Is normal actually being true to your feelings and honest to the people around you, or rather, playing the game, of particular social behaviour, needed to follow the rules, demanded of the society? For me, I would say that there is no such thing as normal, and instead of trying to change people to become a special way, one should encourage people to be as true to your self as possible. By the way, creating a thing, such as normal behaviour, is done only for the reason that people in general feel uncomfortable if someone is behaving in a way that they did not expect the person to do. So, normality is just a way of letting people that already have prejudices against others, fulfill their preconceptions. It makes it easy, and destroys the wonderful thing of diversity and uniqueness, that defines the human being.
The reason why this subject has been brought up, is due to that I spent my day at Ivy Mount. We had the opportunity to participate in a classroom together with eight students, diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. The students were wonderful and I am looking forward to meet them again. Still what got me discussing the word normal, is because it was used frequently by the teachers. The mission of Ivy Mount was to help the students be part of the "normal" society, and become normal. Therefore, whenever the students, behaved in a way, that according to the teacher, was a behaviour due to their syndrome, they got reprimanded and told to behave in a more normal matter. As you noticed this pissed me off! Of course I want the students to become self sufficient in the society, and have a happy and rich life, and not seeing any trouble in interacting with other people. Still, they should be true to who they are, and not change them self to fit the model constructed. This can be done through building a self knowledge, a strong confidence, and help them to understand how and why other people behave in certain way.
So, my mission the next week, when spending time with the students and teachers, is to encourage the students to stay exactly as they are, and be proud of themselves, while trying to change the behaviour of the teachers. Wish me good luck!
Nessica
I see what you’re saying, but wondering if you really have preconceived notion that nothing like normality or abnormality? If you do, doesn’t that seem to say that there is nothing like good or bad? To say there is nothing like abnormality or normality effect most aspects of our life and health. Socially, how could we diagnose many different social behavioral disorders, mental disorder, disassociation disorders, dementia, these are common social abnormities. Clinically, we use abnormality or normality to differentiate cells conditions. These have deep impact in our life and would need to be dealt with if it is necessary we should make changes in our life. If we do, then we need not to treat normal but abnormal behaviors.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that in our lives, there are good & bad behaviors, there are right & wrong behaviors. To ignore these differentiations makes no meaning to our living and treatment or correction of what need to.
While we must accept all people and love all people without discrimination, we must at the same time be able without prejudiced identify those distasteful mannerisms that are being accepted in our today’s society. We are living in a society where everything goes, no such thing as wrong or bad any more, making people living dangerously stupid, reckless without regard to others, killing indiscriminately all because he society is accepting the way we live. To me that’s scary and makes us no different from the animals.
I believe is an interesting and insurmountable topic that should dealt without prejudice and sincerity. The loving heart to discern behavior of humans..Are we like animals or complete humans?
E. Davison
Elin & Nessica, I think you two are wonderful with unique characteristics and set of thoughts. I am fascinated with your concerns to the world and peoples in particular. I am very honored and pleased to meet you and would continue to share thoughts & knowledge with you, sometime agree and sometime disagree with each other and doing it all with love and unity and happiness. We should always love and get along with each other because, what unites us is more and stronger than what separates us.