Anything Can Be Normal

"Normal" is a word we often use without much thought, yet its meaning is fluid and deeply personal. What one person considers normal may be entirely foreign to another. This relativity of "normal" is especially stark when we consider the varied experiences of individuals growing up in different environments. For instance, to a child in an abusive household, routine beatings might be seen as normal—a grim reality that only becomes apparent when they encounter a different way of life. The idea of normality is not fixed; it is shaped by our experiences, surroundings, and the world we are exposed to.

My own children grew up living all over the world. For them, normal was a life of constant movement, exposure to diverse cultures, and learning to adapt to new environments regularly. It wasn't until they grew older and began to interact with others who had a more stationary upbringing that they realized their version of normal was anything but typical. What was routine to them—homeschooling, making new friends in different countries, learning new languages—was extraordinary to others.

This concept of normality being relative extends beyond personal experiences and into the very structures that govern our lives. Consider democratic government, for example. In the broad scope of human history, democracy is an anomaly. For most of recorded history, strongmen—dictators, kings, emperors—have ruled with the power of armed men. The idea that individuals have a say in their governance, that they possess certain inalienable rights, is a relatively recent development. "Freedom" and personal sovereignty are concepts that many of us today take for granted as normal. But in the grand scheme of history, they are anything but.

We view democracy, freedom, and personal rights as the standard now, but this was not always the case, nor is it guaranteed to remain so. Our society is continually evolving, and with this evolution comes the risk of regression. In recent years, we've witnessed a worrying trend toward the suppression of free speech and increased government intrusion into personal spaces. The United Kingdom just sentenced a man to prison for complaining on a social media post that his tax dollars were being spent on immigrants who arrived in his country illegally. He got 20 months in jail! What we consider normal today may very well be seen as an outlier in 50 or 100 years, just as the concept of divine right monarchies is today.

The trajectory of our society is not set in stone. While democracy and freedom may seem entrenched, they are still relatively new experiments in the context of human history. The perception of normality is malleable, and it is shaped by the values and structures we uphold—or fail to uphold—over time. As we move forward, it is crucial to remember that what we consider normal is not an inevitability. In our lifetime, the United States has always been the most powerful nation in the world. The dollar has always been the world’s reserve currency. Elections have always been mostly legitimate. However, 100 years ago, the same could have been said of the United Kingdom.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the sun never set on the British Empire. The British pound sterling was a solid currency and recognized all over the world (almost as good as gold). It was normal. Then things changed. A couple of devastating wars, economic and trade issues, and the emergence of the United States as an economic powerhouse facilitated the changing of the guard. The U.S. became the world hegemonic power militarily after World War II and economically at the Breton Woods conference where, quite literally, the U.S. dollar was deemed as good as gold.

These events occurred 80 years ago. It’s no secret that China and the other BRICs nations are gaining power economically and militarily. The BRICs’ GDP is quickly catching, and will soon surpass, the GDP of the G7 (the largest economies in the west). Our grandchildren will grow up in a world (if we’re lucky enough not to fall victim of the Thucydides trap) where the normal will be quite different from our normal. We can only hope it will not be a totalitarian dystopia.