After almost two years of government incompetence and mayhem, the corporations are telling us what the new normal will look like. It is here. Now. We should listen.

Photo: Air pollution from fossil fuels accounted for 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018 alone. HINDUSTAN TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

24 October 2021 | James Porteous | Clipper Media

Of course we would eventually reach the point when we would decide we have ‘had enough’ of lockdowns and vaccines and dire warnings. We are only human, after all.

But in truth, we are not quite so human in this regard are some (most?) other people.

For example, we in the West have lived for 20 years under the almost constant ‘threat’ of terror and terrorism. Our governments have been relentless in their desire to propagate fear and loathing of our enemies. From ‘see something, say something’ to dehumanizing airport security and the deaths, torture, and terror imposed on millions of ‘other’ people in our name, we have come to think we ‘know’ adversity.

And we do, of course, but not that kind of adversity.

In truth, we were rarely in any real danger. We have witnessed terror-related incidents, but how many of us have lived (or not) through daily bombings, ‘over the horizon’ drone strikes, food and water shortages, torture, disease, and death?

Not many of us, because we were the ones largely perpetrating these atrocities.

So I would suggest that after 20 years of ‘coping’ with fear, we had come to think and agree that we understand all there is to know about the very things we have imposed on other people but have not actually endured ourselves.

I would suggest that the governments who control by fear merely carried on using the same calling card when it came to controlling the masses with the outbreak of covid. Fear of death, lockdowns, a lost economy, overwhelmed hospitals, and now an apparent ‘lack of money’ to make things right again.

So, yes, we have endured covid lockdowns and vaccinations, and now will we endure third doses and vaxports and the continuation of fear of fear itself.

But we will have learned nothing if we do not move on from the preposterous notion that this was little more than an interesting example of what happens when ‘bad things happen to good people.’

We will have learned nothing if we do not finally wake up to the notion that bad things happen to good people all of the time -from natural disasters to disease, to climate breakdown, to millions of bombs being dropped worldwide- and that we are often the ones who perpetrated such things.

We will have learned nothing until we admit that ‘we’ are humans, just like all other humans, and that our feelings of fear and anger are no more pronounced than those felt by anyone else.

We have to get rid of absurd notions such as Boar Boris and his ‘leveling up’ meant to lead us ‘back to normal’ and instead shine a light on the path to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink and retool who we are, as humans.

Us. Not them.

Because, let’s face it, the new move to a ‘green’ world is not going to be any different from the rise of the industrial age or the technological age.

The money, the power, the decisions, everything to do with our future, will be made by corporations and politicians, and the military who are beholding to those corporations.

And it will not end well.

If you think you have been rendered impotent by endless covid, wait until you find out what the corporations will continue to do to our food, our water, our brain cells, our future generations.

So, as we sit back in the comfortable knowledge that our governments will take whatever measures deemed necessary to help us survive the next wave, bear in mind that we really have learned nothing.

Corporations are calling the shots now, in sickness and in death.

And this truly is ‘the new normal.’

James Porteous / Clipper Media