Normal

[Doktor Howl]

I am a hideous & vile old man.  I am in fact so old that the Earth's population doubled in my lifetime.  Get that around your noodle...An extra 3.7 billion people in less than half a century.  I remember the world as not being so crowded, and I remember correctly.  When I was a boy there were fish in the ocean and turnip trees on the land, as far as the eye could see.

But having seven and a half billion people is the New Normal.

Humans are really good at compartmentalizing stuff.  Nigel could probably give you biological reasons for this, using words that sound made up but sadly aren't, but let's break it down in layman's terms.  When stress gets too awful, when the boogieman is coming out from under the bed with your tax records in his teeth, when your nation is eating itself and howling through mouthfuls of its own skin that it is still strong...The angel of apathy comes along and whacks you upside the head.  All these things are now Normal.  They are part of the routine, and are less stressful.  Or at least you can ignore the stress, at least until it's time to buy an AR15 and join the folks jabbering about Jade Helm.

Manufactured Normalcy.  It's not really a new concept.  How many times have you heard some horrible new band that makes you want to smash your car into a wall?  Everyone hates those guys.  But the radio plays them and plays them, MTV gets some brain-damaged kids to scream on TRL, and suddenly the horrible band is just another part of the scene.  This is how Fallout Boy happens.  Neuroscience is a strange and frightening thing, and not for the likes of you and I.  Unless you're the kind of person that gets off on slicing up thousands of snake brains.

Manufactured Normalcy is also how people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump can run for president and have 47% of the country keep a straight face.  After all, once you've voted for Palin, you're pretty much at rock bottom, may as well go for broke.  It is how the TSA can now grab your junk for no reason and you just gotta stand there and smile.  It's how police can just start murdering people for any reason or no reason at all, and the outraged masses will...Well, they'll LIKE and they'll SHARE and they'll TWEET, but as mad as they get, it's now NORMAL, so that's all they're gonna do.  Get mad.  Not the clean, white-hot anger of the superior mutant, but the sickening, ulcer-inducing anger of a person who HAS gotten mad as hell, but IS gonna take it some more.  Not because they're cowards, but because that's the way it is. 

This is The Machine™.  It turns out there never were clattering treads and grindy choppy horrible spiky bits.  Well, actually there were.  But that's to be expected.

Or Kill Me.

[Eater of Clowns]

I am a hideous & vile old man.  I am in fact so old that the Earth's population doubled in my lifetime.  Get that around your noodle...An extra 3.7 billion people in less than half a century.  I remember the world as not being so crowded, and I remember correctly.  When I was a boy there were fish in the ocean and turnip trees on the land, as far as the eye could see.

But having seven and a half billion people is the New Normal.

Humans are really good at compartmentalizing stuff.  Nigel could probably give you biological reasons for this, using words that sound made up but sadly aren't, but let's break it down in layman's terms.  When stress gets too awful, when the boogieman is coming out from under the bed with your tax records in his teeth, when your nation is eating itself and howling through mouthfuls of its own skin that it is still strong...The angel of apathy comes along and whacks you upside the head.  All these things are now Normal.  They are part of the routine, and are less stressful.  Or at least you can ignore the stress, at least until it's time to buy an AR15 and join the folks jabbering about Jade Helm.

Manufactured Normalcy.  It's not really a new concept.  How many times have you heard some horrible new band that makes you want to smash your car into a wall?  Everyone hates those guys.  But the radio plays them and plays them, MTV gets some brain-damaged kids to scream on TRL, and suddenly the horrible band is just another part of the scene.  This is how Fallout Boy happens.  Neuroscience is a strange and frightening thing, and not for the likes of you and I.  Unless you're the kind of person that gets off on slicing up thousands of snake brains.

Manufactured Normalcy is also how people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump can run for president and have 47% of the country keep a straight face.  After all, once you've voted for Palin, you're pretty much at rock bottom, may as well go for broke.  It is how the TSA can now grab your junk for no reason and you just gotta stand there and smile.  It's how police can just start murdering people for any reason or no reason at all, and the outraged masses will...Well, they'll LIKE and they'll SHARE and they'll TWEET, but as mad as they get, it's now NORMAL, so that's all they're gonna do.  Get mad.  Not the clean, white-hot anger of the superior mutant, but the sickening, ulcer-inducing anger of a person who HAS gotten mad as hell, but IS gonna take it some more.  Not because they're cowards, but because that's the way it is. 

This is The Machine™.  It turns out there never were clattering treads and grindy choppy horrible spiky bits.  Well, actually there were.  But that's to be expected.

Or Kill Me.

Outrage is the new normal.

Internet shaming is the new normal.

Hell no GMO is the new normal.

Defund Planned Parenthood is the new normal.

[LMNO]

Fracking is the new normal.

Paleo is the new normal.

Candy Crush is the new normal.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Whole states ablaze and left to burn is the new normal
Water shortage and continuing to bottle it is the new normal
Rare earth metals at rock bottom prices is the new normal
The air filled with radio waves and fallout particles is the new normal

And definitely go ahead and eat the fish
And never question the price of anything
And don't worry about ISIS, GD, and company
And coastal real estate prices are just fine

Always have been,
Always gonna be

And it just might kill me

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nickelback is the new normal.

When I was much younger I thought that there was some kind of key to changing the world, some idea I might hit upon and save us from the headlong, determined hurtle toward a mass extinction event that may well wipe out every vertebrate on the planet.

If there is, I never found it. So now, I'm mostly just along for the ride, seeing how much I can figure out about how you fuckers work and why we're so intent on planetary suicide before the oceans go dead and the droughts soak up our agriculture regions.

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Nickelback is the new normal.

When I was much younger I thought that there was some kind of key to changing the world, some idea I might hit upon and save us from the headlong, determined hurtle toward a mass extinction event that may well wipe out every vertebrate on the planet.

If there is, I never found it. So now, I'm mostly just along for the ride, seeing how much I can figure out about how you fuckers work and why we're so intent on planetary suicide before the oceans go dead and the droughts soak up our agriculture regions.

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

THIS!

And in light of that it would seem that dreams of a Mars colony and asteroid mining may be truly that. A dream.

Dreaming of a new world to harvest while this one burns is the new normal

[Doktor Howl]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

[Doktor Howl]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

[The Wizard Joseph]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

[Doktor Howl]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

As a maintenance guy, that means "we can't".

[The Wizard Joseph]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

As a maintenance guy, that means "we can't".

As a guy who's watched the maintenance guys I agree. Also why Mars colony is a terrible idea. Just really, really bad.

[Doktor Howl]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

As a maintenance guy, that means "we can't".

As a guy who's watched the maintenance guys I agree. Also why Mars colony is a terrible idea. Just really, really bad.

It's a deathtrap.  On top of that, they'd arrive as tumors in suits.

But it's never going to happen.  After years of fundraising, they have 10% of what they need to build their initial unmanned probe, let alone launch it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

I was responding to the tragedy of the commons bit, not the ice age bit. We'd weather an ice age just fine.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

Mostly because there would be nothing to eat or breathe.