Year 2021 review: How good is the 'new normal'?

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The year 2021 was completely free for most people. The universe rolled it out into our lives worldwide as an over-the-air update at 11:59 PM on Dec. 31, 2021. As in every year, there were people all over the world who wanted to stop the invisible update with fireworks. However, according to scientists, this plan is just as futile as fighting pandemics with will instead of medicine.

Despite all the advanced medicine, 2021 also cost many people their lives. From now on, they will no longer accompany us on the way through 2022. Since one should never give people an advantage, I will spare myself the popular naming of the deceased celebrities in this review. In death, we are all equal, at NextPit too. If you want to read about stars who have died in 2021, then go to EW or People!

2021 design and build quality

In terms of design, the universe was very much based on its predecessor. Unlike the coming year, 2021 was not a leap year, so there were 12 months, just under 52 weeks, and about 365 days. That's a good thing, too, because otherwise, we'd have a pretty uncomfortable time on Earth.

What I liked:

• 51 weekends where we could escape the snares of capitalism.
• Good day-night ratio in the summer months.
• Two lunar eclipses, they're always so nice and spooky.

What I disliked:

• 52 assembly, 261 working days - makes a total of 2,088 working hours.
• Daylight Saving Time still not abolished.
• Hardly any innovations.

Hardly anything has changed in the rough design of the year 2021. However, from experience, there is really something new only every fourth generation anyway. Leap years are much more fun, but the universe of 2021 relied more on familiar qualities.

The summer days were once again very good, at least in Central Europe. There were numerous hours of sunshine, and the nights were warm enough to heat across the planet with human means of transportation. We humans simply love to cover certain distances in the shortest possible time.

However, we hardly had time for that in most social systems. Ever since the "capitalism" form of society was rolled out many versions ago, it has been stealing 2,088 hours of our lifetime every year. Optimally, of course. This is where human history desperately needs to improve. Why are we all working to speed up our productivity through machines, when work is not getting shorter after all? Here the universe must clearly deliver in the next year!

Special Features: Vaccines, Space and Squid Game

As special features we can attest the year 2021 retrospectively some positive things. Humanity developed vaccines in record time so that we could finally watch Harry Styles live again. In addition, space travel was privatized so that the industrial overlords from even higher up can spit on our heads. For recreation, there was Squid Game, which hit the post-Lockdown mass taste like a fist to the eye.

What I liked:

• Corona vaccines in more ways than one.
• Harry Styles performs again - and a lot of other artists.
• Already mentioned: Squid Game!

What I disliked:

• Space travel so far only for the top 0.01 percent.
• Terror in Afghanistan continues to progress.
• The environment seems to be going even more haywire.
• Economic crisis.

In the same structural concept, however, 2021 held a number of surprises. Foremost among them - and confirmed by the Google Year in Review - was the Netflix series Squid Game. I have to admit to not having looked into this one. But I've been told roughly what this is about, and I can understand the hype. Watching people beat each other's brains out in children's games after Lockdown 2020, with a fair amount of fake blood spurting, sounds like ecstasy and the right liberation blow after all the social distancing.

However, we also managed to strike a liberating blow in a big way against the new type of coronavirus. Although we put the first vaccine needles into arms with a bit of uncertainty, we saw 8.47 billion vaccinations later: The world has managed to produce an effective and, in most cases, harmless vaccine in less than a year. A feat that took considerably longer for past diseases.

For these things, 2021 will go down in the history books, but unfortunately, with its checksum of 5, this number will also be on the dark side. For example, the Taliban was able to take Afghanistan over (again), and the environment seems to have continued to go haywire as a result of climate change. Large parts of Germany were flooded and at the end of the year, several tornadoes swept through the USA - 2021 thus also showed on the doorstep of the most important decision-makers how powerless we will be if we do not tackle global warming.

Paralyzed by this mammoth task, humanity preferred to grumble about seemingly more important things: Our packages arrived in 2021 with a long delay - or sometimes not at all! An absurdity that had a surprisingly simple reason. A ship was stuck in the Suez Canal. And freeing a 200,000 ton container ship is not so easy. We'd need a 400,000 tonne ship to lift it - and since we don't have that, we had to use a couple of dredgers. Nobody could have thought that up in 2020!

Performance: Gap between smart and naive widens further

Humanity made a lot of progress in 2021 - and not just on a global scale. With sheer inquisitiveness, we soaked up information this year on viruses, hygiene rules, NFTs, Crypto, Elon Musk, Billie Eilish, Biontech, Moderna, and all other vaccines. While many were educated, however, the distrust in the consensus we need to reach on a regular basis for the good of all diminished.

What I liked:

• Inquisitiveness of many in the field of medicine.
• Progress in equality, tolerance, and openness.
• Well-known demagogue and ex-talk show host (and social influencer) no longer in office.

What I disliked:

• Distrust in science grows.
• Fake news still going strong.
• Looked away too much again.

If someone had told me that I once discussed terms like "evidence, reliability, and incidence" with my family at the Easter table, I wouldn't have believed him or her. As humanity struggles to cross the daunting hurdle called the Corona Pandemic, we gain terabyte after terabyte of new evidence. Quite Luhmann, in fact, most social systems in 2020 focused on supporting the systems of medicine and science. This makes for progress, even if other areas fell short. And in 2021, we finally had time to let the pearls of these findings melt in our mouths.

Science inspires and all over the world there are people who put their faith in statistics, expert opinions, and refutable theses. But the system of science works differently than the private circle of friends - and some people have a hard time dealing with that. Scientists don't have opinions, they have results and formulate theses based on them - and these have to be refuted in order to move forward. And where scientists try to reduce the distance between reality and measured value, some people smell bad intentions.

After all, it is hard to understand that a thesis in science gains in quality when it is refuted. That's the only way we find out how things really are. And those who don't understand that just feel fooled - and those who feel fooled no longer trust. And mistrust is, in a way, the fattening food in the throat of those who want to cause harm with their own ideologies. A dangerous game for which we all have to pay in the end.

However, in a time when everyone is a victim, there is no one to blame. Therefore, it would be wrong to let the view of 2021 become gloomy. At the same time, it will be existential for 2022 to keep our eyes and ears open. Humanity is splitting - into the informed, who feel superior because of that informedness, and the "seemingly informed", who as a result will not want to be informed. But since we want to take everyone with us in 2022, we have to talk to each other!

Short and sweet: This is how 2022 will be really cool

You notice, slowly but surely we can record what we have to create in 2022! How convenient, that is quite simple! Let's get started right away, shall we?

• Getting a handle on the Omicron variant...
• Get herd immunity to all countries.
• Resolve the world economic crisis.
• Build guard rails in the Suez Canal.
• ... Just smile more ... 🙃
• Expropriate Facebook.
• At the same time, keep an eye on the monopoly of other companies.
• Save whales from extinction.
• Stop climate change.
• Maintain speed of travel despite climate change halt.
• Send Captain Kirk into space again and then hear him out.
• Reinstate the downvote button on YouTube.
• Come up with better jokes for those who were born on February 29th.
• Restore access to information based on scientific evidence to people who have lost it.
• ...

Okay, stop, even in my almost youthful drive I'm really considering going to bed and watching Squid Game in 2022. First things first, and most importantly, where does Harry Sty...? No - first we need to get into the new year safe and sound in the first place.

So let's close out 2021 with a conclusion.