What's "Normal" in a Hyper-Normalized World?

Oftwominds.com‘s eclectic range of timely topics include finance, economy, stocks, housing, Asia, energy, long-term trends, social issues, urban planning, work/tradecraft, health/diet/fitness, sustainability, Les Paul guitars and The Great Transformation ahead: www.oftwominds.com/blog.html.

Now that the entire economy depends on these hyper-normalized speculative bubbles for its “growth” and “wealth,” there is a profound fear of a future based not on artifice but on the real world.

Humans are quick to habituate to current conditions, i.e. consider them normal. This rapid normalization has advantages and disadvantages.

Normalization is an adaptive strategy, enabling humans to adapt readily to conditions that are considerably different from their previous “normal” state of affairs. So those ripped out of their “normal” lives and thrown into the Gulag soon consider the wretched conditions of the prison camp “normal.”

The downside of normalization is that it erects a defensive barrier between the real world and the perceived i.e. normalized world. In systems that have failed but are incapable of real reform, normalization phase-shifts into Hyper-normalization (generally one word, Hypernormalization), a peculiar adaptative state described by Alexei Yurchak, a Russian anthropologist who used the term in his 2005 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis described Hypernormalization in this way:

“‘HyperNormalization’ is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase ‘HyperNormalisation’ to describe that feeling.”

I submit that the U.S. economy and stock market have been hypernormalized to the degree that what is now viewed as “normal” is completely detached from the real world. What we inhabit is a system that has lost all authenticity and survives entirely on the ceaseless marketing of artifice, a.k.a. narrative control that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

In effect, “normal life” is stripped of authenticity in favor of a simulacrum “normal” that supports those at the top of the status quo. This “new normal” reaches extremes of artifice, hence hyper-normalization.

As long as everyone thinks there are no alternatives to this hyper-normalized simulacrum, this artificial construct appears to be immutable–everything is forever.

But once the power structure admits, however minimally, that it no longer has the answers to the decay of the social-economic order, then the entire artificial construct collapses in a heap. This is the sociology of collapse: people accept a facade of artifice and propaganda without actually believing any of it, though they do have a limbic loyalty to the founding ideals of the nation.

What’s real is denial, repression of non-conforming realities, group-think, virtue-signaling and a profound loss of competence.

In this hyper-normalized state, madness of crowds speculative bubbles are now considered normal, not just in stocks but in housing, commodities, quatloos and everything else that can be commoditized, marketed and sold:

So Housing Bubble #2 is not viewed as an insane extreme that is bound to succumb to gravity, it’s “normal.”

Here is the real world: speculative frenzies are abnormal and the collapse of these bubbles is normal and predictable.

Now that the entire economy depends on these hyper-normalized speculative bubbles for its “growth” and “wealth” (two additional examples of hypernormalization), there is a profound fear of a future based not on artifice but on the real world.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can’t Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Les C. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, W.B. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Tom M. ($70), for your magnificently generous subscription to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Mark P. ($7/month), for your superbly generous contribution to this site — I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/04/whats-normal-in-hyper-normalized-world.html