Normality is a Myth

Hmm..normality..what is normal? I guess it’s something that the majority decides. It probably is strategic and logical, or maybe its simply a byproduct of how most of us do things. a search for utopia in the realms of reality,perhaps?

I believe  ‘normal’ is ever-changing and evolving. Look at the world before and after the suffragette movement. It was considered normal to deny a woman the right to vote in the 1600s but one cannot think of doing the same in the 21st century.

Social norms are set to distinguish the acceptable normal behavior from the abnormal one. But the same set of norms can suffer from culture bias and lose their absolute stand. For example, Carla bruni kissing Nicolas sarkozy in public is well accepted in the west but the same act performed by mr. and mrs. Manmohan in our country would not go down well with the public.

As I sit in my statistical psychology class everyday, I’m made to belive that a normal distribution exists and well, if the data in front of me reads otherwise, then I’m taught ways to transform it to make it ‘near-normal’.

Are we humans, as a species,obsessed with a search for a normal in everything?

I ask this question because I recently came across Dean Hamer’s view on the god gene, where he talks about how we inherit a set of genes that predispose us towards spiritual experiences.

Similarly, are we genetically predisposed to demarcate boundaries for normalcy? Does our DNA code for putting  normal limits in every statistical index and behavior we come across?

If that’s the case, then I believe that we are at the brink of extinction, for Darwin’s principle spoke only about how, the more different we are, the better our chances are of surviving as a species.

I feel that limiting our quests to understand nature and beings by clinging to this baseline, is a gross mistake.  This mistake might not lead to extinction of our species but it might hinder the development and deeper understanding of psychology.