We’re all born into the world clueless, we have to figure out how everything works in order to survive and thrive. Sometimes things are too complicated or nuanced, so we accept a simplified explanation or outright lies.
As children we don’t realise we’re being influenced and indoctrinated, we simply think that this is just the way things are, because it’s all we’ve known our entire lives.
It’s normal.
It infiltrates through cultural osmosis and we acquire ideas about things passively without even realising it.
Except normal is subjective and not necessarily good.
If you grow up with abusive parents, that’s all you know for a long time. That’s your reality and you accept it. When you get older and go to school, maybe go to somebody else’s house with parents who are nurturing, then you start to realise that not everything happens the same way for everyone and that what you’ve experienced might not be normal.
But how do you define normal?
It’s majority rule right?
So what if the majority of people grew up in hostile, abusive households? That would become normal, but would it be right? Would it be ethical?
No, of course it wouldn’t.
Sorry if this is like teaching you to suck eggs, but I’m trying to illustrate that normal requires consensus from the majority and even then, it’s still subjective and not necessarily morally right.
And yet, we’re thrust into a world that expects us to behave normally, do all the things normal people do and conform, which for the most part we do until we discover alternatives, realise that we don’t fit in with what normal should be or more horrifyingly, realise that it’s unethical.
That’s when stepping outside of normal can be punished, even if what you’re doing is neutral or morally correct! The people conforming to the normal behaviour probably won’t like it.
We have created our own societal prison, based on sets of rules from traditional and religious ideas about gender, sexuality, disabilities, race, monogamy, marriage, politics, consumerism and property that restrict us from true freedom and self expression.
These restrictions have been perpetuated because they mostly benefit the patriarchy, capitalism and those in power. Religious ideology can be weaponised and used to create scapegoats to hinder progress too.
The good news is that normal changes over time and through consensus we can break free of our own self imposed rules.
The hard part is changing people’s minds and making them realise that not being normal isn’t a bad thing and shouldn’t be punished.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people out there that consider themselves to be alternative or open minded, but when presented with a truly different way of living revert to the conditioning they’ve been subject to their whole lives.
Solutions to this require lots of conversation, introspection, deconstruction or critique of tradition, visibility of alternative lifestyles and normalisation of a diverse population.
I’m convinced more people would be happier and less afraid to be themselves if they were given permission by society to just exist, try things out and make mistakes without punishment.
That’s the culture we need to perpetuate, so let’s do it!
Normal changes over time.
Normal requires consensus from the majority.
Normality/conformity appearing desirable is a notion that needs to die.
Normality requires context
Normality/conformity isn’t always morally correct.
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