| Misdefining ‘Normal’: A Cause of Atrocity | |
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23 Jul 2004 @ 11:22, by sevenlamb
There are some terms whose function belies their appearance as ‘regular concepts’. Consider the term and concept ‘separation’. Without this concept — there are no terms, or concepts.
For human beings, one of the most deadly terms ever invented is ‘normal’. Without this term, we would not be able to endlessly invent utterly fictitious reasons to attack each other and our world. What could such a term possibly mean?
I believe we must somehow come to a living experience of the truth
about what ‘normal’ means, because as a species we appear to be
extremely confused about this in a way that causes us to attack each
other and our planet. Firstly, ‘normal’ must mean ‘unique’. The
‘most normal’ thing about any possible thing — is that it is
fundamentally unique, regardless of which ‘class’ we assign to it.
Every tree, person, fingerprint or ‘animal’ is unique ‘more than’ it
is ‘anything else’.
We must then accept that the most significant and true meaning of
‘normal’ is ‘uniquely complete’. There is no ‘grand credentialer’
somewhere who feeds us statistics against which we should measure
each other, our children, animals, planets or peoples. There never
was. The entire idea of ‘normal’ is a figure of speech used to crush
the dignity, humanity and spirit of our peoples and world.
Let us take an example from nature to satisfy ourselves that this is
a matter of consequence and not merely some fantasy of a bored
author. Every single example of a given creature in nature is
unique. Each one may accord very closely with a schema of form or
activity, but the individual itself is unique in all possible
perspectives. In fact, it is -more unique- than it is in accord with
‘form or function’, for in each moment ‘what a being is and does’ is
changing dramatically. Plant, human, planet or animal — change is
the rule -before- stasis.
It is this very uniqueness, this incomparable and sacred diversity
upon which our most hallowed dreams and aspirations of human unity
and liberty are founded, but somehow we have instead become a vast
factory of standards, a nation of rulers within rulers, against
which every human and natural thing must be measured, and punished
or exhausted in the effort to forcibly cause creatures to conform to
fictions.
Let us take another example, the example of the gendering of an
individual, human or otherwise. In nature, each moment of each
creature is a unique mix of genders. Males exhibit feminine
behaviors, some plants grow both flowers and fertilize themselves.
The truth of all of nature, even stars and planets, is that both
genders contain each other in ever-changing measure. To lie about
this and pretend there is some ‘normal’ standard to which all must
congrue or be condemned is an abominable instance of the worship of
a fictional artifact: which is that any ‘stable’ instance of gender
identity exists -at all- in -any creature-.
In nature, the most significant thing we can say about ‘a normal
instance of gender identity’ is that it is a unique moment of
gender-expression. Male humans adopt feminine ‘receptive’ modes
during conversation the same way male chimps ‘present themselves’ to
males higher in status in their socium. This form of behavior is not
‘unholy’ or even ‘homosexual’, it’s essentially akin to shaking
hands. Young chimps faced with an unknown creature near their size
will often ‘present’ to it, uncertain as yet if their status is
‘above or below’, and thus taking the safe bet. The point is that
‘normal conversation’ is a sexual act in the cognitive dimension.
This is a pretty unique thing to realize about normalcy.
What we can come to know and experience from all of this has a lot
more to do with liberty than it may at first appear, for if we have
no examples of liberty and our ideas are frozen codicils laid bare
of their original intention, we find ourselves with nothing to learn
or emulate, except accordance to fictional standards. Usually, these
standards openly abhor all we are and may become, and more often
than not, we will be charged every possible cognitive, physical,
financial and emotional price for the ‘great privilege’” of finally
achieving accord with ‘the standard’.
Normal means unique. Newness is a part of normal. So is 'shocking'.
If we decide to measure each other by standards fed to us by those
who have no interest but war and profit at heart, we will soon find
that the rulers to which we’ve congrued abhorred the most miraculous
and amazing parts of ourselves: the places where we unify in
recognition of the power of our diversity, in common agreement for
mutual uplift to overcome any and all possible obstacles with
celestial haste.
Our children, surrounded by machines more valuable than their own
lives, experience the shock-treatment of our anticulture, and when
they finally become symptomatic — we drug, diagnose, blame and label
them. I often wonder who it was that decided children responding to
the most deadly environment in terrestrial history were ‘sick’.
Those kids aren’t ‘sick’, they are signalling. They are signalling
that our ‘normal practices’ make everyone sick, and the fact that
many manage to congrue in no way mitigates the absurdity of what we
are actually countenancing. I'm not entirely convinced that anything
but children exist. Even the idea of ‘adult’ is a fictional standard
we are all forced into congruence with. Who told us this is the
thing we’re supposed to become?
If we will cease to worship the fictional standards we’ve been fed
as a nation and planet for the last 2000 years or so, and actually
take a close look at all these matters relating to ‘normal’, what
we’re going to see is that ‘normal’ is a synonym for ‘totally
unique’. When we create a standard that claims otherwise,
scientific, religious, or statistical, we are creating a cognitive
bomb which will explode into scalar waves of rape, war, omnicide,
lying and theft of our human potentials in unity and progress toward
liberty.
We must stop trying to ‘shave off the novel or unique aspects’ of
our children, our families, and each other. The power we have is
when diversity is unified for common -and- individual benefit. I do
not believe there is any other road that our species will find
survivable.
Normal means ‘totally new’ and ‘uniquely complete’. It does not now
and never did mean ‘in accordance with some standard dictated to us
by distant or fictive experts’.
It never will.
o:O:o
[link]
New Ways of Knowing
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Category: Activism
2 comments
24 Jul 2004 @ 04:35 by : The "Somehow" Is The Rub
What an important article! I don't know whether or not you live in the States---and can't tell either at your positively brilliant site---but surely there is no more essential issue in this country than the powerful manipulation of what is normal in people's minds. We sat long and hard after dinner last evening with some new friends and pondered how the hell the current White House, for instance, does it. The solutions you offer seem to be the Way. Thank you for getting them out!
24 Jul 2004 @ 21:47 by celestial : Excellent Article,
I hope and pray to see more of this quality of penmanship, from you and others.
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