Globalisation is a term thrown around so much it has
lost its shape. It can even be used as a positive or a negative depending on
who is doing the chucking. If you see a borderless world as one where the
restraints of nationalist spite and dictates dissolve, you may rest easy in the
first group and there are many things which require the co-operation of the
whole globe if any good is to be done. An obvious example is our present
climate disaster.
However, if you look at Globalisation as the
realisation of the Capitalist wet dream where at the push of an app a small cabal
with wealth that would make Midas sick – can exploit untold masses of poor
people continents away, then you will fall into the latter category.
And like the monster itself – the sickness it
spreads needs ever more subtle tentacles to invade our space. There is an aggressive
alien presence in our midst that very much does the bidding of wholly exploitative
Globalisation. We became infected with it, partly through the new breed of
advertising and now it is endemic. It is so pervasive it’s hard to tell who the
zombies are and who remains still human, sentient and with brain activity.
NORMALISATION is one of the successful viruses killing
common sense.
Many years ago (when I was a child in the Neolithic
era) much advertising was based around aspiration; keeping up with the
neighbours and having a better life. Some time in the 90s it seemed to segue off
the slip road of not being left behind. Early this century, the new push was
Normalisation. It’s been so insidious it’s hard to pinpoint when Normalisation
became the new drug of choice for rampant capitalism on a global scale.
By Normalisation I mean that things that we most
certainly did not regard as normal even twenty years ago – in some cases only
one decade ago – now pass as normal because they are promoted so persuasively
that way.
Below is a short example list -
It is ‘normal’ for a significant number of Western children
to still be in nappies full-time by their 3rd birthday. If you are a
young parent you may think this is normal but it wasn’t when my kids were
little and when I was a child and the dreaded terry nappy was all harried mums
could get, it was not unusual for parents (usually mothers) to aim to get their
infants out of nappies starting at 12 months. However – if you look on the side
of nappy packets you can see that advertisers are pushing people to think it’s
normal because the kids they use to advertise nappies – or pull ups which
actually hold kids back from being continent – look to me like they should be
at university. The longer your kids are in nappies the more money the
manufacturers make and fck the environment. But they need you to be comfortable
with this retarded behaviour so it’s pushed as entirely the norm until that is
what it becomes.
Plastic surgery. This was once the go to for aging
Hollywood starlets. Then it came down the ladder to the Page 3 girls and IT
girls and D-list celebrities. Now you can see disfigured teenagers in any city
with lopsided lips that look like they’ve been punched in the mouth or middle
aged women with paralysed foreheads looking like they’ve been lobotomised and
some with bosoms that will be breaking down their chemical compounds decades
after the body that is currently housing them is dust.
Needless to say it’s ‘normal’ for most everyone to
have a mobile phone and with the exception of yours truly a smart phone and it
is not unusual to see very young children in nappies in buggies entirely
mesmerised by an i-pad.
It has become normal for young children almost to
never leave the house unless accompanied by – or worse – organised by their
parents. The obesity crisis is always blamed on food – and while I do not
disagree – we ate SHITE in the 70s. Tinned, packaged, neon colours with sugar
and bizarre food colours and the whole of the time I was growing up there was
only ever one fat kid in my secondary school class and none at all in my
primary school. We didn’t have homework and if we weren’t at school we were out
playing. Just yesterday in a radio ad, a TV company was promoting mental health, They suggest the best time to 'have a chat' was in front of the TV. In reality TV is what people 'do' instead of talking or playing out or, in fact, doing anything.
A few weeks ago I heard what to me was an horrific
statement by a young go-getting entrepreneur. She said “we are never not
shopping”. My gut reaction was – that is bollocks. Then my head got into gear and
I realised that if you count actual shopping and all the time folk spend
staring at their screens either scanning for something to consume or being sent
info on consumer crap they didn’t know they wanted – she may have a point.
That was not normal until even five years ago. It is ‘normal’ now.
I tried not to bang on about politics this week but
it cannot be avoided so I’ll say it. Not so long ago, men as openly vile and
morally malformed as Trump or Boris Johnson would never have been elected. The sorts
of things one had to resign for years ago - they both had under their belts
possibly before they left full-time education. Now – sensible humane folk are
left scratching their heads wondering just how much shit these two have to mix
before we can say bye bye. Hideous as they are they are good for corporate greed and many of their fellow politicians expend energy promoting them as entirely normal human beings.
I could go on but you get it.
If corporate Globalisation is the 21s Century’s
devil incarnate, Normalisation is the Devil’s advocate.