Article: On not returning to normal

The New York Times had an interesting article (part of its forum The Stone, which discusses philosophy issues) a few days ago. It used the example of 9-11-01 to talk about resilience & "returning to normal" after a catastrophic event or emergency -- including the questions of whether that's possible, or even desirable.

As I read it (of course), I kept thinking about how so much of what was being said could apply to life after the cataclysm of pregnancy loss, too. Well-meaning family members, friends & coworkers often seem to want nothing more than to see us get "back to normal" -- when most of us know that there is no such thing as "normal" anymore, & that we have been forever changed by our experiences -- sometimes more or less visibly than others.

Political theorists, lawyers and policy-makers sometimes assume that responses to emergency should — morally should — aim at a speedy return to a “normal” that predated the emergency. This is implicit in the metaphor of resilience often used by officials for emergency response. “Resilience” suggests that the preferred aftermath of an emergency is quickly regaining one’s former shape, bouncing back. Presumably it is possible to bounce back with a few permanent bumps or scars, but at the limit we might speak of an invisible mending ideal of emergency response: when the response is genuinely successful, the effects of the emergency entirely disappear: before and after are indistinguishable...

Aiming simply to return to a former normality can have an unwelcome complacency about it, sometimes a defiant complacency. A determination to go on exactly as before —just to spite an enemy or attacker or simply a critic — is a recognizable human response to attack, enmity or criticism. Perhaps it also displays a kind of resilience. But unless continuity has a significant value of its own, the determination to go on exactly as before may have little to be said for it. Emergencies may better be seen as occasions for fresh starts and rethinking. Because they take life and make death vivid for those who survive emergencies, they properly prompt people to appraise lives that are nearly cut short. ...

September 11 caused many people to take stock of their lives, and many governments to reappraise their priorities in foreign policy. Not every such reappraisal has led to better lives or better policies. But there is something important about the opportunity that emergency offers for not going on in the same old way. For us to break from our past because of an emergency is not at all for us to be broken by an emergency...

What do you think? Read the full article here.