The unusual, the extraordinary and the unusual have disappeared. What were until recently impossible hypotheses, fiction novels or nightmares has been normalized. What was incredible is now part of everyday life, part of every news program that is watched without shock. Tragedy, or political cynicism, is forgotten when the next news arrives, or a scandal that boggles the mind and arouses some short-lived indignation.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons that devastate entire cities, rains that never stop, droughts, storms, epidemics and disasters are everyday events, as well as political absurdities translated into trivial matters.

Until recently, such news was a source of shock and was long remembered; They were extraordinary events, chronicled by some frightened traveler or war chronicler. Those were hard episodes to forget. Today, because of the frequency, because the news happens in “real time”, and because of the vulgarization of the critical capacity, every episode of this magnitude is just another, a kind of hoax that grows thanks to the frivolity with which life is assumed.

The normalization of the unusual perverts politics, turns public life into a series of absurdities and turns “citizens” into consumers of news and scandals. It nullifies sensitivity and encourages cynicism both in the actors of the event and in its viewers, who shrug their shoulders in front of every horror and assume that “that’s the way it is”.

There are intellectuals and leaders who sponsor dictatorships in the name of freedom, condemn the opponent in an exercise of “tolerance”, understood as intransigence, disqualify dissent and even engage in nonsense. Academics find the most elaborate explanations for the inexplicable. The normalization of the unusual advances thanks to the abdication of common sense and the extinguishing of the capacity for surprise.

Nothing surprises us. The incredible and the absurd materialize around the corner and become reality. The rush of facts, the frequency of nonsense and the validity of stupidity contribute to the construction of a society defeated by indifference and sarcasm, without memory, without history, without an idea of ​​itself. We live in the bustle of events, the absence of direction and the endless boredom of the masses of busy consumers, citizens without democracy at heart. And, by the way, among people tormented by opinion scattered in the endless messages that everyone sends on social networks.

In all of this, society’s great ability to adapt, its imagination in finding means of survival and the ability of leaders to preserve their interests and find explanations for the strangest deviations of behavior are at work. The fundamental problem is that the “normalization of the unusual” involves ethics that remain without foundation, values ​​that are abolished, and scruples that are extinguished. (OR)