Normalcy feat. Andrew

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Normalcy feat. Andrew"

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Host(s): Andrew Sage & James Stout
Date: February 10, 2026
Production: Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores the concept of "normalcy" as it relates to the American political system, society's myth of linear progress, and the deep desire—especially among liberals—to return to a pre-Trump "normal." Andrew and James unpack why this conception of normal is both historically contingent and ultimately unsustainable, urging listeners to reject the illusion of past stability and instead focus on building resilient, interconnected communities for a turbulent future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of Normal and Yearning for Pre-Trump Times

• Trump's chaos is framed as a continuation, not a deviation, from longstanding systemic issues.
• “People seem to be yearning for” a return to normal, but Trump is “a product of the normal” (Andrew, 02:47).
• Liberals and progressives often mistakenly view the Trump era as a singular aberration, ignoring the deeper roots of societal problems.

2. The False Narrative of Progress

• The allure of the "myth of progress"—that society moves in a straight line toward justice and improvement—is challenged.
• Malcolm X analogy: “If I stick a knife into you and I only pull it out 3 inches, that’s not progress... Progress would be, you know, removing the knife completely and mending the wound.” (Andrew, 06:03)
• Questioning whether undoing injustices truly counts as progress or simply as returning to a baseline.
• Linking the idea of progress to colonialism, "uplifting" missions, and the white man's burden (James, 08:08).

3. The Historical Anomaly of Postwar Prosperity

• The economic boom of the 1950s-70s is described as an “historical anomaly”—“just this 50 to 70 year fossil fuel binge” (Andrew, 09:47) impossible to sustain.
• Calls out the fantasy that society can recreate these conditions indefinitely, especially in light of ecological and resource limits.

4. Techno-Utopianism and Resource Scarcity

• Dissection of contemporary faith in technological solutions (AI, electric cars, fusion), ignoring physical limits and material dependencies (James & Andrew, 11:00–12:42).
• “We can’t supplement each and every individual person with a car for all of time, you know.” (Andrew, 11:00)
• The pursuit of replacement technologies constantly kicks the can down the road rather than addressing underlying contradictions.

5. Collapse Is Delayed but Inevitable

• Societal collapse is being staved off by exploitative mechanisms: financial rent-seeking, increased surveillance, and environmental theft (Andrew, 12:42).
• When capital-driven growth inevitably ends, "the group project of making the rich richer... has to come to an end.” (Andrew, 14:31)

6. Health, Sanitation, and Growth Are Not a Package Deal

• Improvements like vaccination and sanitation did not require environmental destruction (Andrew & James, 18:04–18:33).
• Example: “All London had to do... was stop dumping their sewage in the Thames.” (Andrew, 18:33)

7. Detachment from the Costs of Consumption

• Modern society is insulated from the human and ecological costs of cheap goods.
• “Why is a barbecue grill $7, you know, who is suffering so that this barbecue grill...” (Andrew, 20:15)
• The supply chains and ecological destruction required are intentionally invisible.

8. Illusion of Coherent, Competent Leadership

• The system is messier and less stable than it appears; political leaders project confidence while lacking control or willingness to admit uncertainty (Andrew, 22:34–23:40).
• Example: Texas grid failure; politics in Flint, Michigan.

9. Denial and Social Responses to Collapse

• Society’s responses span panic, conspiracy, denial, hustle culture, and disengagement. Only a fraction challenge the idea of normal itself (Andrew, 32:25).
• “Many of us like fish in water... can’t really recognize the socioeconomic structure that we are within.” (Andrew, 33:14)

10. Critique of the Self-Sufficiency Fantasy

• Performative homesteading and survivalism are called out as deeply dependent on global systems and supply chains (James, 35:16–38:17).
• Real resilience is rooted in community: “They did so in community... we as a species have survived and succeeded because we are able to share our skills with others...” (Andrew, 38:35–39:11)

11. Mutual Aid and Collective Futures

• Mutual support and integrated interdependence—not atomized self-reliance—offer a path to weathering societal shocks and adapting to collapse (James & Andrew, 39:11–41:00).
• “The community support and the shared resources are going to matter a lot more than your personal purchasing power.” (Andrew, 41:00)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Trump is not truly exceptional. Rather, he's a product of the normal that people seem to be yearning for.”
— Andrew Sage (02:47)

“If I stick a knife into you... that's not progress. Progress would be... removing the knife completely and mending the wound.”
— Malcolm X, as quoted by Andrew Sage (06:03)

“The normal that people are talking about sometimes is just this 50 to 70 year fossil fuel binge, a binge that we are reaching the end of.”
— Andrew Sage (09:47)

“The pursuit of growth perpetually, like a cancer... the pressures to keep the whole machine running just outweighs any long-term considerations.”
— Andrew Sage (21:04)

“They are pretending or believing that they have this grip on things, that they can anticipate and smooth out the shocks to the system.”
— Andrew Sage (22:34)

“Improvements in literacy [can happen] without literally poisoning our fresh water and bleaching our oceans.”
— Andrew Sage (18:04)

“We get this sense that... this is ... this all powerful Lovecraftian entity that us mere individuals can't really challenge... when there are things that we can do directly.”
— Andrew Sage (24:52)

“Most people think of normal as this default state, but normal is actually kind of weird...”
— Andrew Sage (32:25–33:14)

“If you think you’re independent because you bought that seven dollar grill off Temu... you’re missing the web of relationships that brought that $7 grill to your doorstep and eventually to the landfill.”
— Andrew Sage (34:33)

“The community support and the shared resources are going to matter a lot more than your personal purchasing power.”
— Andrew Sage (41:00)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:26: Trump as not exceptional; the myth of "returning to normal"
• 04:38: The new normal and the myth of progress introduced
• 06:03: Malcolm X analogy on the limits of “progress”
• 09:47: Postwar prosperity as fossil-fueled anomaly
• 11:00–12:42: Tech bubbles, rare earths, sustainability illusions
• 14:31: The end of infinite economic growth
• 18:04–18:33: Health/sanitation vs. environmental destruction
• 20:15: The hidden costs of consumption
• 22:34: The myth of competent leadership and system stability
• 24:35: Flint, Michigan as example of denial and system inertia
• 32:25: Normalcy is a brittle, weird illusion
• 35:16–38:17: Critique of performative self-sufficiency/homesteading
• 39:11–41:00: How real resilience comes through mutual support
• 41:00–42:10: Concluding thoughts on networks, mutual aid, and seeing through the illusion of normal

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Conclusion

Andrew and James urge listeners to shed illusions of stability and individual self-sufficiency, recognize the constructed and unsustainable nature of “normal,” and refocus energy on community, mutual aid, and collective action. The exit from “normal” is presented not as a disaster, but as an opportunity to build something more humane, sustainable, and resilient—if we are willing to see clearly and act together.

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For source materials and further reading, listeners are directed to episode descriptions as noted by the hosts.

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Tone:
Engaged, incisive, and slightly sardonic—matching the conversational, critical style of the hosts.

Transcript

[Andrew Sage]

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[Andrew Sage]

Media. So Trump is kind of moving like a bull in a china shop, or rather a bull in a missile shop. You know, I think that's a more apt analogy. The. The system of government wasn't exactly benign beforehand, you know.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

I think it really needs to click, people, that Trump is not truly exceptional. Rather, he's a product of the normal that people seem to be yearning for.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, and the other issues we're dealing with, too.

[James]

Yeah. I think, like, this is the. The crux of what comes next. Right. It's like we have this, like, I don't want to. I don't want to disparage people. We have this tendency in American politics, this liberal tendency, progressive liberal tendency even, to think that, like, basically things have been magnificent until the first week of November in 2016. Right. That America was progressing on this, like, linear pathway towards total equality and justice for all, and that what's happening now is an aberration. It's the idea that there's a few individuals conspiring, rather, that there is a system which inherently creates interest, which repose to our own, I guess.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, exactly. It's like all of these problems, the genocides we're waging long before Trump came into power. You know, the economic strains people are feeling today that people have been feeling for decades for their entire lives. You know, the climate crisis that has only worsened as time has gone on. You know, all of this is a product of that normal, of that pre Trump normal. And I still hear people asking, you know, when are things going to go back to normal? When can we settle down? When will we go back onto the track of normalcy? And, well, if you're listening to this podcast, I think you already know what time it is. This is. It could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage and I'm joined by.

[James]

It's James again, here to talk about the new normal.

[Andrew Sage]

All right, and welcome.

[James]

Thank you.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, the new normal. The ever shifting normal. Right. The phantom of normal. And why it is that it's really not coming back and why normalcy as a concept is actually pretty weird. So part of. I think what feeds into this notion of normal is this myth of progress that people are obsessed with. You know, recently I read this book, Progress by Samuel Miller McDonald, and I would like to do a review of it at some point for the podcast. But the short of it is that it gets into just how pervasive this concept of progress is in kind of tripping people up and keeping us serving systems that don't serve us. You know, you mentioned progressives earlier and you know, even that notion, I think, of being a progressive. He kind of calls that into question in the course of the book. Going from ancient times talking about a religious sense of a promised land to the sort of modern sense of a secular or technological progressive improvement or social progressive improvement. He identifies it as a story, and a story that's so powerful that it acts like a sedative. You know, we don't engage with the degree in reality the world around us because we're wrapped up in this all powerful faith. We're bound to progress, that progress is linear, that we are ever striving forward, you know.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And we point to examples of things like social progress. But as he quotes in the book, it's like what Malcolm X said, you know, if I stick a knife into you and I only pull it out 3 inches, that's not progress. Pull it out 6 inches, that's not progress. 9 inches, that's not progress. Progress would be, you know, removing the knife completely and mending the wound. But I would take it a step further and say that is it really progress to go back to a state that already was? Is it progress to abolish slavery when there was a time when slavery did not exist? You know, going back to a previous default state is not necessarily contributing to the same thing with patriarchy. You know, patriarchy did not always exist. Eroding and abolishing the patriarchy, reaching a point where the limitations placed on women are no longer there. Can we call that progress? Or is it just rectifying a previously imposed state? And so these are some of the questions he grapples with. And there's also, of course, the techno utopian promise of, you know, we can end self driving cars any minute, you know, fusion, energy, AI, ending work forever. You know, all these things are blind to the social or ecological reality of collapse. But where else would you say you might see this myth showing up in politics? I think I covered a good few, but I might be missing something.

[James]

Yeah, like, I mean it's, it's almost in everything, right. Like it's a fundamental myth of liberal capitalism, I guess. Like it also underlies a certain logic of, of colonialism. Right. The idea that like progress towards a neoliberal state is this can be like the logic of explicit or less explicit colonialism, I guess. But like you, you see it there too, right? Like, like you see it in the, the sort of, you see a lot in 19th century. It's, it's very explicit, the idea to uplift, civilize and Christianize our little brown brothers.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, the civilizing mission.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The white man's burden and these things that like became very, very en vogue in the late 19th, early 20th century. I suppose you see it a lot there too, right?

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. This whole notion, I think that even really starts with the concept of civilization. When you have that civilized other divide, that binary of the civilized and the barbarian or the civilized and the savage, and how that gets turned into this mission as civilization expands, that you bring those savage peoples into the fold and you slowly bring them up, make them upright men and closer to being human than the state that they were in previously. And the whole narrative around that is what has, as it has evolved with time, led to the situation that we're in now.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And there's this idea as well that even when there are these ruptures in normal, that everything will go back to its right place. But as I've heard people say, you know, history is a series of unprecedented things. You know, and one of the unprecedented things in history that I wish people would realize is not ever going to come back is that sort of post war economic boom, you know, that 1950 era growth and excess that has become the default state that many people are striving to return to, when in reality something like that is a historical anomaly driven by artificially cheap and abundant energy.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, the normal that people are talking about sometimes is just this 50 to 70 year fossil fuel binge, A binge that we are reaching the end of and I think a fantasy to believe that we can replicate for all time.

[James]

Right? Yeah. But it's the time that so much of the like the world that we exist in was created. Right. And like people almost see themselves as like a different species from human beings in the 19th century. Right.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James]

They can't conceive of society that way.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. And it's something that I've been dwelling on because what a time to be alive, to see personal cause being so ubiquitous. But the ubiquity of personal cause is an aberration. It's a historical aberration. It's not one that is likely to be sustainable in the long term. You know, even if there are electric cars taking the place of gas powered vehicles and we run out of gas, oil, even the materials necessary to produce electric cars are not always going to be around, they're not always going to exist. We can't supplement each and every individual person with A car for all of time, you know.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So many of the rare earth minerals that are again quite rare, we've spent them on things that may serve a novelty or an interest in the short term, but it's not something that we can maintain forever. I hear people talking about this AI bubble and it is in the sense of the financial markets, the financial aspect of AI and how it's affecting our perception of the economy and whether that bubble is going to boost economically. But I'm more interested in the AI bubble in the sense that how long can this AI everywhere thing persist when the material is necessary to maintain it because it is material, despite the sort of cloud marketing that gets associated with it. How long until we run out of those materials? Until those material needs cannot be sustained?

[James]

Yeah, we keep shifting. Not like the goalposts, but like the terrain. Right. Like you know, we, okay, well we've run out of fossil fuels. Well that's fine. We will do electric. Okay. We, you know, with the electric actually relies on rare earths. Well, that's fine. We'll find a different thing to make, to make batteries out of. Rather than acknowledging that like we've created.

[Andrew Sage]

A system or we'll just go to space.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And trash another planet for another few hundred years. You know, when you're driving your truck and you have a lot of stuff in it and it's hitting the end of the rev counter, you know, like you're trying to pass someone, it's bouncing, it's in the red zone. Like we've been running in the red zone certainly for most of this century, you know, since the industrial revolution or certainly since the end of the second World War. And like sustainability is a phrase that's been co opted but like it's just not possible to keep doing it.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, I mean it's really an anomaly, a blip in our timeline, I would say. And I think ruptures in that normalcy, like the rupture we're experiencing now provides an opportunity for us to, you know, take an exit ramp to kind of control the transition, to control our descent. But instead, you know, it seems like we are just rapidly moving towards the more forceful transition, the transition made so by the laws of physics. And that transition I don't think will be nearly as pleasant as it could be. You know, that's why a lot of people call it collapse. And that transition is being delayed currently with the collapse of the material resources and also the collapse of the financial economic system. That stuff has been delayed by rent seeking, by new frontiers of exploitation by ramping up theft in parts of the world that were not as pillaged as other parts of the world, or ramping up surveillance and violence to make it harder to resist. But eventually it's gonna hit, you know, and I hate that it makes me sound like a second coming of Jesus conspiracist or something like that. Just like, oh yeah, it's coming, it's coming, you know, like, like, like I'm a prophet screaming into the, into the streets. But you know, it may not be some kind of prophesied end times, but we are approaching that point, you know, where that sort of narrative of economic growth going back to normal, you know, there's this big group project of making the rich richer because that rise in tide will lift all boats. You know, this, this story that everybody wins, that nobody will have to lose anything because the pie will just keep getting bigger. It has to come to an end.

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[James]

It's amazing how long it's lasted, right? Like, certain group of society's been able to make the rest of society believe that the pie will just keep getting bigger when the pie has got smaller for most people, certainly for the last few decades, but arguably lives have become worse for us since the Industrial Revolution in some ways.

[Andrew Sage]

Right, Exactly. And people will point to improvements in health and sanitation. Sure. You can have improvements in health and sanitation without all this other baggage, though.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, we can have improvements in literacy without literally poisoning our fresh water and bleaching our oceans and killing off biodiversity by the millions of species.

[James]

Yeah. It's not a. Like a package deal. Right. Like, we can have vaccination against diseases without having Superfund sites. We didn't need one to make the other. It's not. It's not a. Like this way or the Dark Ages.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. For example, all London had to do. I mean, I'm oversimplifying, but all London had to do was stop dumping their sewage in the Thames.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's a remarkable. It's not that hard. But like, just look at the disposal of hazardous waste and the way that rather than being like, huh, maybe we should stop making waste that will be hazardous for centuries. For the better part of a hundred years, we've just been finding somewhere else to put it.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, just keep. Just keep dumping it.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Even as a child, I was like, what are we supposed to do with all these mountains of garbage? Like, are we just gonna keep on piling it up until we reach the moon? I mean.

[James]

Yeah. It's like in San Diego, they used to dump it in the bay. There's a whole part of our bay which used to be a landfill site. And, like, I like to free dive. Sometimes I'll just be practicing or diving in the bay or whatever, and, like, you'll dive down and be like, the fuck is a barbecue grill doing on the bottom of the ocean? And people just continue to chuck shit into the bay. Right. Like, even though we have another landfill where we put it now.

[Andrew Sage]

No, but you see, James, it's like that barbecue grill was $7 on Temu. You can't pass up that deal, you know?

[James]

Yeah. And then when it turns out to be absolute crap, it will be on our planet for longer than any of us. But we've created a system where there's no disincentive to buy a TEMU barbecue grill, use it once, and then throw it into the bay. And, like, we can't see that that's a problem.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. Because of how the system is set up. You have to think about, wait a second. Why is a barbecue grill $7, you know, who is suffering so that this barbecue grill.

[James]

Yeah, right. Because we're so detached from that. Right. Like, despite being so connected, we're also so far away from the people who. Their misery is a consequence of our consumption or of the system which makes our consumption the way it is.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly. And, you know, instead of thinking about how we can make society resilient, how we can reasonably and ethically and with consideration for seven generations, use the resources that we have. And without endless throughput, our leaders continue to chase growth. They continue to chase progress perpetually. Like a cancer.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, and everybody's seeing the consequences at this point. The work situation is getting worse because these platforms, these employers are finding ways to game the labor laws. You know, we're seeing shrink in margins in certain sectors because when you rely on growth, when that growth comes to an end, there's nowhere else to grow. You have to squeeze what there is. What's the phrase? Squeeze blood out of a stone.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, you have to force overwork. You have to inshitify existing services so that you can extract more subscriptions, more payments, more upgrades, whatever the case may be. The livability of entire cities has been wiped out because, you know, you have Airbnb and other private companies hauling out something as basic as housing.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

For all. And so the pressures to keep the whole machine running just outweighs any long term considerations. But like I keep saying this normal was never sustainable. I will say though, when we criticize the system and we call it out and we talk about how these leaders are pushing things in a certain direction. They are. But at the same time, it's easy to fall into this notion that they are manipulating the whole thing, you know, that they manage the system in its entirety. It's tempting to see the system as coherent, you know, to act like it's all piloted by one individual or group.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

As some wise or malevolent parental figure. And you know, these institutions, they all rely to varying degrees under the appearance of competence. Right. But I think what recent Times has revealed is that things are a lot messier than that. That political leaders know that they don't know, but won't admit that they don't know, or they don't know that they don't know. And in either case, they are pretending or believing that they have this grip on things that they can anticipate and smooth out the shocks to the sister. You know, there are those who think that if they share the honest truth, that they could trigger panic in the populace. So they think they're doing something, you know, brave and benevolent by not giving people all the information they need. And worse yet, they fear that by sharing all the information that's needed to make accurate decisions, that they might lose investments, they might lose investors, you know, that the economy will take a hit as a result.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

That's why you have situations where, like when the Texas grid failed in 2021, that the officials were insisting that it was stable.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Until it wasn't, you know, or for the years that UK has had its water, its water infrastructure issues, continues to claim that things are under control and sewage was still getting into people's rivers.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know.

[James]

Yeah. Like, like I think a lot about Flint, Michigan, where the water that people have to drink to survive is killing them. And this has been happening, we've known about it for a decade and there have been a series of politicians from both parties who have just been like, yeah, no, don't worry, we've got this covered. And we fundamentally have not got this covered. Right. But the machine is moving so fast that no one person can stop and turn it around because the machine will just bulldoze them.

[Andrew Sage]

Yep. It's not as steady and stable as it puts forward. You know, in fact, that whole image of the system as coherent, as steady, as stable, I think it also serves to keep us from defying it.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, because we get this sense that, yeah, this is this like this, this behemoth, this all powerful Lovecraftian entity that us male individuals can't really challenge when there are things that we can do directly to throw, you know, spooks in the wheel, if that's the expression. No, it's something in the spokes.

[James]

Yeah. Spanner stick in the spokes, maybe.

[Andrew Sage]

Right. Yeah, sure, let's go with that. Would you say there was like a particular moment when you realized that nobody actually knew what they were doing, though? Yeah, I'm trying to think if it.

[James]

Was like a momental recognition for me or like a sort of gradual one. You know, I think a few of the times, like you see it a lot when, when you travel more. Right. Because the perception that like we are helping here, we've got this under control. Like, I think with immigration, it's a great example actually. Right. Like, so I've obviously spent a lot of time with immigrants and I think you see this. I remember in 2018 we had the migrant caravan, right. Like there have been many migrant caravans. This one was just coincided with a midterm in a way that allowed it to become like a political football. And the American government is like, we are stopping them at the border so we can check if everyone's okay. And the government in Mexico is like, well, we are taking care of them. And you get there and you're like, like these people haven't had water today. And like at that point, you know, I was already sort of predisposed to thinking that perhaps the state didn't have all the answers. And, and like, to be clear, the Mexican state's a lot more than the US state in this instance and provided these people with a place to be, which it would have been much worse if they hadn't had that. But like it was just this realization. I was with a few friends, all of us happened at the time to be full time bicycle people. So we didn't have jobs that needed us to be like in a place at 9am so that realization that like, if these people are going to get water today, it's going to be because we go to Costco and buy all the water bottles and then we ride back whilst slowly destroying the suspension of this pickup truck because we've got so much weight in it and give them out because no one else is going to. There's this whole world of NGOs and governments and states and didn't matter. These people still didn't have water.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, there's a lot of room for direct actions too. Yeah, and the powers of being not as competent as they may at first glance appear. In other words, if they say they have everything under control, don't believe them.

[James]

Yeah.

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[Andrew Sage]

I think also that instability within the system is part of it. You know, it's part of how it works. It's part of what's necessary for it to keep going. The competitive tune of the capitalist market, the shifts of industries that, you know, uproot people's lives. Just part of how the system operates. You know, the booms and busts in real estate, they all are ways for the powers that be to expand their wealth in some ways expand their reach in certain territories. And people, for the most part, just go along with it. You know, daily life is complex as it is, without having to grapple with the full scale of all the global issues, you know, the following, the leader. Just going along with what they say. It does give you some psychological breathing room. You know, it's hard to grapple with the existential threats that we face. I don't have time to in many cases.

[James]

Right.

[Andrew Sage]

Especially when you have an administrative strategy that involves flooding the zone with so much mess, it's so much drama with so many different controversies and lies and incidents, that it feels like the best thing to do is just throw your hands up and give up. And then I'm speaking both from the perspective of what I'm observing in the Trinidadian government and what I'm observing in the American government. But I see this attitude of arrogance, callousness, and corruption. It's like they're not even trying to maintain a veneer of legitimacy or intelligence or anything like that. Studies go through the motions to provide the things that it claims it's necessary to provide, you know, but they're failing at even that. And they're so cocky about it. Yeah, they're so careless about it, too. So they're smiling in your face and lying to you.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And people do see what's happening, and they're responding in a couple different ways. You know, they. They panic, of course, or they fall into conspiracies, or they deny that there is an actual problem. They continue to Insist that everything is normal, that everything is fine. They double down, they hustle harder, they consume more, they carry on as if nothing's wrong. And there are those who see that something's wrong, but they see everybody else carrying on as if everything is fine. And so they go along as well, you know. Or there are people, of course, who disengage, who are burnt out, who are numb, who are just drifting or going through the motions. But only a portion have turned to challenge the concept of normal itself. Whether it is that they're experimenting with simpler living, developing some program for survival, some strategy either for themselves, for their household or for their community, engage in mutual support. And of course this is only a portion of the population because many of us like fish in water. You know, we can't really recognize the socioeconomic structure that we are within. It's hard to recognize what you are immersed in as a thing itself. And something really, in seeing and reading about alternatives, that you get a glimpse of this normalcy and question it. To realize the system isn't natural or inevitable. There's an aberration destined to decline, no matter how much we want to believe otherwise. That the script of working, consuming, careering, accumulating property and all is a normal. That is actually kind of weird, you know, like it's strange that an entire society is dependent upon globe spanning supply chains, volatile markets, and oriented entirely around the quarterly earnings of elites. You know, it's strange that whiteness, maleness, cisheteroness, ableness are treated as the default, the starter kit, even though only a fraction of humanity fits in any one of those molds, let alone the combination of all of them. You know, it's strange that normal is so narrowly conformist with those who don't conform are marginalized. It's strange that normal means an illusion of independence that disguises the webs you will always rely on that you can claim to be independent and say, yeah, well I just bought that seven dollar grill off Temu and not think about the, the well of relationships that brought that $7 Timu grill to your doorstep and eventually to the landfill. You get to feel self sufficient while the system hides the labor, the ecosystems, logistics and the people holding you up.

[James]

I'm just thinking now about people whose whole thing is being like homesteaders, but their homesteading is in itself a performance for the global supply or the global market for distracting or entertainment or whatever you want to call it, right? And they do not exist outside of those supply chains. They are doing this performance of independence because they are so Codependent. They exist to generate revenue off affiliate links or however influencers make money. Sponsorships.

[Andrew Sage]

Oh, yeah. Oh, you're talking about the influencers.

[James]

Yeah. There's a guy who I remember, like, a year ago, I. Because I'm like, I don't know, broken inside. I got into an argument with someone on x dot com.

[Andrew Sage]

Oh, no.

[James]

Yeah. This guy was, like, posing as a homesteader. And, like, you know, I grew up on a farm, right. Like, I've spent lots of my life around, like, domestic animals and around domestic. I know how to fix things. I know what tools look like when you use them. And this guy was very clearly just posing a series of photos. It just really, like, I don't know why that particularly threw me for a loop. Right. But, like, the idea that this guy is performing. Performing independence for a system he himself is reinforcing, it was just such a strange thing to understand.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. A system he's dependent on.

[James]

Yeah, exactly. A system he's entirely dependent on. Like, more so than most of us even. Right. Like, he makes nothing other than photographs that people look at on their phones. He makes no tangible product. Like, at least if you're right, you know, you could be a cabinet maker, right? Yeah. You install kitchens for rich people, but you know how to make things with your hands. This guy just gets right, you know, a saw that looks like it hadn't been used since the Edwardian era and stands around for photos next to a log in the same breath. I guess that I condemn that. I feel like the way that we deal with the end of this is the same way that we help each other get through the middle of this and the. And the collapse of it. Right. Like, I've seen people do mutual aid with such scarce resources and manage to make such amazing things, like, both in terms of, like, physical objects and in terms of, like, these beautiful things we do for each other with so little and the ingenuity that's still there. It's not like people have forgotten how to exist without temu. Right. But we just haven't created a way, a situation where we have to. And in mutual aid spaces, I sometimes feel like we already have the solution to this, which is to depend on and care for each other. It's just that we need that to be the way we do everything, not just some stuff.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. You know, the whole homesteading fantasy is this very comforting illusion and fiction, in my view. Because if we're talking about going back to the land, people who live on the land, who live off of the Land. They did so in community.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

You know, very, very, very, very rarely did someone live entirely by themselves without contact with anyone else. Because you can't be an ax maker and a carpenter and a cook and, you know, a farmer and a herder and all these different things, all of these different roles, a medicine maker, all these different things at the same time. That is why we as a species have survived and succeeded because we are able to share our skills with others and, you know, collectively accomplish more than the sum of our parts.

[James]

Yeah, it's a fantasy. I was recently in a place called Chaco Canyon. I don't know if you've, if you're familiar with Chaco Canyon at all. No, but there's this idea, I think, that like, pre the arrival of capitalism, like, that's how indigenous people lived. And it's just not like, you know, this was a large, thriving community. I'm interested in Chaco Canyon because I'm interested in what you're talking about. Like a society which consumed at an unsustainable level and then collapsed. And what came out of it, but what came out of it is what kept the working class people in that society alive throughout it, which is helping each other. Right. Like, yeah, sure, people had these little plots where they, where they grew grain, but also like, by doing their ceremonies, by coming together in community, they had something which could sustain them even when the economic reality completely changed for them. And it's like, it's that part that people forget. Right. They think they can. Yeah, they think they can grow all their own food. Yeah, you can. But when you need a new plow, what are you gonna do? You're gonna buy a forge on Temu? You know, like, it's so detached from the way anyone has ever lived.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, it is. And it cannot last. And me personally, I would rather not wait until supply chains break down completely and storms wipe the slate and blackouts cut all communication. And I would rather wait for those things to create and sustain those networks of dependence, networks of interdependence, those local networks of aid and cultural practice and, you know, meeting of mutual needs. There's a saying that the sort of hustle bros would say that your network is your net worth. And to that I must concur. You know, the community support and the shared resources are going to matter a lot more than your personal purchasing power. Being part of something is emotionally easier than carrying everything alone. They matter now and they'll matter even more in the future as crisis makes the invisible all too visible. The normal that we remember is an illusion, but once you've seen it, you cannot unsee. I think the departure from normal is an opportunity or chance to make something better, to be adaptable to the shocks that come with courage and with clarity. And I hope that this conversation is able to put to words when I'm sure that I'm not alone in feeling. That's all for me today. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

You can now find sources for It.

[Andrew Sage]

Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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[Andrew Sage]

This.

[Tara Davis Woodhull]

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