The Root of the Madness

[ecosophia]

It occurred to me yesterday, while mulling over various symptoms of our ongoing national nervous breakdown, that there's a very simple explanation for it all:  a very large number of people in our well-to-do classes have accepted the New Age notion that they create their own reality, and taken the next step -- the step that leads to madness -- and convinced themselves that they create everyone else's reality too. 

Do you remember, dear reader, the aftermath of Trump's election in 2016? A great many of his opponents immediately insisted that those who voted for him could only have been motivated by racism. I originally put that down to Democratic propaganda, but it was more than that. When I pointed out to people who were spouting that particular line that they were wrong, and offered them a good deal of evidence that they were wrong, they didn't argue or challenge the evidence or anything -- they just got a thousand-mile stare in their eyes and insisted again that the people who voted for Trump could only have been motivated by racism.  It was eerie. 

It took quite a while for me to realize that these people thought that they, not Trump voters, got to decide why Trump voters voted the way they did. The reality that Trump voters are human beings, with their own values, needs, concerns, and motives, simply didn't exist for these people. The bleak economic landscape created by policies that benefit our well-to-do classes didn't exist for them either, and articles that talked about that harsh reality -- here's a recent one, and here's another -- made no impression, because that wasn't the reality they chose to live in. 

I had another brush with that during the debate I had here on Dreamwidth with Michael M. Hughes, one of the leading figures in the soi-disant "Magic Resistance." One of the points I tried to make in that discussion was that the magical workings he was teaching people to do were bunny-slope stuff, inadequate for the purpose he had in mind. His response was to insist loudly that no, they were powerful magical rituals. At the time I was baffled, because they weren't; there are plenty of technical details that you put into a magical working to make it powerful, and his had none of those; furthermore, he was limiting himself to techniques that can be used by complete beginners, which again is a pretty fair demonstration that we're talking about the bunny slope. I realize now that he seriously thought that his workings were powerful because he said they were.

Take a look across the battered and smoking wasteland of our national consciousness and you'll see the same thing over and over again: a good many members of the comfortable classes have lost track of the fact that they don't get to decide what the universe will be. Violent rioters and arsonists are peaceful protesters, for example; why? Because we say they are, that's why. 

I was about to write the words "that way lies madness," but we're much too far along the curve for that. A significant fraction of the well-to-do in today's America have lost their last fingernail grip on reality and are insisting that the universe is whatever they want it to be. Since reality doesn't know or care in the least what they think about it, this will not end well. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Some light criticism here, coming from someone who agrees that e.g. rural economic decline (something that has been accelerating over the past few decades) is a better explanation for Trump than overt racism (something that has been mostly in abatement for the past few decades.)

This post is interesting to me because it's an exact mirror of liberal accusations of contemporary conservatism. ("Post-truth" is the relevant search term for this variety of discourse, although in the aughts it would have been "reality-based community.") It seems everyone wants to be the lone voice of reality standing against the postmodernist hordes, regardless of which side of which decade's culture war is drafted to play which role.

Now, this doesn't mean that this isn't a real phenomenon. (Consider two political parties accusing each other of corruption - both can be correct.) The widespread appeal of this discourse itself, though, implies that ordinary bad faith, lying, and confusion may play a greater role than a total normative eclipse of Truth. (The corrupt country where everybody accuses each other of corruption still hews to some idea of that corruption being bad; if it weren't, they wouldn't call it corruption but taxes, rent, profits, or other legitimating term.) In particular I think the kind of evidence you point to here - "X says Y, I calmly explained that not-Y, X must be a post-truth post-modernist" - is a conclusion you see across a wide variety of this kind of discourse and is almost always wrong, and "that ways lies madness" conclusion if there is one.

[ecosophia]

I considered that possibility, of course, but I really think something beyond ordinary bad faith, lying, and confusion is involved here. Ordinary bad faith and lying are goal-directed -- people use them to try to achieve something -- and ordinary confusion is usually amenable to the repeated impacts of reality, e.g., "Something must be wrong, I keep getting whacked upside the head."

The really odd thing about the state of mind I've discussed here is that it's so self-defeating. The Democrats could have neutralized Trump easily, and would be headed for a landslide victory this year; all they had to do is listen to the voters and figure out why so many people who voted for Obama in 2008 turned around and voted for Trump in 2016, and then craft an appeal to them. Instead, their behavior has been the single most important incentive driving people into Trump's arms. For four years now I've watched former liberals look at what the Democrats have been doing and decide that, as little as they like Trump, he's better than what the other side has to offer. "Vote Republican -- They've Got Their Problems But The Other Side Is Insane" is a sentiment I've been hearing over and over again.

The other point that I tried to make here, which I don't think you caught, is that the problem isn't party-based, it's class-based. Just at the moment, a very large sector of the well-to-do are backing the Democrats, because the Republicans no longer support what used to be the bipartisan consensus that benefited the middle class at the expense of the working class. I suspect working-class Democrats are much more in touch with what's actually happening.

[robertmathiesen]

I think you're quite right about the explanation, JMG! and that it will not end well. "Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad." also

[ecosophia]

That quote has occurred to me more than once...

[(Anonymous)]

Funny how these people have now invested all their hopes in creepy senile Biden, an unlikely saviour who has a serious rape allegation against him but the #metoo crowd conveniently ignore that.

I was talking to some Karens about Trump. They hate him but their main problem with him is the way he speaks.

"He speaks like a child"
"He can't use long words"

They loved Obama's flowery speeches in contrast. Funny how it's never about their actions, their whole focus is on who is the best smooth talker, as if that's the most important thing. 24 hour news channels have a lot to answer for.

[ecosophia]

Yeah, watching #BelieveAllWomen suddenly give way to #BelieveJoeBiden was practically enough to give you whiplash. As for the Karenocracy, I wonder if that's another aspect of the huge class dynamic at work in the present situation: i.e., if what they're saying works out to "He doesn't talk like a member of our class, he talks like a prole..."

Yes indeed.

[(Anonymous)]

Due to growing up with a neurotic mom, I've had these ideas in the back of my mind for years. I keep waiting for a "let them eat cake" moment that'll jolt people out of the trance, but nothing does it. Some kind of shock will happen and I'll think "Is this it? Will this do it?" but so far none of these things has shaken people awake. I remember in high school English we had to write one sentence about ourselves, and I wrote "I am the person who shivers in the dark as zombies pass by." But I didn't mean zombies; I meant everyone around. It's eerie.

Re: Yes indeed.

[ecosophia]

I don't think a shock will do it. I'm not sure what will.

[violetcabra]

An excellent and eerie point! From my experiences in suburban Massachusetts I would guess that about 20% of the well-to-do are mad in the way you describe. Another 60% go along with the crazed 20% while having personal reservations, and the last 20% have various degrees of hostility to the whole sweeping madness.

It's very eerie to wonder how the body count will tally and the endgame play out. If my estimate is correct, we're talking about approximately 4% of the population of the United States having descended into total madness or about 13 million people. What does a society do with that many people who have lost their minds?

[ecosophia]

I'm glad to hear it's only 20%. A society can cope with that. As for what will happen to them, I have only anecdotal evidence to go by, but I've heard now from three different people who say they know people on the left who are planning on laying in a stock of vodka and sleeping pills on election night in case things don't go the way they want. Depending on how widespread that sentiment becomes, the problem may take care of itself. Ghoulish, but such things happen...

[open_space]

I had a minor mental breakdown that lasted for about a year when suddenly it became really clear that my mind was not me (yes, meditation can be overdone, quite easily in fact. Do not recommend!) and that the things that I had put there would fight back to stay there. Add to that an unhealthy habit of smoking weed and realizing that it makes you much more sensible to omens and divination and I almost popped. I hopped that served to clear some karma at least!

Realizing that what you thought real is not can be quite terrifying, I assume that is why their minds somewhat protects them to not see it. The problem is that what their minds are latching to is nothing but hot air sold as truth because there are interests involved that sustain that reality. I wrote a small thing on which I argue that since a big chunk of humanity has lost touch with Nature, the needs and experiences that Nature provides were not met and found escape in what I called the cyber-nature, the surrogate equivalent of what Life around them provides: awe, sustain, connectedness, respect, etc in debased ways. The problem with that is that you are attaching to something which is not fulfilling to those needs because it only emulates them, as you have argued before. If people are too deep into the cyber-nature everything inside them goes backwards and spills into their psyche and I argue that is what is behind the strong sense of attachment to this delusional type of thinking. To them, it’s their lives and environments that are collapsing in the same way that, say, for a shaman his world collapsed when his forests was destroyed.

If the situation around them slowly starts showing that their reality is not what they think (or scream) it is, on top of being worn down by the self imposed lockdown, because that side of the spectrum is the one that bought it to the extreme. Ooof. Have you noticed how many people on the internet fantasize with suicide and depression memes? And they laugh hard at them. If there is anyone in Zeta Reticuli, they will wonder if we decided to built a planetary sized popcorn machine.

[ecosophia]

Open_Space, thanks for this. That makes a great deal of sense. Getting attached to a simulacrum of nature created by people is extremely risky, of course, because of the positive feedback: the people who are dependent on faux-nature are also creating faux-nature, either directly in their work hours or indirectly by choices that influence the market and are used as guidance by those who create faux-nature, and so a minor imbalance can blow up into mass psychosis with frightening ease.

[kevintaylorburgess]

I have to deal with the overly privileged regularly, and I think there's another issue which helps to extend this into madnessland: the pervasive notion that when reality fails to do what you want it to, it's only because you didn't believe it enough. Of course this means that even entertaining the possibility you might be wrong about something is akin to failing on it, and once you go there it's very, very hard to be able to think about anything....

[ecosophia]

I forget who it was that called that the Christian Science Fallacy: Belief A is true, and if your experiences contradict it, that shows that you didn't believe hard enough that Belief A is true. It does indeed make thinking hard!

I want election week off work

[(Anonymous)]

I want to take that whole week around the election off of work. I work in a mostly liberal progressive environment and I remember all the people who called in sick and just acted crazy at work the day after the election in 2016. I want to avoid the inevitable meltdowns.

Turquoise Squamous Octopus

Re: I want election week off work

[ecosophia]

I'm going to make sure my wife and I have plenty of food in the pantry and no errands to run for that week, with that in mind -- I work from home, but I have no idea just how bizarre things might get.

[kevintaylorburgess]

Suddenly the way that the privileged can insist that a working class neighbourhood where half the people are minorities is full of unrepentent segregationists while their lilly-white suburb is a bastion of tolerance makes sense: they've decided it is so, and mere reality won't get in the way of that!

[ecosophia]

Exactly. "It's true because we say it's true!"

[(Anonymous)]

Exhibit A:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/08/10/excellent-book-recommendations/

[ecosophia]

That's a good example, because it catches both the surreal mental state and the constant simmering state of rage at a universe that fails to cater to their idea of what they should do. It's a miserable way to live, and yet what can you do?

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

[(Anonymous)]

Am just reading Paul Levy on Wetiko:
***
"In essence, genuine predators, 'full blown' wetikos (which can be an individual person or the 'person' of a corporation), are not in touch with their own humanity and therefore cannot see the humanity in others."

and

"Wetiko has its origin in the imagining and image-making psyche."
***

Been seeing a lot of cognitive dissonance recently and also doublethink.
Wetikos, Archons, madness brought on by cognitive dissonance or something else?
It feels like something major is happening as it is reflected in so many different areas of society.

I'm having to do more work to maintain dynamic equilibrium - and avoiding people, not for fear of disease, but because there seems to be 'madness in the air'. Saw a story earlier about some guy haranguing a bloke pushing a pram about not wearing a mask - guy just walked over, said 'don't you start on at me' and promptly floored the bloke in the mask, and then just walked off.

You mentioned a while back about a grand mutation at the end of the year(?)... plenty of time for things to get even weirder then?
[earthworm]

Re: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

[ecosophia]

I'm turning back to Giambattista Vico, who argued that societies rise out of a "barbarism of sense" in which raw sensory reality overwhelms the thinking mind, and sink back into a "barbarism of reflection" in which the thinking mind erases the last connection to raw sensory reality. He has a point...

A nation with no carry

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t see anything especially odd about the behavior you describe. People who have concepts fixed in their heads of what is true in their heart of hearts routinely and obstinately cling to their treasured concepts over reality and still remain capable of functioning as a dangerous enemy.

That is why Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a woman?” is so famous, and had so little effect at the time. The concept of Southern Womanhood and the delicate flowery qualities of artificially fashioned femininity were too well fixed in the minds of those opposed to the abolition of slavery for them to even see the laughable lie at the heart of their dearly-beloved ideal.

They were not mad. They were self-interested to the point of stupid blindness, but they were fully able to load a rifle and rationally fight the humanitarian tide in the halls of justice, legislation and the field of battle. And they continued long into the 20th century to fight the same fight on ever more unstable and sinking ground. Not until gay marriage became the law of the land did they know how very lost was their cause; yet they are still fighting to this day. Are they all mad or just of one-pointed mind? If it is madness to hold loyally to an ideal, how many patriots, oil-based capitalists and partisans are not mad? As for being self-interested, tell me who is not?

The Sufis say that nearly everybody is going around drunk. To be sober and know the truth is a difficult, lonely place to live. That is one of the meanings of the tale about the ‘changed waters’ cited elsewhere by a commenter. If some people are drunk on notions of the proper subordinate place for women and colored people to be locked down into and some are drunk on the idea that poor people are racist scum whose gonna volunteer to take away their ideal-liquor bottles? There’s no more Carry Nation to take an axe to our nation.

Surely you are not expecting to use Reason to change people’s minds? Reason is a whore to self-interest. You can try to pry people off their Ideal pedestals with crowbars of religion, bribe them off the plinth with money and status, or embroil the lot in a hot killing war that forces them to rely on their hated rivals for sheer survival. You can use drugs or dance or juicy dirty jokes or books and movies, plays and fervid imaginations, even prayer. But it is most unreasonable of you to expect to move people with the dry melba toast of Reason.

Re: A nation with no carry

[ecosophia]

Where did you get the idea that I was expecting to use reasoning for that purpose? You might consider looking up the word "occultist" someday... ;-)

sickness of the soul or spirit

[(Anonymous)]

Another from Levy:
***
Wetiko/malignant egophrenia is a 'psychosis' in the true sense of the word as being a 'sickness of the soul or spirit'.

"Though calling it by different names, Forbes and I are both pointing at the same illness of the psyche, soul and spirit that has been at the root of humanity's inhumanity to itself."
***

The madness really seems like a thing; if Sheldrake's morphic fields and resonance are a thing too, then it is going to take some effort to wade through this soup.

JMG you mentioned a while back about changing your practices (for the times?) - anyone else finding their practices need to be adapted recently?

Re: sickness of the soul or spirit

[ecosophia]

In my case, it wasn't a change for the times, it was a change to lay the necessary tracks in space so that readers and students of a forthcoming book would have an easier time of it. Daily banishing, though, is even more crucial now than usual!

Any Functioning Adult

[(Anonymous)]

I'm very curious to see the outcome of this election, and am also very curious to read your upcoming Libra Ingress chart for Washington D.C. based on your comments in this week's Magic Monday. I really just don't know what to make of this election; I know polls were off in 2016, but they weren't as insanely off as conventional wisdom now says. If the polls of today were to be at all believed, even if they were as off as they were in 2016, you would have to think an election held today would lead to a Trump loss.

I just don't know if I should trust that in the least, though. It doesn't feel quite right. On the other hand, I live in a very blue city on the West Coast and my impression is that people hate Trump and have largely gone along with the ever-crazier critical theory/identity politics of the left. I feel somewhat crazy because I've been some version of a liberal basically all my life and I'm wondering how the frack we got to the point where it's the left advocating censorship, humorlessness, incredibly restrictive views on sex (see the Alex Morse dust up of late), and just a general dispirited moroseness and absolutely miserable outlook on life and the world. My god, we used to mock the conservatives for that! Now it's the expectation for the left and its the conservatives, more and more, that have a sense of humor--at least, if you're not so driven by TDS that you can actually see the ways in which Trump is often pretty funny.

But I don't hear this view much. That said, I wouldn't state it myself to most people in my life. I admit it--it feels too risky. (Though I avoid lying about what I think, either--mostly I just try to stay as noncommittal as possible.)

That makes me wonder if the shy Trump voter theory might be real for 2020. I don't know if there's much evidence it was very real in 2016, but perhaps we've gone so far around the bend at this point, it is for 2020. Or perhaps the polls are useless because they have the turnout model all wrong, and there are going to be a lot more Trump voters coming out than they expect. I don't know.

One interesting thing I've noticed, though. Here in this very blue city, I have seen I believe all of two Biden lawn signs. I don't know if that really means much, to be honest; people I know who work in campaigning love to mock lawn signs and the notion that they mean anything. But there are BLM signs everywhere--they probably doubled or tripled nearly overnight during the onset of the George Floyd protests--so it's not that no one puts up signs. Which, on that note, one sign I have seen a little more of lately (granted, still only a handful, but so far more than Biden signs) is "Any Functioning Adult 2020."

It's a little amusing, I admit, but it feels fascinating in one of those Freudian ways. These are newer signs, so far as I can tell, so they were put up after it was clear Biden would be the nominee, not during the heat of the primaries. At that point, they make more sense as a humorous commentary for those who hate Trump and think he's . . . well, a non-functioning adult, and that any of the primary candidates would be a better replacement. After the nominee is decided? Well then, not only can you apparently not bring yourself to put up a Biden sign, but you put up one that . . . uh . . . shall we say, could perhaps also serve as a bit of inadvertent commentary on Biden's clear cognitive decline? I mean, it all seems a little on the nose. Is that really the smartest meme to put out there right now?

It almost feels like a tacit (not that I think it's at all purposeful) admission that there is no functioning adult in the running, at least if you hate Trump and think of him as incompetent.

All in all, my takeaway is that this election on both sides is 100% about Trump, that nearly no one is excited about Biden, that the left has gone off the deep end on critical theory to their detriment, and that I can't see how this could possibly wind up in a Biden election. But who knows? I feel like I've lost all political mooring these days, so perhaps the country will surprise me. It's part of why I'm so interested to see what happens November 3rd. Maybe it'll help clarify what the heck is going on in America.

Re: Any Functioning Adult

[ecosophia]

I've seen one of the "Any Functioning Adult" signs in Providence, RI, and I have yet to see a Biden sign or bumper sticker anywhere. The election will likely clarify things quite a bit; for what it's worth, I expect to have the US Libra ingress up later today.

[(Anonymous)]

I placed a small bet on Trump to win. I don't make the mistake of listening to pollsters now. I think I will be making some easy money in November.

[peter_van_erp]

I made that bet two years ago, and doubled it last summer. I would double it again if I could go to church, but the COVID has kept me from the mark.

[(Anonymous)]

The Democrats do look cursed. Joe Biden is almost senile, Kamala Harris got zero support in the primaries and isn't a "real" African-American, Bill Clinton and Hunter Biden adress the Dem convention, they want to sue and disband the NRA, they still deny Antifa even exists, and by banning QAnon they make everyone talk about it...

I never seen such an inept campaign. Can they even pull off vote fraud at this point?

Oh, and that covid thing.

TIDLÖSA

[(Anonymous)]

The results of the election will clarify nothing except that the democratic process in the United States is broken beyond repair. Regardless of which candidate wins, the losing side won't accept the results, and with good reason.

The anguished meltdown of our nation's 200+ year experiment in democracy will continue.

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...."

[syfen]

Are you also noticing how many people aren't voting for a candidate or ideology, but against the other candidate or ideology?

May this fevered maddess break soon...

Regards,

Syfen

[(Anonymous)]

Can you point me to the debate with you and Mr. Hughes? I'd be interested in reading it. Was it on Magic Monday, or elsewhere?

[ecosophia]

Here you go.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you-I have a recent example of just this kind of madness: I work in an organization with a very deep 'social justice' perspective. It's a sort of typical regional social service agency. In a recent meeting (attendance not required but encouraged) focused on how our organiztion can increase equity and respond to recent Black Lives Matter events, our assistant director-so someone who manages and leads the organization-stated "I've come to see that white supremacy is the foundation of this county-so I'm hoping for a revolution. Hopefully not a violent one...". I was shocked that they would say such a thing, and also at the ignorance of imagining that any revolution would not be violent (at least for someone!). I didn't challenge the remark since to do so seemed dangerous. Needless to say, I'm plotting my escape... I've voted democratic or green in every national election for the past 40 years, and won't be doing so this time.

[(Anonymous)]

A data point to consider. I know quite a few people who fit into the demographic you're describing, and I would say that, for the post part, I don't think they're as delusional as you make them out to be. What I think is that they actually live so much in a bubble that they genuinely have no exposure to a well-made and thoughtful counter-argument. I'd like to think that if they actually hear one and have a chance to think about it, they would. But then, I've been disappointed before. I think a huge part of this is the internet and social media upping people's anxiety and reactivity to new levels. In a calm and relaxed setting, in person, in a small group or one-on-one, people can be surprisingly open minded and reasonable. It's just that such situations are increasingly rare, and people spending all their time online is more normal.

[lincoln_lynx]

Presenting counter-arguments isn't enough. The are programmed to reject alternative sources and perspectives by the media. Herd mentality is involved as well. If all your friends hate Orange Man and you don't then you are now a outcast.

Karl Rove

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if there is something like a Karl Rove effect in play here - "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality- judiciously, as you will— we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."

That was considered the height of hubris at the time, among left leaning people. But in the spirit of "what you hate you emulate", did the liberal left absorb this as some kind of spell?

Do the denizens of the Empire Of Progress believe that they are history's actors and the masses are left to simply study what they do and try and keep up?

Darren

Re: Karl Rove

[ecosophia]

I've brooded over that more than once, and it's one of the things that has convinced me that we're dealing with the mental dysfunction of a class, not a party. Membership in the professional-managerial class seems to be the common thread here.

[(Anonymous)]

Every time I read about the PMC's behavior over the past four or five years (particularly in relation to Trump) my mind inevitably comes back to the last four lines of this Bertolt Brecht poem:


The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler
for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! Brecht knew what he was talking about, too.

Adjacent Behaviors and Cars

[(Anonymous)]

Another adjacent philosophy to creating your own reality is the "blank slate" view of children. If your child is a blank slate, then you can "nurture" them into being whatever you want them to be.

I think this also comes into play with gender equality for Boomer women. Arguably this was the first generation for the equality experiment, and sometimes that was misinterpreted by women and men as putting women above reproach.

Finally, I first encountered this level of cognitive dissonance bordering on madness in regards to American community infrastructure being built for cars rather than humans. Our conception of the world is shaped by the infrastructure we are born into, and I am too young to remember what America was like before auto and tire companies bought up public transit systems and shut them down.

Thus, as a young person when I pointed out that there are cities in Europe and Asia where most people get around via infrastructure not involving cars, and autos are just a side helping of urban transit allowing for the rich to flex their toys, I'd get that thousand-mile empty stare. Then they'd address a straw man, as if I'd instead claimed "You are not allowed to get anywhere" and so they'd reply "Well, I might have to get somewhere, so I need a car."

Re: Adjacent Behaviors and Cars

[kevintaylorburgess]

People get really weird if you question the Great God Automobile. Seriously, I think that people worship the things, and it's truly, truly bizarre....

Madness and fishing nets

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this! I'm living in Germany and it's still some time the next elections, but I notice an increasing madness around me, too. In fact, in the wake of the subject that shall not be named, this has reached new highs that I admit have become difficult to bear for me. It's become hard to keep the bullshit-filters working. This madness seems to spill over into much more areas of society and I begin to notice the pressure of the social grid which seems serve more and more like a fishing net than anything else. Frightening. Maybe start to cut the last ties and sail full speed ahead (if I knew the direction...), which is - as I have already written - difficult without any sign tentacled underground to rely on...

Cheers,
Nachtgurke

Re: Madness and fishing nets

[booklover1973]

I have had more or less the same experience. Mostly, I get by, but the craziness around us made some strong banishings necessary. I know people whose fear of the coronavirus is so high that friendships are neglected, and in the media there are reports of brawls between people who don't wear masks and other persons. The big problem seems to me to be that there is no official idea how to get out of the pandemic and back to a normal way of life.