The scene of our English teacher giving us a passage from a book and asking us to hyper analyze it is all too familiar. “The curtains are blue,” we read as our well-intentioned English teacher prods us into thinking about “why it’s blue”, “what does the blue reveal about the character” or “how the curtains’ blueness reflects the existential dread of the human condition.” We are all guilty of laughing with our friends and thinking to ourselves it’s not that deep, bro, failing to consider, what if it is that deep?
Of course, the curtains might just be blue. However, if we take everything at face value we fail to see the complexities and “deepness” that do exist. For example, we at The Tower believe that if we view George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as just a fun book about pigs and horses and fail to recognize the deeper political and social symbolism, we lose out on perhaps one of the greatest commentaries on the reality of revolution.
This seemingly trivial problem outlines a much broader societal issue that can be observed on both local and national levels. Although our English teachers may force us to find deeper meanings within literature, we are not forced to find deeper meanings in the occurrences of our daily lives. In turn, we’ve rejected critically analyzing the issues we see in our community or on the news, leading to a prevailing sense of apathy. This claim is not just observable, but it can be extrapolated from the declining reading frequency per the National Endowment for the Arts and a growing distrust in science and experts per the Pew Research Center, two indicators that require us to engage thoughtfully and question the world around us. Not just literary metaphors, but we have begun to consider real-world problems as being “not that deep.”
Our local school board is the most relevant demonstration of this phenomenon. When we hear them arguing and failing to help our students, we dismiss these concerns as we did the blue curtains, normalizing their shortcomings as we fail to see the greater implications that their inaction has despite us not being directly affected. This mindset creates a negative feedback loop: When we reduce complex problems to surface-level inconveniences, we rationalize their existence rather than addressing their root causes. This, in turn, allows us to then feel it acceptable to reject the same critical analysis that was needed earlier—for future situations. We at the Tower believe this act of rationalizing negative practices is not only harmful to ourselves, but to society, as we have a civic responsibility to engage critically with the world around us.
This experience is not novel. The term hypernormalisation was coined in 2005 and denotes the inability for one to accept the status quo as anything other than the sole reality. The lack of critical analysis and willingness to consider the deeper meaning behind issues is a major contributor to hypernormalisation. Because we take worldly issues at surface value, we strip them of their greater implications, reducing complex problems to mere background noise. By dismissing these concerns and becoming complicit with flawed systems, we ignore the far-reaching consequences they may carry. We at the Tower believe this mindset is not just apathetic—it’s ignorant and irresponsible. When we fail to analyze the deeper meanings behind social, political or community issues, we deny ourselves the opportunity to understand their true impact, inadvertently allowing these problems to grow unchecked.
Our world is riddled with problems, but when we normalize them, they seem trivial and unimportant. We at the Tower believe it is imperative that we look deeper into all aspects of our lives, giving them the time and energy they deserve and not dismiss them as insignificant details. This issue does not discriminate on political, social, or religious lines, rather all of us have been affected in some way by hypernormalisation. We at the Tower urge you to educate and organize yourselves. Find an issue in the community or in the world that speaks to you and work toward a solution instead of casting that issue aside. After all, it really is that deep, bro.
