Return to Normal Considered Harmful
Next Monday will mark 52 weeks of official remote working for me and my colleagues. Many of us are in a similar situation. Some us us never stopped having to physically go to our jobs, whether due to the nature of the work or inhumane policies (often due to uniquely inhumane intersections of both).
We have a vaccine and many people are getting it. Things are finally starting to look up. Winter is winding down and the days are noticeably longer now. It’s a bit warmer on the patios, too. It’s feeling a bit like there’s hope for social lives once again. But many of us will have to wait for the vaccines, possibly quite a while.
The positive outlook with a protracted rollout is causing some absurdities. People are jumping the gun as they rush back toward normal. But, beyond the inevitable rush toward half-vaccinated summer weddings, here’s the thing: “normal” kinda sucked.
Actually, let me restate that a bit for clarity:
Normal was terrible for pretty much anyone who wasn’t straight, white, middle class, and masculine. And it was terrible for a good many of those that were as well.
Back in those first few weeks when the pandemic was starting to take shape, my team ran a research initiative to explore how life was likely to change moving forward, even after eventually returning to something like normal. One central assumption was that many changes were unlikely to be completely new. Rather, we expected to see acceleration and crystallization of currents that had been brewing below the surface. One of these trends, which the months following our report have born out, was a trend towards community DIY and repair culture.
A superbloom of mutual aid efforts like the Nashville Free store and community projects and the increasing interest in baking, home improvements, and groups like The Maintainers has shown this current to have legs. People are turning in these directions as a way to find community and build relationality (or maybe just find a meditative space) in our socially distant world, but also for what might be considered “practical” reasons: reducing spread meant reducing trips, even for necessities. Supply chains were disrupted, many goods and services were simply unavailable. For a great many, the coronavirus pandemic meant (sometimes severely) reduced income as well. Doing more with what you had became a matter of practicality, comfort, or even survival.
But instability isn’t new. The growing gig economy was exacerbating cracks in a workforce that way already quite aware that shit was fucked up and bullshit. The laborscape has been changing rapidly since the 60s, when new vectors opened along which to shift. Remote working and learning was already on the rise, as unequally then as it is now. The unstable inequalities were already showing, the digital divide was widening gaps.
This is all barely scratching the surface. Things haven’t been great for a great many people for a very long time — and now, after a year of pandemic, things haven’t been so great for the rest of us either. I’d like to say understand the impulse to just get back to normal, but I’m not sure I can.
When the pandemic hit we threw out the old normal. Then we settled into a new normal where teachers, baristas, door dashers, and warehouse pickers had to risk life and limb so a well-caffeinated class could demand more, pay less, and watch our 401Ks go up and to the right, all while staying safer at home through the magic of Microsoft Teams. The old normal sucked, the “new normal” sucks, and a “return to normal” already promises to suck even worse.
Instead of contorting ourselves to ensure we miss every lesson we could have possibly learned, maybe let’s be a little less hasty to “get back to normal” and instead focus on moving forward into something new and maybe a little better. What can we take from this year of making do and staying home? What can we add to make existence a bit more tolerable? What cracks have been exposed that might benefit from something other than repair? What cracks should we make wider? What should we burn down entirely? What earth should we salt?
Seeds, currents, and orbits (?)
- 👂 I’m thinking a lot about Indi Young‘s work, especially her work on listening.
- 🔨 A recent reading of Breaking Things at Work has me exploring more of the origins and role of technology. It also has me looking for my lost copy of The Real World of Technology.
- 🌪 The Nashville Tornados were a year ago and I wrote what might be seen as a reflection on what that means for me.
- 🏔 I’ve been taking some time to look back at the valley I was raised in as I continue to look to the horizon, and will be sharing some writing on this soon.
- 🌉 Straddling the edge of the valley and the widening horizons: the origins of the “California ideology” and its relationship to the “dark enlightenment” — a continuing exploration.