Uncomfortably numb

{ NOW | GET IT } HYPER-NORMALISATION

- Bhanuj Kappal

In India, many woke up last week and headed to news portals and to Instagram to see if the US had begun to “obliterate” Iran.

There was a slim chance it had. Still, it was something of a relief to see the feed look as it usually does: clips from stand-up acts and podcasts, ads for niche products. There was also the ever-present news of violence and death: in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Manipur. Mixed in with influencer ragebait about the problems of being too pretty. News of ships still stranded. A coming Super El Nino. An upcoming blockbuster. “Buy my face cream”.

As one gets on with the day, after a morning like this, a pit remains in the stomach. Life hums along as normal, but one can’t escape the feeling that it shouldn't; that something is very wrong, and it isn’t going to be put right. The word for this feeling is hyper-normalisation.

“(It's) the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren't working... and yet the institutions and the people in power just are ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has,” Rahaf Harfoush, a Syrian-Canadian digital anthropologist (studying the relationship between humans and digital-era technology), author and TED speaker, said ina post on Instagram last March.

In the field of anthropology, hyper-normalisation is related to normalisation, which occurs when something new — think, the iPhone, stilettoes, gay marriage — slowly becomes familiar and mundane.