Everyone you meet seems normal until you really get to know them.
The better you know them, the more abnormal, or at least "different," they seem.
It's safe to conclude from this that no one is "normal." Normal is a concept based on our experience. It's an amalgamation of everyone we have known put together into one (hopefully) non-conflicting entity.
Never compare yourself to your own concept of normal because, by definition, you will never meet your own criteria.
If you were normal by your own definition, there would be nothing about you worth knowing. You would not likely be someone you would want as a friend and you would not likely be someone your community considered a valuable member.
If you compare every new person you meet to your own criteria for normal, you will be using measuring standards you would not use on yourself.
Each person truly is unique. What you need to determine is whether another person has enough in common with you to make you comfortable together, but enough differences to make the other person interesting. And you interesting enough to the other person.
There is no such thing as a perfect mate or a perfect friend. These relationships are like hands in gloves. The hand may slide easily into a glove that is made to accommodate many different hands, but each of your fingers is different from the others and from those on the hands of anyone else.
Gloved hands all look the same. Remove the gloves and the hands all look different.
When you say that someone's behaviour is "not normal" you mean that it is not within the bounds of acceptability in your own concept of how you would like your world to be ordered.
If everything you did was considered "normal" by everyone you know, you would be an exceedingly boring person. A person who stays "inside the box" for everything has imprisoned themselves.
Don't impose on others standards of normality that you would not adopt for yourself.
Conclusion: "normal" is a dangerous concept. "Socially acceptable" is a more useful term because it's this on which our laws and our unwritten rules of social interaction are based.
No one does everything that is socially acceptable. Not everything that anyone does is socially acceptable.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show the individuality of each peson.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 23
Seriously, it's a good article, Bill.
"Normal" is a figment of the imaginations of some members of the establishment who wish to control how we think and act. Acting "normal" is not normal.
Rev. Gretel, I think it's critically important that we learn all the ways that we are all the same, including our basic beliefs in non-violence, in a greater power, and so on. Once we learn that lesson, our differences make us interesting, rather than threatening.
Growing up I always felt "weird" and "not normal" because I was different from most of my family and even my friends. In my personal tastes and interests, etc. I finally found my place when I went to college and started working at the college radio station where I actually felt closer to "normal."
A normal school or teachers college is an educational institution for training teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. The term normal school is now archaic in all but a few countries.
In New Zealand, for example, normal schools are affiliated with Teachers colleges.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.
In the United States, the function of normal school has been taken up by undergraduate and graduate schools of education.
Many famous universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles were founded as normal schools.
In Canada, such institutions are typically part of a university as the Faculty of Education offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies.
The term normal school originated in the early 19th century from the French école normale, because the graduates of these schools, that is, the teachers, were expected to uphold and teach norms, or rules.
The term normal school has now faded into history as the term "norm" remains alive mainly among social scientists.
As for "normal" children, are they not the ones who act and do exactly as the establishment of their community expect? By definition, the establishment wants life in their community to remain unchanged, "normal," which means that if no one violates those norms the community will stagnate and eventually die.
It has happened with small communites and with large cities. Look at a large city with a decayed downtown core and you can check its history to see where city governments of the past works hard to prevent them from changing.
Thus over a long period of time, any community that retains its characteristic of "normalness" has pronounced its own eventual destruction.
As those who are like you tend to teach such ways to their children, by deduction we can conclude what those who want to tell us exactly how to run our lives are teaching to their children.
only degrees of weirdness...lol
Chris, if there are socially acceptable degrees of weirdness, then someone will call that normal.
As Shelley said in the first comment, normal is boring, but it's boring because the establishment wants normal people to be made from cookie cutters.
Enjoyed reading your insiteful artical and will continue to reference it. So many articles, so little time!!!
In days past, play time was also considered to be a time for learning, such as leaning how to get along with other children, how to make friends, how to treat a friend, when to retreat from a fight and so on. It was not strictly a time when the babysitter could relax with nothing to do.
However, the "garden of children" idea creates some beautiful images. Why do we allow weeds to grow in these gardens? Why do we allow some worthwhile growth to turn wild from lack of attention?
I think that most parents happily turn their young children over to various kinds of schools, hoping that they will fill in the blanks the parents have left. Then the schools are hampered from filling these blanks by assorted people who want schools to stick with intellectual development only and leave the rest to (often ignorant) parents.
So much to write, so little time.
I began my teaching career in grades 7 and 8, then moved to 4 to 6. Little kids were frightening to me because I knew nothing about them (never having met any when I was that age myself). In my final years in the classroom, I taught grade three. In many ways they were the most rewarding of my career.
I still have no idea what to do with or how to act with little kids. Too bad I was never one myself.