Everyone’s Gone Mad, but it’s Business as Usual

Is it right to think about what images we should use for our posts next month, or what items I should use to make up my first January Favourites posts, while there’s so much craziness happening in the world?

Is it right to think about commerce when people are deprived of basic human rights like water, or when individuals are kept from seeing their families and coming home simply because of the God they pray to or the country they were born in.

I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and continue to devise campaigns that sell products that people may or may not need – they may need them to feel better about themselves or eliminate a flaw they feel takes away from their true beauty or true confidence, but at the end of the day, it’s a non-essential product. It’s not food, it’s not water, it’s not shelter.

How are we able to go on with our lives with so much injustice, inequality and inhumanity around us? How has this become a normal everyday thing? How is it business as usual?

People might be more likely to act on something unfair when it directly affects them or one of their kin. But I think by this time, it’s too late. Too much damage has been done and it’s a harder battle to win. We may find it harder to understand unless we’re directly affected, and therefore it might be harder to empathize.

Still, it seems bizarre to carry on as if nothing is wrong with the world. It seems helpless to feel that nothing can be done and that even if something is done, it might not be enough to make a difference or create positive change. It’s this fear of being unable to make a difference that is debilitating and stops us from changing this ‘new normal’ – or at least limits us in what we are willing to do to create change.

Maybe we can simply start by having conversations and becoming more well informed. Sharing our experiences and hearing other perspectives might help us realize we’re not alone in our feelings of discomfort towards this ‘new normal’. But will we act?

Even as I write this, I know tomorrow will be business as usual.

First written by be on madderandshade/wordpress on January 30, 2017: https://madderandshade.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/everyones-gone-mad-but-its-business-as-usual/

Reposted to this final madder and shade site in 2018