Radically Normal –
on honesty, responsibility, and justice
The title isn’t a contradiction. “Radical” here doesn’t mean extreme — it means going to the root, the way the word was originally meant. And the argument of this series is simple: a fair world isn’t something extreme. It should be the most ordinary thing imaginable.
Because what counts as “normal” is always shifting. Slavery, child labour, the twelve-hour working day — each was once taken for granted, even defended as economically necessary, and anyone who wanted to abolish it was written off as a starry-eyed radical. Today we can barely imagine it was ever otherwise. In the other direction, the internet shows how fast the far-fetched becomes something we can’t live without. Perhaps a later generation will look back with the same disbelief at a world where a few people owned millions of times more than everyone else — while others starved. What looks radical today could be self-evident tomorrow.
I’m not an economist. I hold no special authority on these questions — and that is exactly the point. If only experts are allowed to talk about inequality, the subject stays trapped in a narrow circle. Yet it concerns all of us, and the fundamental questions are ones anyone can ask. If I can do it, so can you.
For me, honesty means starting with myself. By global standards, I am one of the well-off. When we talk about sharing, I’m one of those who would have to share. The same is probably true of you, if you’re reading this in a warm room. This isn’t an accusation; it’s the precondition for thinking honestly at all.
Radically Normal is a complete series in seven parts. The question behind it is old: Plato already held extreme inequality to be one of the greatest evils a community can suffer, and in his Laws he demanded that no one own more than four times as much as the poorest. Along the way I encountered people like Thomas Piketty, Ingrid Robeyns, and Gary Stevenson, whose thinking I’m grateful for. But the questions at the heart of this are not questions for experts — they are among the oldest a society can ask.
Radically Normal exists in German and English; the German edition lives at radikalnormal.de.
From the start I have thought of Radically Normal as a shared learning project — for myself and for anyone who wants to think along. So I welcome your thoughts, in the comments or as a reply. Controversial and constructive. Because that’s what we can build on.
