pathologising normalcy

sus

Moderator
This is a big theme yeah people talk about this with flirting in bars or making eye contact or having several children or how poly people think of monogamous people as having hangups

Became a moment on the American right this election cycle with Vance even, this idea that liberal sexual deviants were trying to pathologise his nuclear family

It's sort of the template for the conservative culture war complaint, that shifts in culture to valuing Y offen involve devaluing X, or even marking X as taboo/stigmatized. If only because when a majority of people start acting a new way the old way becomes strange and rare by definition.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
how might we pathologise normality?
there's been a effort by all kinds of people to do this for ages, and basically a lot of it has worked really well. the battle over what's normal, the default, is ongoing in most cultures i think. the drugs are a machine for change you can change a lot if you change a strata of people, the drugs that people are on are a key part of what a place is like. there's other practices as well that make a difference.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
oh you're getting at a different kind of how. normality comes about coz people have been disciplined and standardised no. self-regulation and the policeman in your head.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
i'm in a world right now of debate about social research methods. it's just an example. there's a muscular bunch of nerds led by americans with their maths and forumulae that it takes a long time to understand and they've grabbed normality. they've grabbed powerful people and convinced them to think about research their way. it's spread out to the non-specialists and it's recieved wisdom that research means doing things like the maths nerds want. the other options are shut down they're beyond normal. there's an insurgent section of the profession which is trying to not exactly pathologise that normality but is trying to denormalise it. this is normalisation / denormalisation at the level of discourse
 

mixed_biscuits

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Society​

 

mixed_biscuits

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People can't understand just how normal they are; it's a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Progressives eschewing some traditional practices here and there think they are deviating from normality but, within the context of our societies' anthropoligical progress, that movement itself is completely normal.
 

mixed_biscuits

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In short, movement from an old normal to a new normal is normal. The new normal pathologising the old normal is normal. The new normal perishing and being supplanted by a new old old normal is also normal.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Education - as Peter Hitchens puts it, eloquently - "taught what to think, not how to think"

You'll all laugh at me cos I keep mentioning Hitchens, but that's a good one, I don't care, and fits in with what Dilbert was saying
 
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