New Normal or Nothing's Changed? Informed & Aware, Preparing For a New Paradigm

The dire predictions of "New Normal" in a post-Covid world are intimidating, and the questions being asked add a level of angst:

What is Your "Understanding Of The New Normal"? How is it going to affect your life and what measures if any are you going to put in place to help you maintain the life that you want?

Even the way these questions are phrased promote a level of fear and the idea that suddenly "they" are going to limit and detract from my choices and my liberty.

I beg to differ.

Nothing has actually changed. It has only become more transparent. And the groups affected have changed.

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After the French nuclear bombings of Mururoa Attol in the South Pacific in 1971, political pressure forced Australia to stop importing all things French, and banned all French migration for a while. Australians were likewise no longer welcome to go to France. I stopped taking French lessons. "No point teaching French anymore, because we'll never be able to go there."

I grew up in Australia during the Cold War, thinking that all houses should have a Dorothy-Kansas type hurricane cellar - against rampant bush fires a la Ash Wednesday when I was 16; the cellar could double as a bomb shelter against the Russians. I grew up with Sting, hoping the Russians loved their children because planetary destruction was imminent.

In Europe and America
There's a growing feeling of hysteria.... from 'Russians' by Sting.

When BSE "Mad Cow" Disease erupted in the late 1980's, travel to and from the United Kingdom was dramatically restricted, and there was widespread panic. Likewise the Ebola outbreaks, SARS and Swine Flu.

I caught swine flu in Australia 11 years ago, flew back to Thailand and was "apprehended on arrival" by Thai health authorities (I had a fever of 40.5C on arrival in Bangkok) and was required to quarantine at home for 10 days. Unpleasant and yes, I was very sick and unhappy to be confined alone at home with a then 5 year old daughter and no help. But it passed. I was more upset by the idea of potentially having infected others on that very full Thai Airways flight than I ever was about having my civil liberties curtailed. At the time, it did not enter my mind. Plus I was far too sick and grateful to be home. 😆

The biggest thing that has changed since Swine Flu in 2009 is social media. A moment-by-moment, graphic and interactive source of "information", panic and fear; such a superb propaganda machine.

You know when they ask which famous person you'd like to have dinner with? Well me, I'd like to interrogate Machiavelli about social media and the City State over a great bowl of pumpkin tortellini with an excellent Merlot on the side. But I digress.

What social media has done these past 6 months is create an unprecedented level of fear and paranoia. Governments around the world felt compelled to act and over-react, not so much because of real medical risk initially, but because hysteria is very bad for crowd control and "they" needed to be seen to be acting.

People have been constrained from traveling from one country to another, unfairly and without recourse to appeal, for eons. Ask any Israeli citizen about their recent holiday to Bali. What's different in this so-called "new normal" is that it's the white-so-called first-world people being constrained.

Normal is not "new" but has merely shifted to a privileged group who thought they were beyond what they have long required of other countries and people of different skin tones.

The Western African Ebola virus epidemic was the most widespread outbreak of Ebola virus disease in history—causing major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Dates: Dec 26, 2013 – Jun 9, 2016. Number of deaths: 11,323. Source

There was NO discussion about the wisdom of quarantine, closing borders or mask wearing protocols. Definitely no mention of denial of civil liberties. Why? Because it was brown skinned people in Africa.

But surely Covid is changing SOME things for us?

• Given that social media is actually the ONLY real thing that has changed, the greatest changes I have been making is WHERE and HOW I source the facts I base my decisions on.

• Given the propensity of privileged white people to moan incessantly on social media about the "unfairness" of it all (which they have happily doled out and expected from others for centuries), I am cutting down, unfriending and removing myself from people on social media who are self-absorbed and don't 'get it'.

• Given the shifting of the burden of confinement and economic loss to our white middle class client base, we're readjusting our business strategy to focus on countries with whom we will easily share travel bubbles: Korea, Taiwan, some parts of China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau in the short term. The longer term we will be looking towards India, the Middle East and the more progressive parts of Europe.

• Given how little we like hand sanitizers and face masks (despite producing an exceptional vegan hand sanitizing product 😉 ) we now mostly stay, eat, cook and entertain at home.

The long game for us has not changed a bit: the Thai-Burma Border will be home for me, and our new business production & herbal teaching center, once my daughter starts university abroad in 2022.

I'm delighted with The Great Pause and feel it has been, and is, invaluable. Not because anything is really new or even very different, but because 'things' are out in the open.

It's rare for me to quote the Bible 😆 but I hear this verse in my head as I close:

For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. Luke 8:17.

We are luckier and more blessed than most - sitting here with electricity and a computer, debating and discussing an idea instead of falling into exhausted sleep on a half-full belly after a day in the mines cutting stone by hand, or ploughing a rice field, or working in dangerous electronics factory in Asia.

Appreciating the Global Rebalancing.

Posted in response to @abundance.tribe's Biweekly Question: What is Your "Understanding Of The New Normal"? How is it going to affect your life and what measures if any are you going to put in place to help you maintain the life that you want?

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