249: Which Normal?

The snow has gone. In fact it went much faster than I expected.  (There again, I have little experience of snow.  In my lifetime, heavy snows have been rare.). Temperatures seem to have settled on the right side of zero.  Everything seems to be back to normal.

But is this the old normal … or some new normal?   Nothing surprises me any more. Well ,it might surprise me but it doesn’t shock me.  My beans talk about a ‘new normal’ in relation to serious topics like politics or economics but they have never explained this concept of a new normal to me.

Surely a new normal is, by definition, abnormal.  It can’t be both normal and new can it?   Of course, a new situation might become ‘the norm’ in time but when it first occurs, describing it as a ‘new normal’ is just lazy, human thinking.  

Humans seem to like lazy thinking.  I blame the teachers - for failing to instil a process of disciplined, critical thinking - and a set of appropriate, values .  This is why, for example, younger beans are unable to distinguish what makes ‘good’ television.  And so we end up with Love Island, Traitors, Made in Chelsea…. I could go on…. and on … and on!  

Next week, it will still be too early to say whether the current weather really is ‘the new normal’ or just the current manifestation of climate change, (See, I have been watching ‘good’ TV documentaries and I know all about the forthcoming end of the world one degree at a time.)

And then there is AI - artificial intelligence. Whose intelligence id being replicated.  Not those same younger beans, I hope …. or  doom will be here more quickly. We’ll all go together - while watching Big Brother and eating pizza.