Wednesday, June 20, 2007

What is "Normal?"

Every human being is unique; that fact is hardly in dispute. However, there are trends of the flow of society that we use to label people or their individual traits "normal" or "abnormal"--manifested in the overuse of the term "weird" to describe abnormal or "out of the ordinary" traits.

Needless to say, I have been described as "abnormal" many, MANY times in my life; and it was probably justified. I am certainly abnormal, and frankly, I have never met a normal person in my life.

So, in that sense, "normal" is an either/or fallacy [something I learned about in my decidedly abnormal Logic class]. If the only two choices are "normal" and "abnormal," we quickly lose any sense of meaning.

I believe that various traits, quirks, personalities, and other "abnormalities" [by definition, something bucking the trend, the norm], are normal, for every human has them.

And yet, "weird" and "strange" [implicating divergence] are words of derision in our supposedly individualistic culture. Why is this? Because humans are social, and socialization is harder when less traits are shared between the two parties.

What on earth am I trying to say here? Frankly, I'm saying that EVERYONE is normal, but at the same time abnormal, and therefore to call someone "normal" or "abnormal" is meaningless.

So, am I "weird," "strange," "abnormal," or "different?"

You decide.

1 Comments:

Your Conscience said...

i agree... it is meaningless. it has always bugged me when people say that they are going punk because they want to be "differant"... just like everyboy else. normal is what you make it, and to the rest of the world, we are abnormal or weird, while we say the same of the rest of the world.