Vignettes From Post-collapse America: Follow Up

I wrote posts (here and here) about how strange our world has become. I’d observed and described real events. They were weird because I still remember “normal”.

I assumed I was alone in my observations until I stumbled across this from Z-Man:

“There is no getting around the fact that our present is unimaginably weird, relative to our standards of just a generation ago. People like to laugh at what people a century ago imagined was the future, but those past predictions were based on the assumption that crazy people would not take over the country.”

Yes… unimaginably weird. Then more from Sarah Hoyt:

“Not just the conviction that ‘it can’t happen here.’ There is also the deep in-built certainty that tomorrow will be more or less like today, and the worst that can happen within relatively safe bounds. Even while everything is shifting against you. From Pompeii to Nazi Germany, from Alexander’s conquests to Communist Russia, the normalcy bias has killed more human beings than any other factor in history.”

Sarah found the word I was looking for; Normalcy Bias.

Current day has a trajectory and velocity that’s… off. People pretend it’s not weird so they can continue ignoring it. Normalcy bias is a weakness of mind.

If one simply observes, they’ll know shit’s gotten weird. We’re disconnected from reality. Lacking reality, society is going full on spastic, lunatic, batshit crazy.

As I composed my earlier posts, sipping coffee at the home planet of the woke, I realized I’ve completely given up on “going back”. That’s part of rejecting normalcy bias. Certain events have already happened. I can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Perhaps all historic times of madness feel like this.

One example was the time in history after Luther nailed the Ninety-five Theses on the church door but before the shit hit the fan. During that time, nobody, not Luther, not the blacksmith on the corner, not even the Pope, knew what would happen next. At the time one could assume “it’ll all blow over”. It didn’t blow over, it blew up.

Normalcy bias means people believe bullshit because they must believe. They’ve also discarded societal tools that keep us out of the ditch. They believe (without evidence) that magic new awesome solutions will appear out of thin air. These new solutions will be better than what we have now… because they must.

Imagine the stupidity in that! The richest, most peaceful and free society in human existence is flushing it. The replacement will be so excellent and groovy that flushing it  was wise. Suuuuure.

Think of the things we once did but simply quit:

There are methods for orderly transition between generations. Speaking generally here; Baby Boomers aren’t/didn’t use them. Subsequent generations hate Boomers. Boomers reciprocate. Gen X took it in the shorts decades ago; they have zero fucks to give and always will. Gen Z is watching Tic Tok and hasn’t a fuckin’ clue how to “adult”. They invented the use of “adult” as a verb to describe what they don’t know how to do. How much wisdom (and joy) is lost when each generation reinvents the wheel?

Mental health is part of happiness. We have means to care for mental illness. Yet do we? Homeless crazy people shouting at street lamps is a normal part of city life. We elect and revere genuinely strange people who’ve made trainwrecks of their own lives. In general, when someone is unsuccessful in plain old living we shouldn’t put them in charge.

We have ways to build community, fellowship, and trust. We ditched all that and freebase social media as an alternative. This may be the biggest rug we’ve pulled from under the world’s structure. We put a mass propaganda device in every pocket and let that unfeeling droid Zuckerberg dole out dopamine like a crack dealer. Starting in 2004 (not that long ago!) he trained the living shit out of us. Seventeen years to build human beings who think collectively instead of as humans.

I’ve seen people when they’re out of cell phone range. It’s funny and a little sad. Like a chain smoker who can’t light up. Grab the phone. No service. Put it away and try to do something. Ten minutes later check again. Still no service. All day long.

Social media trained us to think “fact” is determined by social media. Share, like, and subscribe and that makes it true. What kind of idiot thinks “likes” and “upvotes” makes truth? Trained ones.

There’s humor in this. Upvotes make “truth” and downvotes make “false”. So when Biden’s YouTube speeches are less popular than an anal probe… YouTube changed the upvote/downvote mechanism. That’s funny! A real leader doesn’t give a shit about upvotes and downvotes… he earns respect. We’re told Biden got more votes than any candidate in history, but we observed that he can’t get people to upvote. Suuuuure.

We’re dropping the ball on education too. A Neolithic huntsman who failed to teach his children the magic spell of fire would be a monster who doomed his progeny to misery. An MIT lecture hall discussing why math is racist does the same. We have a system that churns out waves of schooled but clueless walking vote tallies. The can do naught but what they’re told, for they know nothing at all.

A recent term in support of normalcy bias is “follow the science”. Drones say this as if science is leading a parade. They think “science” is what the guy with a Federal grant and a lab coat says at a press conference. I remember that same guy in 1975. Back then he was on network news telling me we’d starve in a Population Bomb. Later he insisted we’d freeze in an ice age. Difference is back then we weren’t nuts. We didn’t hunt down and persecute “Population Bomb Deniers”.

This has bit us on the ass and it’s going to get worse. Anyone who thinks “science” comes from “consensus” can never know anything but what he’s told to believe.

Our economy is all about normalcy bias. There have always been ways to corrupt currency. The Romans, on the way down the tubes, made their coins of base metal. We, started with real coin, degraded to base metal, and now we’ve gone all the way to an “idea”. We call it Modern Monetary Theory. Money is whatever we say money is. If we believe another trillion just appeared in a database, they did. Isn’t that neat?

The most obvious weirdness is what’s replacing rule of law. Laws were once written on paper. The words roughly meant what they said or they’d have used other words. Now law is whatever you can do or can be done to you.

If it’s illegal in theory but you did it and weren’t punished… is it illegal? If it was legal on paper and you got fucked over anyway, was it really legal?

Laws no longer apply to everyone. They don’t apply to this race (which is a construct), or that sex (which is whatever you define it as). Whatever you did is legal if they’ve got a reason to let it slide. Holding a valuable political seat, running a big company, if the judge is sympathetic, or if it would further a narrative to drop the story. If there’s a reason to fuck you, then you’re toast. If a mob screams for your head, or you’re from the wrong party, or crushing your reputation will earn clicks then words on paper mean nothing.

This scales all the way to the top. Even the most egregious crimes can be forgiven. Arson and violence is legal if you hold the right opinions. It’s OK to get pissed off at the government and burn down a shoe store, provided you live in Portland, Oregon. In Burns, Oregon, ranchers were pissed off at the government so the Feds shot their ass. I’m a nobody who lives nowhere so I’ve got to play by the rules. Joe Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and therefore it’s totally fine that we’ve all seen photos of his son with a crack pipe in his mouth.

Not all of this is tragedy. Some is comedy. The press became so political that the President used a thing called Twitter. If Trump had used Morse code and a shortwave transmitter, the FCC would have shut it down. Since he was using Twitter, a corporation banned him. Meanwhile, people moaned that he was an oppressive fuckhead… using Twitter to do it.

People using Twitter bitched that a guy who couldn’t use Twitter was oppressing them.

That’s hilarious!

When you dispense with normalcy bias you look around with clear eyes. It’s bittersweet. That’s why I wrote a story about coffee and my newly repaired truck. I wanted to say; “You’re not alone. You’re sane in an insane world.”

That insane world thing has happened before. I’m reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Yes, that’s right, I’m reading shit written 1,841 years ago. He’s talking about the proper way to live. From a society that collapsed 1,600 years ago. One of the things he wrote is on this blog’s header:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Don’t fall prey to normalcy bias. This shit ‘aint right. Take care of yourself and see with open eyes. Being on the side of the majority (whatever that means in 2021) isn’t the goal.

Also, remember when your mom scolded you “if all your friends jumped off a cliff would you?”

Well? Would you? You’re about to find out.

A.C.