Fragile is being normal; (August 19, 2009)
In general, scientists (including psychologists) consider what is normal the sample of items or group of people within a restricted community who share a particular attribute or characteristic 68% of the total studied, which means one standard deviation from the means (which has no meaning whatsoever, except that it is amenable to mathematical formulations of other mathematical derivatives).
Now if we want to study the same group who share two characteristics then the percentage deteriorates rapidly. If you need to investigate people who share three characteristics then you tend to scrap your project as leading nowhere. When we walk the street we are amazed to discover that there are more “normal” people than we imagined. There are mainly two reasons for our imagination:
First, the “abnormal” people (for example, the Mongolians, the smart idiots, the clinically found psychologically disturbed) are sheltered off the street, voluntarily or involuntarily. Most of them are secluded in rooms at homes, or in the basement, or in the attic.
Second, the majority of “abnormal” people that look normal on the street are labeled normal in contrast to our perceived over valuation to our personality. They are normal in a bad connotation; they are not as good as us in many ways. There are a few instances when we observe people of being in a category of “better than normal” but we never declare ourselves defeated. In the depth of our psychic we know that if we get to “know” them deeper than the superficial aspects, let’s say sort of skin deep, then these super normal must have vices and diseases that instantly drag them way below “normalcy”.
Being normal is pretty fragile. Maybe if you read “The man who substituted his wife for her hat” by the physician Oliver Sacks you might realize how barely tenable the concept of normalcy is. You have got people who lost the functions of language, memory or part of it, identity recognition, time, and space. You have got people who lost the feeling of their body, of imagination, of who consider one of their limbs are stranger to their bodies, people stuck in one moment in their life, people who cannot see what is on one side (right or left), super talented people in one restricted domain of music, numbers, chess, poetry, or drawing.
People who would describe a glove in much detail until they wear it and then would exclaim “My God! This is a glove!” People who would describe a rose in detail and after smelling it shout “But this is a rose!”
We are subjected at any instant to flipping from normal to the other side of the category and we will have no idea that we have flipped; even psychiatrists will never tell us how we have been categorized: we are no longer normal people to communicate intelligibly with; as if our folks or relatives should fair better than us to be told the whole truth.
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