I have pondered this very question for quite some time, as if something deep inside of me burns at the mere mention of the word "normal"...
A quick Google search gives a fairly standard answer...
and while I believe certain things in life should have a sense of normality to them (the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that is normal if it did it in reverse one day that might be considered abnormal) when the concept is applied to society and in particular individuals, I feel it tends to fall apart...
What one person considers as outrageous and obscene, another might find joy in, and it goes way deeper than just actions.
I have this really broken disturbed theory, that if there are millions of people who are suffering and deeply depressed, is it really the individual who is broken, or is it the world?
Alas it seems I have gone off topic again, back to this concept of Normal, is it normal for someone to sleep 8 hours a night? what if you function perfectly fine on 4 hours or perhaps you need 10 or more, now someone who knows anything about statistics will say well what about standard deviation and the bell-curve and all those wonderful metric measures?
Normal is okay when you're describing things, the temperature output of this oven is normal, the weather today was fairly normal for summer, so on and so forth, but when you try and apply it to people, people who are 1 in 7 billion unique, it really doesn't work.
I believe everyone looks around themselves and see's what they think is normal and many people try to conform to this and society will typically support this (yay go media), "oh hey you don't like going out clubbing on weekends, man you be strange".
There definitely has been some progression towards individualism, or abnormality but this too will often see niche clusters of "abnormal" who when viewed in isolation all conform to each other.
I want to end this with a thought, Fuck Normal! it's just a made up concept that has no bearing on you, me or anyone for that matter. We should support people for owning their decisions and ideas not trying to squeeze them into some pre-defined mold of who society thinks they should be.
So if you ever think to yourself "is it normal to be feeling this way" or "is it normal for me to do this" or anything along those lines, pause for a second and ask yourself... what the fuck is normal anyway?
