The problem with that reasoning is that there's no fundamental law of nature that dictactes what "normal" means; instead there is a complex network of interrelated forces that is itself kind of resilient but whose individual states are very fragile. Under those conditions, it is practically imposible to "go back" after having disrupted the status quo.
On the one hand, there is such thing as supply destruction, oil producers that are marginally profitable and that go out of business if price collapses, taking tons of hard capital (not financial, but equipment, personnel know how, etc). The Saudis are pressumably aware of this and very much doing it on purpose.
The problem is that there also exist demand destruction. Companies that consume energy in large quantities to produce economically useful but expensive goods and services. This guys conversely go out of business when oil price spikes (there was some statistic going around in 2008 about how 5 out of the last 6 recesions in the US where correlated with high energy prices), which is the intended effect of Saudi strategy.
So, eventually, when the noise signal introduced in oil prices gets absorbed by the market negative feedback loops, the economy we go back to will likely be smaller than the economy we started with. We could debate wether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but many actors are nervous because this is a game of musical chairs, and very few can say they will have a guarrantied place at the table by the time the rubble stops bouncing.