirical truth that should transcend mere opinions and perspectives.  Both sides have lost sight of that.  They insist on their interpretation of "the truth", and refuse to listen to any others.  That's leaves no room, no foundation, for agreement or reconciliation.

The current riots in America certainly echo the disruptions of the so-called "Arab Spring" in the Middle East.  Those failed, spectacularly so in many countries, as a conservative, traditional reaction to their excesses set in.  Will the riots here "fail" too?  Or will they gather momentum and produce lasting change?  Your guess is as good as mine - but the conservative, traditional reaction has hardly begun in this country.  Some believe it will express itself at the ballot box in November.  Are they right?  If so, will the progressive forces on the left refuse to accept that outcome, and riot all the harder?  And will that produce a crackdown on them from the right?

It's worth repeating Mr. Andrew's observation:

Our biggest challenge will be to adapt to this dynamic and find ways to live in the moving river, not beside it, as it overflows its banks and swamps our expectations of what is normal.

While we never know what will happen next, we now know that the challenge of our times is how we adapt to what happens next.

That's going to be a monumental challenge for all of us as individuals, and for our country as a whole.  Frankly, right now, I'm not very hopeful that we'll find a peaceful way forward.  It may be that things have already gone too far for peace.  Perhaps the spark to a general conflagration has already been lit.

I hope and pray I'm wrong.

Peter