HyperNormalisation

Managing situations versus actually dealing with the complexities of the world itself.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece called Hyperscale Normalization, inspired, as you may have guessed, by the Adam Curtis documentary Hypernormalization, where he describes, and I quote, a world where over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated, constructing what he calls a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power, with the world going along with it because the simplicity was reassuring.

It's a two and a half hour long documentary, but it comes down to a simple point, that we as a society manage problems rather than dealing with the messy and complex elements of the world around us, putting off problems again and again and under the assumption that they'll disappear if we do so enough times.

We use the system to manage these problems rather than actually eradicating them or dealing with the conditions.

"Cringe."

Hypernormalization.

"The youth is really-"

Can't believe they...

[laughs]

Have you seen that, um, Adam Curtis documentary, Hypernormalization?

I haven't.

No.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, a- and it really comes down to three people that started it.

Um, and he did this other documentary I think in 2016 called Hypernormalization that just has- ... spot on predicted what the internet-

Mm-hmm