SEPTEMBER 1st, 2023 | RYAN TYLER

Our Normal Is Wrong

If we let it, it will destroy us.

Normal should be something that lifts us up. It should be something that encourages growth, wealth, cohesion, prosperity and happiness. Normalcy in Western society doesn't do any of those things. The more I have woken up in the past few years, the more aware I have become of the ugly reality that has been in front of me my whole life. It's like I had been asleep when I thought I was awake. Now that I'm fully awake, I am aware that our normal is a destructive force that needs to be completely and entirely gutted.

When something is this rotten, it can't be saved. It needs to be destroyed, burned, and rebuilt.

Our society doesn't fuel and feed individual prosperity, it eats us and feeds off our labour and stress. We are constantly being sacrificed and swallowed up to feed some greater good. Unfortunately, that greater good is an abomination and a lie. There is no greater good. Not anymore. The further back we go to read between the lines, the more clear it becomes that there never was a greater good—not in my lifetime.

We can debate when the greater good died. Was it a few years after World War II? Was it just before? Or, did it die in the mid 1960s? At some point, before most of us were born, the greater good became an ugly, horrifying mutation. We were told it was “peace”, then we were told it was “freedom”. Then, in the 1980s and 90s, it was both. After 9/11, it was about “security”. As we look back and look more deeply at what was really happening, we see it was neither of those things.

When the U.S. invaded Grenada in 1983, what was it really about? America had already beaten the USSR on nearly every front. After the Soviet Union fell, we just kept going. What purpose did invading Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan really serve? What purpose did bombing weddings and killing children in the Middle East accomplish? Well, we know those things made a lot of people rich and helped strengthen the USD.

In terms of our freedom and world peace, they accomplished nothing.

As we sit, distracted by mass media and shiny objects, the greater good becomes more of an abomination. Without us even realizing, the creators and architects of this mess compel us to sacrifice even more. We take on more stress and labour, while giving up more of our happiness to feed their beast. They continue to suck more of our energy to feed a monster that will inevitably die. The closer it gets to death, the more energy the system sucks.

In the past twenty years, they used fear to take more of our freedom. First it was Islamic terrorism, then it was a virus with a death rate barely higher than the common flu. Within one single generation, we gave up most of the freedoms we thought those endless wars were designed to protect. Their finely tuned, well-oiled machine tricked us into accepting the Patriot Act and mandatory vaccines. That same machine continues to hold a tight grip on half the population—despite all we have seen and everything that has been revealed.

The Patriot Act was for our own good. Mandatory vaccines weren't really mandatory, because refusing to participate in normal societal behaviours and becoming unemployed was our “choice”.

People have let themselves become fodder that feeds a massive pig. That's all we are. That is the so-called greater good now. We are here to work harder and to sacrifice more energy and happiness for a collective entity that does nothing but break us down and imprison us. The plot of The Matrix is our story and we exist only to provide energy to a machine that seeks to control and swallow up more things. A machine that exists to grow itself at our expense. A machine that is harvesting us.

We've been trained to accept the boom and bust cycles of a rigged economic system.

Over the course of a hundred years, life has become too expensive to have children. To keep the machine fed, they bring in more immigrants. Those immigrants then drive down average wages, while increasing demand on services and housing. This cycle is perpetuated and made more corrosive with every bust and economic meltdown. With every following boom cycle, those at the top become more wealthy, while the long-term effects leave the poor deeper in poverty.

With every boom comes a larger consolidation of power.

Since the 2008/09 meltdown, 30% of America's housing market has been bought by large corporations and investment firms like Blackrock. Almost twenty years later, rent and housing costs across North America have trippled—making those investment firms wealthier and more powerful. By 2022, investment firms owned a quarter of all U.S. single-family homes. In Canada, investors now own one in every five.

Some will say this is capitalism. It's not. This is cronyism and corruption inside a system with a rotting core. It's your normal.

What Is Normal?

In an interview for War Of The Words, an Australian reporter once asked Tom Cruise how he plans to raise normal kids as a celebrity. Peter Overton started what became a tense exchange by asking, “Is that hard to give them a perspective that they are like the kids down the road?”

“I don't buy into this whole thing of being normal,” Cruise replied. “There is no such thing as normal.”

It's a good point and a telling example of how the machine expects us to blindly adhere to the concepts it provides. As parents, we are expected to raise our kids to be just like the “kids down the road”. We don't often bother to stop and ask who those kids are and whether “normal” is something that should be questioned.

As we face new normals in terms of gender, the rejection of science, and the sexualization of kids in the name of inclusion, we're continuing to accept the old norms. It's almost like the new normals that the machine is trying to make us accept are so radical, we're forgetting how destructive the current ones have been. Maybe that's how it works.

Taking pleasure in polishing your 1969 Mustang in the driveway is normal. Obsessing over inanimate, material objects has always been normal. Buying into the latest fad and fashion so we can fit in and look normal has always been... normal. No matter how shallow or destructive that normal might be, we feel pressured into accepting it. We seldom question whether shiny objects should warrant more of our time and energy than an unresolved disagreement with a loved one, or a deteriorating relationship with a family member.

Supporting wars to defend the freedom to buy and nurture material objects has been normal for nearly one hundred years.

That's a freedom we sure haven't lost. People are buying more things than ever before, while men stay virgins for longer and while women bear fewer children. As a natural consequence of the system, homelessness is rising, drug addiction is skyrocketing, kids are moving out and becoming dependent later—but consumer spending keeps rising past historic levels. No one can afford to pay their rent or mortgages, but they can afford the latest video games, drugs, and smartphones.

Virtual reality and gaming are becoming normal, because the reality created by the machine is becoming increasingly undesirable and overwhelming. False realities within our existing reality—metaverses—keep us pacified, compliant, distracted and available for the machine to suck more energy.

If we sacrifice more freedoms, like eating out, visiting parks, kayaking, playing sports, going to concerts, vacationing, travelling, and spending money on peaceful and productive adventures, we'll be able to save more money to pay our rising fees to the machine. If we stay indoors, immersed in simulated realities similar to the ones we used to spend real time and money on, we would require even less to fill the void. A simple, affordable virtual reality platform will be enough and all the money (energy) we save will be sucked up to feed the machine.

Too distracted to notice, it will steal and devour whatever we have left with more uncontested wars and violations.

The metaverses that are coming are the same as the ones we have always lived in. Our obsession with material objects has offered the same distractions and compliance the machine has required to sustain itself. The only difference is that the machine wants more, so it's becoming our duty to make more sacrifices. Since it feeds off our energy, we need to make more of it available. The quickest and most efficient way to have us do that is by incrementally deleting our freedoms. By turning us into immobile blobs that hook into another matrix, the machine will rob us of any remaining capability to resist.

It turns out, our normal is insane. Our normal is self-destruction.

The Facts

The costs of everything designed to get us out of the house have increased exponentially in the past three years. At the same time, the prices of things designed to keep us inside have risen less exponentially. Ten years ago, I was paying $70 for high speed internet; today I'm paying $85. That's a fifteen dollar increase (less than 3% annually) over ten years, which is minimal. The cost to eat out at a restaurant, on the other hand, has increased 15% annually since 2020. At most restaurants, menu prices have increased 50% since 2019, or portion sizes have shrunk.

Concert tickets have risen in price by nearly 20% since 2019. For some big-name concerts, prices have risen 200%.

In 2022, airfare prices increased 5% and in 2023 they are up by more than 25%. Hotel prices are up nearly 50% in Canada.

Just this year, gasoline prices in Canada have risen from 150 per litre to 163 per litre on average since March, while electric cars remain unaffordable.

All of these costs combined have also made it more difficult for parents to enrol their children in sports.

Meanwhile, most of the things designed to keep us indoors have increased far less dramatically. Netflix subscriptions have only increased 35% since 2014 (4% annually), while gaming consoles, on average, have only risen in price by 90% over 20 years. In 2001, an Xbox sold for $299 USD—in 2020 the same Xbox sold for $438. In 2013, an Xbox One cost $499 USD, in 2021 it cost $560. That's a $60 increase over eight years.

In 2020, a Sony Playstation 5 cost $399 USD. In 2023, they're going for $545 USD at Walmart. That works out to a 37% increase over three years, or 12% annually. That's minimal compared to the 50% increase in menu items at restaurants over three years, the 25% increase in airfare in one year, and the 75% increase in fossil fuel costs. 

To break it down:

Airfare is up 25% in 2023; restaurants are up 50% since 2019; concerts 20%, hotels 50%. Gasoline is up 10% in only five months. (2% monthly, between March and July, or 24% annually.)

Gaming consoles are up only 12% annually, while Netflix and Prime have increased their prices in 2023 by less than $2. Most household products can be purchased for 15% less through Amazon, without having to travel to the nearest store. Coffee is even cheaper when it's made at home, since prices at Starbucks and Tim Horton's have been on the rise for years.

Yes, this all has to do with supply and demand. But, we've seen supply disruptions disproportionately effect certain, particular industries over the past three years. Gaming consoles and smartphones are being churned out at record rates, while food, fuel and housing have been crippled. Due to coincidence, or by design, demand is outpacing supply in the most important and vital parts of our economy. However, the things designed to entertain and distract us have faced fewer supply disruptions—despite their record demand.

2022 was Microsoft's biggest year ever for Xbox sales, and 2023 has already seen more than 20 million consoles fly off the shelves. Somehow, there is no supply shortage.