The “End of Normal” and the After-postmodern era

     When James K. Galbreith wrote about “the end of normal” he was not talking about some kinds of “normal” that we can find in several discussions, mainly in Humanities. We can see, for example, in the book of the French physician and philosopher Georges Canguilhem, “On The Normal and the Pathological”, a discussion about the concept of “normal” under biological conditions and studies of the constrution of medical knowledge. In a general way, what is “normal” in one culture, can have a diferent meaning in other culture, and so on.

     The “end of normal” for Galbreith is the end of the paradigm that says that the world economy can grow on and on, under a traditional concept of progress. Now we have to put in this equation the factor “resource” and “sustainability”. In postmodern times, this was a kind of dream, although the environmental movement was already present. So, the pragmatism of industrial,technical,etc development need to change in After-postmodern era. Maybe it is even a new kind of pragmatism dictated by the necessity of Mankind’s survival.