This is the normal world. You go to work in a city. All around you are enormous new buildings. They look alike. But you will never be able to afford to live in them. Because they are not really homes. They are blocks of money bought by global investors whose money had nowhere else to go. Adam Curtis, Living in an Unreal World, BBC 2016
They and you live in a dream world detached from reality. You spend your days and nights on social media. ibid.
But as you work in glass-walled offices you know that the targets are manipulated and fake. And the managers know that you know. But you all sit there and pretend it is objective and rational. ibid.
The [Soviet] system was starting to crack. Russia became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said is not real. Because they could see with their own eyes the economy was falling apart. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real. Because no-one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it Hypernormalisation. ibid.
We too came to think of ourselves as simplified beings, whose behaviour and even feelings could be analysed objectively by scientific systems which told us what was the normal way to feel. And both we and our leaders have come to believe that this is the true definition of freedom, there is no other. But there is. There is an alternative idea of freedom but we have hidden and forgotten about it … The dream of not only changing the world but also transforming people. And then by changing them you can transform them from themselves … The architects of our present world set us a terrible trap: in seeking to protect us from the dangers of the other kind of freedom [hope] they led us into a world without meaning. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free, BBC 2021
This is what separates us from normal people – normal people are on their couch right now watching South Park. The Cage Fighter, opening scene, trainer, 2017