New Normal: We are officially wearing masks

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO AVOIDING THE NEW NORMAL

Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park. The continental drift between the North American and Eurasian Plates. Pic: CAVALHER

Being normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful. (Carl JUNG) [1]

Disruption threatens the continuity of our existence.

Our careers cannot continue their trajectories indifferent to disruption. Whatever the work we do, it is only valuable when it adds value to other people. Disruptions change the reality of other people too, therefore touches on what is valuable for them. Our work and careers must adapt to this new reality, or they become irrelevant. If your work is irrelevant to other people, it is less likely that it will produce income. Disruptions threaten the continuity of our existence.

Our families and friends cannot continue their trajectories indifferent to disruption. Our beloved ones have a life of their own, activities of their own, careers of their own — all of that is impacted by disruption. Suddenly, we have to face the reality of our family members in a radical way, meaning, inside our homes. The impact of disruption on them clashes with the impact of disruption on us and then disruption escalates. Disruptions threaten the continuity of our existence.

Our personalities cannot remain the same, indifferent to disruption. Perhaps because the trajectory of our careers have changed, or because the nature of our work has changed, or because we no longer have a job, or because our routines have changed, or because we do not have as much money as before, or because our beloved one’s situation has somehow changed — we can no longer remain the same person. We are forced to change the very characteristics of our personalities. We are forced to adapt. Disruptions threaten the continuity of our existence.

Insecurity, fear, panic, angst — or maybe some other ghosts — invade our lives and realities. You may have felt some of them. I have. We may try to behave, but we know they are there. We use or develop coping mechanisms, trying to ensure — oh boy! — our lives keep on track. They won’t. We know that. We just postpone admitting it. But it will come, inevitably. Disruptions threaten the continuity of our existence.

These are only the interactions of disruption with the microcosm of our personal lives. The major disruption encompasses the society as whole, the economy, politics. It is probably permanent. It could escalate. It could maximize into total collapse. The fact is we simply don't know. That threatens the continuity of our existence even more.

Why is continuity so vital for us?

Continuity is an absolute need for our egos.

No, the ego is not necessarily this monstrous assembly of vanity, pride and selfishness some spiritualists insist it is. This is just the worst version of the ego.  — Theme for a soon-to-be-launched article. Subscribe! :D

The ego is a structure of the psyche indispensable for consciousness development. In a way, the ego is consciousness, because this is where everything that is conscious for anyone ends up getting to. [2] It doesn’t matter if you are a pervert or a Bodhisattva, the ego is you, meaning it is the part of yourself which you are already aware of.

The ego is a non-coherent complex of characteristics you already know how to manage and associate with the concept of being “yourself”. The ego is the net of relationships you believe to have. The ego is the reality you believe to dwell in. The ego is the story of your life, from the perspective of consciousness. The ego is the consciousness you have built up to now.

The ego is continuity.

Disruption threatens continuity. Disruption threatens our egos. Disruption threatens our existence. 

We feel disruption threatens our existence because deep down our instincts trigger the alarm: if reality as we know it is discontinued, our egos are discontinued — our existence is threatened. Panic is now on the horizon.

There is a Greater-than-ourselves part of us, the Self (as Carl JUNG says), the 4D Self (as I say). It is to this part of ourselves that we refer to when we say “I want to be part of something larger than myself”. Well you already are. You just have to take part.

But the problem is that, every time we want to be part of something greater-than-ourselves, it is indeed greater-than-ourselves — meaning, disruption. Crisis is the word we use to describe the action of the Greater-than-ourselves Forces, Transcendental Forces, that arise and change everything forcefully.

This is what is happening now. In Theological terms, we are looking at the actions of God.

In the face of all the difficult facts and emotions, we want to go back to normal, even if this is a new normal. The new normal is an inevitable goal because it is really hard to live in continuous change, I admit that. We will use that to escape the feeling of having our existence threatened.

However, it is, in fact, the other way around. We think that, in order to exist, we need to preserve ourselves. That is not true. If we want to fully exist the way we are, if we want to be ourselves out in the open, we will have to resist the new normal.

Pic: CAVALHER

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NORMAL AS A MORAL STANDARD

Normality is not simply the picture of the most frequent data in statistics. Normality easily becomes morality. Have you ever felt an awkwardness in the environment, suddenly realizing that someone else, or everyone around sees you as… let’s say… different? Or perhaps, if you are one of these people who have the immense privilege of ticking all the boxes of our society’s stereotypes, have you ever felt an awkwardness in the environment when someone… let’s say… different entered the room?

Abnormality easily becomes bad, wrong, immoral — this is one of the key factors preventing true change from happening.

Morality is the temptation to declare that “this is right, the opposite is wrong”. This is the fastest way towards “I am right, and they are wrong”, because, in the end, who thinks of themselves as the wrong ones?

Well, all of us should. After all, how many times in your life have you discovered that you were, in fact, wrong? In the end, whatever convictions we have, will, in time, be surpassed by higher truths. Therefore, we are always wrong.

That is why I prefer to take the shortcut and accept that I am always wrong, unfinished, imperfect. My preference may seem the obvious, even the ‘elevated’ thing to say. But these things are generally rhetorical remarks. We behave as if we were right all the time. Sometimes I have to push really hard to not do so. It is addictive.

As long as the rhetoric prevails though, we need morality to emphasize normality. This way, not only do we get to continue to have the expected and same average characteristics and behave accordingly (normality), but we can also rest assured that the values we adopted are universally and eternally good, therefore you are invariably right (morality), if you follow them. "Universally and eternally" are a whole other level of continuity.

The problem with morals is its inherent dilemma.

Morality often goes beyond simply discouraging ‘wrong’ ways to behave, mainly towards others. It often sinks into dictating that there are wrong ways to be. Morality implies that there are some bad things that, if found inside oneself or in one’s acts, it makes them a bad person. We could exclaim rhetorically "Oh! It's not necessarily like that!" But the fact is that very frequently we see "good people" as "superior", therefore "bad people" are "inferior". It is either that or we move on to accept that actions considered to be good and those considered to be bad are all the same. Weirdly enough, good and bad actions are simply human actions.

However, it is not considered moral to declare oneself "superior to others", although this type of immorality is frequent. This is even considered a demonstration of insecurity. But, if you do follow morality, it backfires, creating this undermining conviction of being "superior to others". 

Morality's inherent dilemma is that its outcome is immoral: you secretly — or not so much — are certain that you are superior to others.

Normality's inherent dilemma is that its outcome is abnormality. And since the normal gets confused with the moral, the abnormal easily becomes the immoral.

The association of normality with morality seriously threatens our capacity to exist the way we are, because all of our characteristics considered to be abnormal are now also seen as immoral and must be repressed.

Now, if normality does that, imagine what hypernormalisation does.

State Historical Museum. Moscow. Russia. Pic: CAVALHER

HYPERNORMALISATION

In the beginning of 2017 I had a lucid 5D dream: I was awake inside the dream.

I was in an inhumane prison. It seemed to be a clandestine prison, since there were no cells. The other prisoners and I were all together on a kind of subterranean, dark and dirty floor of a building. Our naked bodies were covered in dirt. We were tortured from time to time, living in permanent terror. We even avoided moving, afraid of the consequences. Most of the time, we communicated through our eyes only. The intention of those in charge was to subdue us, breaking our spirits and our humanity.

One day they forced us into humiliation. They took us outside, naked, dirty and stinky. When we emerged on the surface, we were at Wall Street, facing Broad Street, in New York. People were there, extremely well dressed, walking elegantly, some of them using their smartphones. Only rarely did they look at us, but even then they just continued doing whatever they were doing. Life carried on. It was normal.

[The dream continued...]

The world is now hypernormal: normality has replaced reality.

This idea struck me in the face back in 2018 when I watched Hypernormalisation (2016), a documentary film by Adam Curtis. Interviewed by Russel Brand, Curtis described people's perception of the reality in the collapsing USSR and the scenario out of which the word hypernormalisation emerged: 

“Everyone knew everything was not right. They knew that those in control had no control. They knew that those running the economy were not in control, that everything was corrupt and often completely fake because the leaders were pretending that they were in control. Everybody knew this and the leaders knew that everybody knew this. But nobody did anything about it because there was nothing else. It was normal.”

Hypernormalisation has not collapsed with the USSR. Much to the contrary, it is now interwoven into the very fabric of our worldview, the tone of our social interaction and our ultimate argument in conversations: it is normal.

Hypernormalisation is the replacement of facts by fake narratives carefully engineered to manage the perception of reality and create the underlying sense of normality. In these narratives, absurd facts are coherently presented as normal — almost obvious, since there is no alternative. On the other hand, facts that could disturb normality are completely distorted to fit the fake narratives, or simply swallowed by them and disappear. History has been turned into a story.

Perception management is the scariest element of hypernormalisation. Our minds are being invaded and driven. Reality collapses due to the immense weight of fake narratives coming from all sides. If governments, prestigious institutions and people, as well as the press, are all broadcasting these fake narratives, they must be true. Surely, they would never dare lie to the public. This way, we do not  need to worry about these absurd facts, since they are normal — hypernormal — and can go back to our normal lives.

That's why violent protests are unacceptable, but violence against black people is hypernormal.

That is why the American student loan debt of USD 1.56 trillion in 2019 is hypernormal, particularly when compared to the USD 6.4 trillion spent by the USA in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, also hypernormal.

That's why the 0.1% richest people making 196 times as much as the 90% lowest paid is hypernormal.

Facts like these easily pop out in conversations around dinner tables in social events, as perfectly hypernormal things.

Not anymore.

Covid-19 has outdated all of them and taken hypernormalisation to a whole new level. Craziness has gotten a little off limits and requires a new hypernormal.

In his article The Coronation, Charles Eisenstein lists a series of absurd facts that have become normal: “the authorities tell us that some social distancing may need to continue indefinitely, [...] The same goes for the other changes happening around the coronavirus epidemic. Some commentators have observed how it plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control. A frightened public accepts abridgments of civil liberties that are otherwise hard to justify, such as the tracking of everyone’s movements at all times, forcible medical treatment, involuntary quarantine, restrictions on travel and the freedom of assembly, censorship of what the authorities deem to be disinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, and military policing of civilians. Many of these were underway before Covid-19; since its advent, they have been irresistible. The same goes for the automation of commerce; the transition from participation in sports and entertainment to remote viewing; the migration of life from public to private spaces; the transition away from place-based schools toward online education, the destruction of small business, the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, and the movement of human work and leisure onto screens. Covid-19 is accelerating preexisting trends, political, economic, and social.”

These “abridgments of civil liberties” are now all hypernormal.

You know people are enticed by hypernormalisation when the New York Times says that the Pentagon formally released UFO videos and no one gives a damn.

Why do we do that? Why do we allow these fake narratives to stick?

We unconsciously desire the fake narratives because we want normality to replace reality. This way, continuity continues steadily even when everything is falling apart, and we are able to do nothing and preserve ourselves, and not being morally criticized. The only thing we cannot do is to fully exist: reality is no longer available.

Como eu vejo Deus ou Subjetividade I (How I see God or Subjectivity I). Pic and Art Direction: Simone Padovan. Model and Edit: Paula Caju.

ABNORMAL LIVES

The new normal is a symptom.

A psychological symptom is a small element that appears on the surface. Beneath it, lies an unquantifiable unconscious complexity. When a reality far larger than our ability to see, comprehend or deal with it is emerging, we hold on to the symptom.

The symptom can also be an attempt to counterweight the emerging reality. Given the deep need of a new normal, the level of disruption must be pretty high.

I have put this as a probability because I am also in the dark here: no matter how good is my ability to see it, the unconscious remains infinite. The only lit candles I have are my dreams — they are quite dark at the beginning and require some heroic works before dawn. The unconscious mind always knows everything before us all. It sets the whole stage and we are left to deal with the resulting anxiety. Aren't you feeling a lot of anxiety lately? I am.

We are not longing for normality because we are stupid. We are doing that because we are instinctively frightened of the Greater-than-ourselves Unknown. And it is wise to be, because it is present, and it is changing the world. In the face of the upcoming Unknown, all of us are at the risk of not being able to prevail and strive in this disrupted reality, therefore we long for normality, so that we can maintain our egos operating as usual.

It is totally comprehensible.

However, if we remain in the superficiality of the symptom, we will not be able to engage life in the situations that reality is now bringing to us. Seeking normality, we will always move towards the average and remain there.

This is particularly important for professionals and companies. It is common to hear them saying that they need to "get out of the comfort zone", "think outside the box" and even that they want to cause disruption. These things are eagerly sought after because they give birth to creativity and, with a great deal of luck, innovation. 

Ok, here we are. Large disruption going on. The Greater-than-ourselves has grabbed us, forced us out of the comfort zone and destroyed the box.

How do you feel?

If you feel fine, at least bear in mind that the vast majority of people do not. 

If you  do not feel fine, then think carefully before you say you want to "get out of the comfort zone", "think outside the box", "cause disruption" or, simply, change.

This is not a moral lesson. With me, it never is. Knowing how it feels removes us from theoretical concepts and returns us to an embodied reality of life.

Disruption indeed spikes creativity and innovation. It is perhaps a crude thing to say, but here it goes: "Dear professionals and companies, you are at your best moment. Embrace it." The last thing you want is normality, a new normality or anything alike, because as we have seen, these are the desires of those who do not succeed in dealing with reality as it is — they are unsuccessful.

[…] can anything lead further or be higher than the claim to be a normal and adapted social being? To be a normal human being is probably the most useful and fitting thing of which we can think; but the very notion of a "normal human being", like the concept of adaptation, implies a restriction to the average which seems a desirable improvement only to the man who already has some difficulty in coming to terms with the everyday world — a man, let us say, whose neurosis unfits him for normal life. To be 'normal' is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work — for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes — deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness. Consequently there are just as many people who become neurotic because they are merely normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. That it should enter anyone's head to educate them to normality is a nightmare for the former, because their deepest need is really to be able to lead 'ab­normal' lives." (Carl JUNG) [1] [author's own highlights]

Jung is crystal clear: those above the average, those who are able to succeed, need to lead abnormal lives. They need to exist as they are.

We admire no normal person: iconic figures are always abnormal. So, why do we bother being normal?

At least one of the elements of the unquantifiable unconscious complexity is the unconscious need of a huge crisis. This means that we unconsciously wanted major disruption to happen. Why is that?

Oh... Come on... Were you truly happy with the former normality? Even if your personal life was improving — which was not the case for everyone — were you happy with what you were seeing in your family, in the streets, in the economy and in politics back then?

It does not matter if you are unhappy. The scenario is hypernormalised. No matter how absurd the situation, it is always normal. There is nothing else. Nothing you can do will ever change anything because you are too small.

We have chosen the one-sided hypercontinuity of hypernormalisation. This radical one-sidedness creates an impossible situation because it does not take into account too much of human nature — all of our abnormality. All these repressed impulses become a strong unconscious drive for the radical change that could make way for leading abnormal lives.

We could admit to our unconscious drive for radical change, become conscious of it and directly choose to make a revolution. We will not. “[A Revolution] can be good, but it can be dangerous. At the moment, we live in a static world that is absolutely terrified of all change.” [3]

The radical need for change and abnormal lives will not disappear just because we are unable to admit it. Nature has its own agenda. If our unconscious drive for radical change will not express itself directly through a revolution or alike, it will express itself indirectly through something that is a quasi-revolution no one is responsible for, a revolution not-driven by consciousness — a major disruption.

You wanted this crisis to happen. We all wanted it. We will just not admit to it. 

Blue Queen. Berlin. Pic: Paulo Freitas

REPRESSION OF ANGER

Violence is condemned in our society.

We declare to be against assaults, assassinations, wars, totalitarian governments and so on. Everyone agrees that violence is morally inferior and should not be tolerated.

However, it has not been banned.

On the contrary, violence is interwoven into our society as a normal thing. Rather, a hypernormal thing.

Violence easily becomes part of fake narratives that manage our perception towards accepting unacceptable situations — such as racially motivated violence.

This contradiction is evident in the death of George Floyd and the protests against racism that followed. There were peaceful protests, but also riots, looting and a police station burned. Instead of condemning racism and banning it from our society, many people condemned the riots, the looting and the destruction of the police station. The National Guard was summoned, and President Trump threatened the Americans with the Army, not against the racists, but against the demonstrators. Does this look like the solution proposed by a society that condemns violence? 

And I suspect the peaceful protests were not praised by a large number of people either. After all, protests of any kind make some powerful people and companies look bad, and are bad for business. Protests disturb our routines. Protests disturb continuity. 

Violence also becomes part of fake narratives that manage our perception towards accepting the use of violence as legitimate when it is, in fact, just convenient for shady purposes.

In Brazil, fake narratives affirm that police operations in Brazilian slums are absolutely necessary to fight crime. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Judge Edson Fachin of the Supremo Tribunal Federal (Brazilian Supreme Court) forbade these police operations. The outcome that these fake narratives did not foresee: the number of deaths due to these operations dropped by astonishing 70%, the number of crimes against life dropped by 48% and the number of crimes against private property dropped by 40%, according to a study published by the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). — One important fact: the police force in Brazil is militarized.

Violence also, if not always, comes in the form of ideologies. Ideological violence has lobotomized our society through the phenomenon of polarization. Radically opposite sides radicate their convictions on radically opposite right moral systems — morality can never be trusted, as History proves time and time again. Self-righteous, each group is convinced that the opposite group is morally inferior, therefore unworthy of debating with.

Since ideologies are themselves narratives, they are easily infected by fake narratives. Fake news is far more attractive than reality. They substitute reality's complexity with plain polarities easy to digest. They prove our convictions right, therefore strengthening the continuity of our egos. They prove other people to be monstrous, therefore strengthening continuity by projecting disturbing elements of reality onto others — the age-old scape-goat mechanism.

Morality has produced the outcome it always does: you are always on the right side, the other is always on the wrong side, therefore you can attack others based on moral grounds. And you can use fake narratives to do that. That's hypernormal. 

Social media makes polarization exponential. "Social media is conservative because of the bubbles — they only give you more of what you already are." [3] You do not even see the perspectives of people who think differently: algorithms will not allow that.

Cancel culture has risen as the quintessential violence in the social media's realm. The ultimate punishment for people who do or say things considered to be offensive is to be cancelled, to be cast out of social media, to be shamed in front of the global community. Since non-digital negative consequences, like losing your job, can be the consequence of being cancelled, social media proves to be more real than reality. 

Let's not forget Charles Eisenstein's already mentioned list of "abridgments of civil liberties". They are compatible with an "agenda of totalitarian control", therefore violent. They are also an expansion and acceleration of "preexisting trends", and if you can still remember how the world was before this Covidian geological era, you will recall that the Alt-right was already on the rise.

Given the widespread hypernormal violence, how can society even claim to condemn violence?

Hypocrisy is the word we use to define "the false assumption of an appearance of virtue". [4]

Since we have come this far, let's just leave behind the false assumption and go straight to business: we all unconsciously desire violence, we will just not admit to it.

This is why we do not take decisive action towards banning it from our society, and limit ourselves to pleasant conversations around dinner tables about how violent other people and the world are.

Our unconscious desire to live in a violent society is rooted on another unconscious desire: the desire to be aggressive ourselves.

I admit it. I feel anger. In fact, I feel rage.

During the quarantine, I saw myself walking from one room to another, late at night, fighting hard to not drown in a sea of rage. I have been doing my best to not unleash the violent beast inside me.

Imagine the immense joy an incurable subversive like myself felt, when I came across the Youtube channel Rebel Wisdom and watched David Fuller and Charles Eisenstein (that's where I became acquainted with his existence) talk about "righteous anger" in their video An epidemic of control.

David Fuller: Is this not the time for righteous anger? We basically got a set of authorities that didn’t see this coming, and seem to be kind of mishandling it completely. I see a lot of people like Eric Weinstein, for example, calling for heads on spikes. And Daniel wrote also about maybe this is the time for righteous anger, for kind of motivating and taking action to create the new world […]

Charles Eisenstein: I do think it's time for righteous anger. The trick that the controlling forces of this world have used is that they again and again divert the righteous anger onto a false target and onto false solutions. There is a lot of bubbling anger and there should be because as a collective we have been betrayed. […] We should embrace the anger because it is valid. It points to a violation. […]

David Fuller: So where should the righteous anger be targeted?

I would humbly ask permission to join that discussion and offer my own answer to such an important question and perhaps contribute with Eisenstein's perspective.

Righteous anger should be targeted at ourselves; at first. 

We were betrayed as a collective. However, that was only possible because we had betrayed ourselves first.

We betray ourselves when we submit ourselves to hypernormalisation and claim to be normal. In order to accomplish that, we must sever rage from our consciousness. That amputation is absolutely required if someone wants to passively accept the absurd fake narratives that keep our insane world running and support these pseudo-leaders who pretend that they are in control. Submissiveness is normality's cornerstone. — Always remember that violence is a privilege.

However, we can only sever rage from our consciousness, never from the Wholeness of our beings. Our Nature is also an aggressive one.

Whatever element of Wholeness which has no access to consciousness will only remain or become unconscious, but will continue to exist and operate in a concrete way. It now expresses itself through actions we take but ignore, the actions of other people or concrete life situations — always with lower quality, often with brutality.

Our hypocritical submission to hypernormalisation allows us to be normal and stand strongly against violence. Nevertheless, deep down we know that something is terribly wrong, that reality is absurd and threatening. Rage comes to our aid, as a natural healthy reaction. But it has no direct access to consciousness: it becomes no conscious choice, no effective action. It will then express itself indirectly, unconsciously, through us and around us, giving birth to racially motivated violence, polarization, cancellation culture, abridgments of civil liberties, the agenda of totalitarian control, the rise of alt-right and so many other terrible situations, some of them still on the horizon.

This way, we can experience our unconscious desire for aggressiveness and violence, and at the same time enjoy the luxury of blaming others for all of it.

In this scenario, our own anger is illegitimate and weak. It is the momentary reaction of the impotent, caused by the monstrosity of those in power. And it will inevitably stall, as have all the important movements and protests of the last decades. 

However, if we target our anger at our betrayal of ourselves first, and destroy our own hypocrisy — and, with it, normality — we will then be able to claim legitimate psychological authority to destroy the same things in our world. Then we can sharpen our spikes and chop the heads we want to place on top of these spikes because at this point, they will no longer be Hydra heads.

Character. Antonio Bandeiras. Multimedia Art Museum. Moscow.

REPRESSION OF EXISTENCE

And then what?

Can we even ask that question?

Overwhelmed by layers and layers of hypernormalisation, we are left with the feeling of impotence — there is nothing else.

What can we do?

This question is just a mask. The question that lies behind it is: What is the right thing to do? And that is why we stall.

The fake narratives of hypernormalisation can only be because we individually fake to be normal and abhor who we truly are — our existence.

Since childhood, we learn that many, if not most, of our characteristics would be unacceptable for our parents, therefore society. We learn to repress these characteristics. For example, we learn to repress anger and to not be violent. This is a healthy stage of development, since, among other important things such as developing consciousness, we must learn how to live in society, therefore some set of rules must apply.

However, after we have developed consciousness, learned about the existence of others — the society — and how to live fairly, we should move towards a higher level of learning and reclaim our repressed characteristics; but, now, consciously.

We usually do not though. We remain child-like, repressing our characteristics in order to be loved, obtain other people's approval or, at the very least, be left alone.

Very early on, we learn that we must not show ourselves entirely when we are in public. We must be normal. We must wear a mask.

Hypernormalisation is one level higher. Everybody knows the reality we now live in is fake and everybody knows that everybody knows that the reality we now live in is fake. Therefore, everybody now knows that everybody is wearing a mask.

Well, this psychological reality (4D) now coincides entirely with a concrete fact — that is a 5D reality. We are officially wearing masks. We officially cannot see each other. We officially cannot understand properly what others are saying or be understood ourselves. Behind our masks, no one can see how virulent we are, or anything else. Neither can we. By believing completely in them, we have given ourselves up to our masks.

Trying to be moral, normal and hypernormal — ultimately, fake — we have become invisible, thus unconscious of our own existence.

That is what the etymology of existence points out: "late 14c., 'reality', from Old French existence, from Medieval Latin existentia/exsistentia, from existentem/exsistentem (nominative existens/exsistens) 'existent', present participle of Latin existere/exsistere 'stand forth, come out, emerge; appear, be visible, come to light; arise, be produced; turn into', and, as a secondary meaning, ‘exist, be'; from ex 'forth' (see ex-) + sistere 'cause to stand,' from PIE *si-st-, reduplicated form of root *sta- 'to stand, make or be firm." [5]

When we split the yin-yang and become one-sidedly good, the extent of forbidden actions is so large that there is nothing we can do. We are now impotent — we lose our strength. There is no room for us to exist the way we are. We are, at best, half-beings.

Beyond a masquerade, these masks have revealed to be Platonic cave-like muzzles. We have walked into a prison.

However, we would rather half-exist, and be muzzled and imprisoned, because if you betray normality, you become the most hated person.

Yet, there is a most hated God — Ares.

Ares is presented by the Greek Mythology as an irrational God. Though all the Gods and Goddesses seem pretty irrational to me, I admit that Ares holds a special status of irrationality. God of war and violence, he kills friends and enemies at the battlefield. Immoral, he was censured by the Gods when caught having sex with Aphrodite, who is, in turn, married to Hephaestus; is adultery a privilege of Zeus? Ares is even involved in ridiculous situations, such as being locked inside a vase by humans. Given his actions, Zeus was very straight-forward and told him he was the most hated of the immortals. [6] 

What did Ares do? 

Absolutely nothing.

He continues to be violent, wrong and ridiculous — strong — to the present day. Plus, he fucks Aphrodite.

The other Gods and Goddesses did nothing either. Ares continues to live among the Olympians. 

The weirdness of the myth is usually dealt with by using another Goddess as an escape route — Athena. Also a Goddess of war, Athena is wise. It is said that we must overcome the violent nature of Ares and reach Athena's wisdom.

That is a moralized Christian interpretation of the myth. That is a preferred interpretation, because it helps our weakness-praising reality to not collapse. Nothing in Mythology points to that direction. Monsters are destroyed by Heroes. However controversial his behavior is, Ares is not destroyed. 

Given the Jungian perspective, which considers Mythology a map for the structure and dynamics of the human psyche, Ares is inevitably one of its gears. Therefore, we are violent, wrong, ridiculous — and strong. We can remain unconscious of it and repress it, generating disease, or otherwise integrate it and act accordingly through Righteous Anger. But we cannot remove it. We cannot transform it into Athena either: that would be absurd in mythological terms.

Of course, as a civilized man who has integrated violence, wrong and ridiculousness to the best of my ability, I choose to be violent, wrong and ridiculous in the most humane and elegant way I can. But I am ready to be brutal if it becomes the last resource. Expressing archetypal forces through sophisticated conscious means — such as elaborated lines of thought, debates, feelings and, above all, presence — is preferable, but not exclusive. If brutal physical means, such as raw violence, are strictly forbidden, the sophisticated conscious ways become mere hypocrisy, because no one can claim to be strong if they will run away every time things get really ugly.

Now let's ask again.

And then what?

There is no right thing to do.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. (Friedrich NIETZSCHE) [7]

Whatever you define as "right" will automatically define a new normal. Everything stalls again. 

There is no escaping normality, and particularly hypernormalisation, if you are trying to do the right thing. You have got to get rid of the damn thing — and morality altogether — if you want to move to higher ground. Then you regain strength. Then you find your way out of this Platonic muzzle-prison. Then, if you find some good allies, you can fight back, and you might stand a tiny chance of destroying the matrix of hypernormalisation. 

Change, rebellion, and revolutions are not about being right. They are about accepting to be wrong and all its consequences in order to create a new reality.

Existence is reality, your reality. 

Existence is the ability to take a stand and be firm. 

If we are to leave behind normality and become conscious of our own existence, we will have to not limit ourselves to only doing the right thing and allow ourselves to also be bad, wrong or ridiculous. We will have to exert these things in pursuit of a Greater-than-ourselves purpose (4D), or, even deeper, something that makes sense to ourselves (5D) and commit to that.

Consciousness is a crime. [8]

References:

1. JUNG, C. G. Complete Works. CW XVI. §161.  Edited and translated by Adler. G. and Hull, R. F. C., Bollingen Series XX. Princeton University Press. Complete Digital Edition.

2. “The important fact about consciousness is that nothing can be conscious without an ego to which it refers. If something is not related to the ego then it is not conscious. Therefore you can define consciousness as a relation of psychic facts to the ego. What is that ego? The ego is a complex datum, which is constituted first of all by a general awareness of your body, of your existence, and secondly by your memory data; you have a certain idea of having been, a long series of memories. Those two are main constituents of what we call the ego.” (JUNG, C. G. Analytical Psychology – Its Theory and Practice. Pantheon Books, New York; page 10.)

3. Russell Brand & Adam Curtis - Do We Really Want Change? | Under The Skin #03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBy08P7tHPQ. Access: August 8th, 2020.

4. “Hypocrisy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrisy. Access: August 8th, 2020.

5. “Existence” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/existence. Access: August 8th, 2020.

6. BRANDÃO DE SOUZA, J. Mitologia Grega. Vol. II. “Ares”. page 40. Editora Vozes.

7. NIETZSCHE, F. Thus spoke Zarathustra. Chapter 55 “The spirit of gravity”. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm#link2H_4_0004 Access: August 8th, 2020.

8. CAVALHER. Paradigm of Sense. page 46. Independently published. https://amzn.to/2LHV6px