The Covid-19 pandemic upended most people’s normal routines around the world in 2020. Many column inches have been devoted to ‘the new normal.’ What will ‘normal’ look like in a week, a month, or a year? When government rules change every other week, the question is an ever-shifting goalpost. Comments can age rapidly and make the author look silly, even a few days later.
At the moment ‘normal’ may, depending on your location, might include a lockdown, home-working, home-schooling, a lack of meaningful socialising, an inability to travel and/or other restrictions. From the ‘start’ of 2021 it is impossible to say very much about how the year will pan out. One thing is for sure - it will be another rollercoaster, with plenty of ‘new normals’ to take in along the way.
But what makes something ‘normal’ anyway? As an adjective in everyday use ‘normal’ means ‘conforming to a standard, usual, typical or expected situation,’ whether the topic is behaviour, height, blood pressure or any other facet of the world around us. In mathematics, ‘normal’ is defined as perpendicular to a tangent line or curve. In statistics the ‘normal’ distribution describes a probability distribution that is symmetrical around the mean.
We can define ‘normal’ behaviour in other ways too. One online comment that stuck out to me while I was reading around this topic defined it as ‘...the most popular form of weird.’ Peeking beneath this comment’s tongue-in-cheek exterior, there is a grain of truth. Everyone deviates from ‘normal’ behaviour to some extent, but on average we can identify an expected ‘mean’ behaviour. A normal distribution of normality, if you will.
Of course, ‘the most popular form of weird’ varies enormously across different cultures and has changed throughout the ages. In the 19th Century it was common to spit in public across much of Europe. In 2021, you might be arrested or fined. In Japan blowing your nose is bad manners, while not doing so in much of rest of the world would be equally unusual. Hand gestures are a total minefield. A thumbs up, often a positive signal or greeting, can mean exactly the opposite in parts of the Middle East. An OK sign might be used by an Italian show their appreciation of a meal or by an American to indicate all is well. In Brazil the same signal is very rude, as Richard Nixon found out during a trip when he was US Vice President in the 1950s.
Different generations also have their own views of what is ‘normal.’ This is often a conscious decision to deviate from whatever norms have come before, be it the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, our preferred foods or entertainment, even the way we communicate. Previously dominated by ‘moody teenagers,’ digital communications and social platforms are now, due to Covid-19, part of all of our lives.
So ‘normal’ varies across different times, places and subsets of the population. This shows that ‘normal’ can change, most often without a grand plan or strategy. So... do we want to change ‘normal’ and, if so, how? Can we? Should we?
A further look in the comments section underneath a cross-section of news articles indicates that the answer to the above question is often ‘Yes.’ There is a wide-ranging dissatisfaction with our current (and previous) normalities. A recurring comment is ‘Normal is what led to this in the first place,’ where this is variously Covid-19, climate change, populism, adversarial politics, childhood obesity, unhealthy work practices and all manner of other modern phenomena.
The clear implication of such comments is that we need to ‘do something’ about normality, which otherwise will continue to lead us up the wrong path. Indeed, this sentiment now seems to be resonating with national governments, several of which have recently pledged to ‘build back better.’ This doesn’t mean physically re-building towns and cities with cement and concrete, but restructuring how societies work for people and the planet. There is finally a recognition that, rather than green technologies costing money, they provide jobs (and tax receipts). This could offer a powerful economic vaccine against the worst of Covid-19’s economic symptoms. Take China, the first country to suffer the effects of Covid-19 and one of the biggest users of coal in history. It has committed to net zero CO2 emissions by 2060. The EU will cut emissions by 40% by 2030. The early days of the Biden Administration will see the US rejoin the Paris Accord.
In late 2020, major cement producers lined up to pledge to hit stringent emissions targets, many as part of the NYC Climate Week. These companies are redefining the cement sector’s ‘normal,’ shaping our sector for the years ahead. Hopefully many more will add their names in 2021. Global Cement, for its part, will continue to emphasise sustainability, whatever ‘normality’ brings us next.
