🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kma4f7INNr88@agate.berkeley.edu> jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>I'm not going to say it's wrong or "abnormal" to
>feel some other way about it.  Given the large number of repressed people
>in our culture, one could probably argue based on the numbers, and the
>statistical meaning of "normal" (== average) that the reverse is normal.

You can't define "normalcy" by replacing it with "average".  In a culture
where most people are unbalanced, maladjusted, borderline (or fully)
psychopathic or sociopathic, where the ever-esacalating level of irrational
violence keeps people in a perpetual state of fear from cradle to grave,
you simply can't use the "average" level of insanity as a going definition
of what normal is.

Repressed people are abnormal in the same sense that having skeletal 
deformities is abnormal.  Even when most members of the population are
similarly physically or psychologically deformed, the disfigurement is not
"normal".  It may be "common" or "dominant", but it does not make it
"normal".  

>I'm much more
>of a toucher now than I was five years ago, for instance, much more open
>to people, and I'm also happier.

And more "normal" by my definition.

>No, they aren't "abnormal", they are just being true to their upbringing.
>I'd say it's "normal" in our culture (though undesirable) for men to have
>some difficulties with closeness.  That's what we're taught.

But is it "normal" or is it "common" or "traditional"?  

Hey, it's only *my* definition.  I do not make claims for it being right or
being The Truth.  Gregbo asked what I mean by "normal" and that's what I
described.  This does not necessarily mean that I myself is "normal", though
I like to think that I am.
-- 
Oleg Kiselev, at home			....use the header to find the path