Difference Doesn’t Mean Deviance - The Case Against Pathologizing The Different
"Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn't become king. He gets lynched."
-Aldous Huxley
Normality is as fake as the assertive persona I put on while writing my posts. All fakeness aside, normality is just another plain old social construct. Which means that it can be burned to the ground on any given day! (If we fight for it hard enough, of course) What’s normal to some may be viewed as abnormal to others. The problem here is that confirmation bias has us all over him which turns us into narrow minded little jerks, convinced that our way of thinking is the one and only way.
Paradoxically, on the one hand we’ll publicly claim that we are as open to difference as one can be (as open as a 1$ whore that is), yet on the other hand, the moment we personally encounter that difference, we will turn it down real quick. In the meantime, I ask myself, what metrics are we basing our rock solid convictions on?
We need to get rid of the knee jerk reaction of labeling as pathological anything that seems atypical to us. Automatically labeling people or situations that present themselves as unconventional to us is problematic in that it makes us extremely prone to bias.
You know that feeling when you hate someone and therefore you see every single thing they do in a negative light? They eat a carrot and you think to yourself what a fuckface? They do a kind gesture and you desperately look for the nonexistent evil in their move? Well we operate from the same place when we pathologize individuals who don’t fit into our premade boxes of normality.
A couple with a significant age gap? Automatic sign of pathology.
A financially independent adult making the free choice of living with his parents? Clearly not normal.
Someone with a personality disorder? They have issues and you better stay away from them.
When we reject something so strongly in others isn’t a sign that we fear that it could be very alive in ourselves as well? Or even worse, that we once had it in us at some point? Just because something has the potentiality of being pathological doesn’t mean it is pathological.
The second and probably ultimate paradox is the fact that we have (somehow) accepted the misleading belief that society is the perfect judge as to decide for everyone what’s normal and what isn’t. The mentally ill is judged not “apt” enough to take decisions for his own life, yet the ill society he lives in has all the power it wants to impose on others whatever it wishes for. Mindrules, mindgames, why don’t you mind your own fucking business society?
