38-The Danger of Being Normal

A couple centuries ago, the word 'normal' began burrowing into the zeitgeist. Before this, people thought differently. They didn't flee the edge of unacceptability but instead ran towards unobtainable perfection. They aspired to the concept of their personal, cultural ideal. Rising in one's station meant impressing family, friends, neighbors, and god with heroic acts that spoke of the legends and myths of transcendence and eternal reward. Honor was valued and everything was personal.

On the other side, no one sought to imprison the statistically nominal. Those with the one-percent personalities were left alone unless they posed a threat. Back then, there was no fix, no solution. Schizophrenia, depression, anti-social, autistic-spectrum, borderline, bi-polar, and every other diagnosis simply wandered about, off their meds. Counter-intuitively, research from contemporary areas of the world were conditions are similar tends to suggest they did better than their advanced, medicated, western counterparts. They may not have had relief but they had a permanent, stable community that knew them and their differences.

They were not labeled abnormal or defective; they were unquantified, quirky, possibly unholy, but certainly eccentric people. Odd behavior was a personality trait, not a cause for action. Back then, the outliers were the great and gifted ones – the genuine heroes. Today, they are the disabled and defective ones – the implied villains. How people are categorized drastically changed when we raised the walls of normalcy. No longer is our individuality unfettered by society. If we stray too far, we will be returned, diagnosed and prescribed. Instead of the old way of working hard to embody the godly or goodly, the new way is aggressive treatment for those who do not fit in while their personal resources have moved from the community to the state. Today, communities are in constant flux. Those who most need stability struggle to find home were they live.

What launched the concept? Coined by Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton, eugenics is when selective breeding is applied to humanity – a solution for tiny, defective minorities. Practiced by the aristocracy for centuries, eugenics gained traction as the world's governments, universities, and other social institutions promoted its efficient and rational principles.

Hitler took it to the next level when he adopted Nietzsche's uberman (superman). Hitler was determined to make the ideal, the norm. He couldn't wait for nature to take its course. Practicing an accelerated form of animal husbandry, he forced those he felt embodied Aryan perfection to marry and have children. Like weeding a fertilized garden, he multiplied the affect by culling the human masses of anyone who did not fit their rigorous standards. Being a blue-eyed blonde was not enough. In fact, those first exterminated were not the camp inhabitants but the physically and mentally categorized of all colors. Promiscuous women, brown people, and members of the LGBT community soon followed.

There is a problem with the very concept: life is unpredictable, stuff happens, things change. Adaptation is a prerequisite for longevity. For example, dark skin is ideal for sunny climates but poses a real challenge for vitamin D production in cold climates with less sun and no pills. Just as trees and birds evolve differently in different places, humans do too. The danger of being normal is more than social. When an emphasis is placed on fitting in and joining the crowd, the number of people thinking outside of the box wains. Diversity is the very strength of humanity. The greatest minds throughout time are often housed in bodies not qualify for Hitler's utopia. Being normal puts pressure on all of us to fit in and meet the parameters of acceptability. This limits our natural tenancy to be ourselves, warts and all.

The homogenization of media threatens our long-term survival. But the greatest danger to human evolution is the possibility of widespread fetal genetic screening abuse– potentially the lynch-pin of our extinction. No matter how smart we are, our only hope is random chance overcomes the twists and turns of time we cannot foresee. The deeper we place our finger into this process, the less random the outcome. If we continue to emphasize normalcy, how long before people like Picasso, Tesla, Dali, Einstein, Hawkins, or Zuckerburg will cease to exist? And when we face a real, global challenge, something requiring a novel approach, who will provide it if everyone operates in that same box? The danger of normal extends beyond restricting one's personality. It threatens the very concept of humanity. We don't have to think like our ancestors but we do have to think differently. Instead of rejecting and dismantling it, let it wither away while we move towards and embrace the ideas of human potential.