There's been a lot of talk about the "new normal" and whatnot, basically referring to how our entire lives have been upended, and I feel like by continuing to call it the new normal nearly four months into a pandemic is kind of overly idealistic and frankly, irrational. Moving is a new normal, yet it only seems like that for the first month or so before you begin to adjust. It's just normal then.
And I can't say that I haven't gotten used to being at home, hardly ever leaving my street, and having my dad work from the dining room. At this point, we're not even trying to imitate normal, because this is what normal has become - endless Netflix and procrastination without an excuse and just time, endless time. So why is it still considered new? We adapt to changes constantly - on both an individual level and a societal one. We deal with moves and changing family dynamics and changing policies and presidents.
What I don't quite understand is why that doesn't apply to a pandemic. Why can't we adapt to this as quickly?
I think that the structure of our society plays a role - we're so used to having (nearly) complete freedom, to feeling safe and being able to plan for the future, that we can't fully comprehend it when all that's upended. As compared to people in war zones, who have almost the opposite situation - they're so used to living in the moment and to coming to terms with the idea that there might not be a tomorrow that they're much more adapted to this sort of situation. But we pride ourselves on being able to lead the world in a crisis, and we've demonstrated that in the past. But we can't - now, it's countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand taking the lead.
Am I surprised? Not in the slightest. At this point, we've become so partisan that we turn a pandemic, a disease into a matter of politics. George Washington warned of this, in his Farewell Address. He called them the worst enemy of the government - a sentiment shared by most other founding fathers. Hamilton called poltical parties a "the most fatal disease" of republican government, and Madison a "dangerous vice" in Federalist 10.
And that's evident in the way people act! At Trump's Tulsa rally, people ignored free masks, and when asked by reporters, said that COVID-19 wasn't as big of a deal as the media was making it out to be. Even some of my family friends are going out - to beaches, to parties, to swim practices - while my family and I limit our trips to public places as much as possible. At this point, the decision of wearing a mask or not is a political statement. Is it any surprise, then, that one person's 'new normal' can be vastly different from someone else's?