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Showing posts from May, 2020

YES! We can "get back to normal"

With two unrelated tweets I realised why "going back to normal" is such a deep fundamental desire and why we are seeing that word so many times. Bill Bennett, journalist and tech writer here in New Zealand, popped up link to  Economics New Zealand: Where are we? (4-May-2020), and I instantly baulked at the phrase "... going back to normal" and challenged Bill on it. He responded beautifully and I had an epiphany. Things truck along at one level. Along comes a huge disruption. Eventually after some time, we don’t know how much time, things find a new level to truck along at. That disruption time can be very long but it won’t be forever. — Bill Bennett (@billbennettnz) May 4, 2020 Normal is NOT a set of circumstances. It's NOT an environment we can describe. it's NOT a series of routines we run through, and it's NOT about being in the office or working from home. It's not even about other people. As sociologist Allan Horowitz points out,