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silveradept[The December Days theme this year is "Things I Used To Fully Believe About Myself." Some of these things might be familiar, some of them might be things you still believe about yourself, and some of them may be painful and traumatic for you based on your own beliefs and memories. The nice thing about text is that you can step away from it at any point and I won't know.]
#7: "It Is Possible To Be Normal."
Apparently, the RNG likes themes, even though I've been putting those themes well away from each other on the list just to try and avoid this situation.
We covered one of the prongs of Mount Normal in the last post. Admittedly, that one is the despair route, the one that encourages giving up, not just on trying to ascend Mount Normal, but on everything else, as well. The Broken route says that self-improvement is impossible and the issues that are present are insurmountable. This route is more hopeful, in that it at least takes the idea that Mount Normal can be summited and there's a way to do so.
That said, a lot of the costs of ascending Mount Normal are the kind that have you changing yourself to suit the people around you. Hiding away, or pruning away, the parts of you that are Weird, so that they only come out when you're alone, or they're something left behind and no longer sought or acknowledged as a part of you. Some of those changes are subtle, and seem like they are easily left behind - changing so that you talk about the local sports team and their activities instead of the neat novel you're reading, because the people around you are sports fanatics rather than novel fanatics, for example.
Some of the things being asked of you to be normal seem deceptively simple, but they take much more out of you or shift you more radically. Changing the language you use to talk about others in the office, either adopting their attitudes toward others and their work, or adopting the style of how they talk about others, which often includes their prejudices and biases. A lot of things that are on the spectrum of objectionable to reprehensible have been normalized, after all. If you want to be "normal" in the United States, there's one big, Eldritch Horror of a belief system that considers you more "normal" the more of it you believe and act on: the specific form of Protestant Christianity that believes
And yes, they will cite Scripture for their own purposes, but there's a reasonable chance what they cite is not part of the Christian Foundational Writings or the parts of Judaism that Christianity has adopted for themselves, and if it is, it's a high probability they've cherry-picked what's there so they can proof-text and feel confident that they have God on their side.
It has taken an enormous amount of effort simply to gain sufficient perspectives that can look at this extremely ingrained facet of the society and go "No, that's cultural, not natural," and even more effort has to be expended to persist in objecting to any of the aspects of that culture, much less to try and change those aspects of culture or remove their network of tentacles around any part of the body politic at any level of government. To become normal is to move in the direction of embracing these things and perpetuating them. Suddenly, normal doesn't seem all that appealing, does it?
Normal starts becoming more grotesque and less appealing if you start digging into even one of those aspects mentioned above. How boys are taught to have a limited range of emotions that mostly tend toward violence, are encouraged to be fans of violence in their sport and their media consumption, whether interactive or televisual, and are further encouraged to be violent in their real life encounters in the name of preserving their masculinity or asserting their dominance or proving themselves to be a true "alpha" type who is worthy of the admiration of other men and the sexual favor of any woman they choose to claim. How white people are taught that they are engaged in a zero-sum contest with non-white people, and that it is better to hurt themselves than allow non-white people to gain a benefit, or if it will hurt non-white people more than it will hurt white people. (Even if those decisions can be empirically shown to hurt many more white people along the way and hurt at least some of them just as hard as they were expecting it to hurt the non-white people.) How there are pipelines being built and lobbying being done so that the public treasury is siphoned off in ways that make it possible for a child to be entrapped in school and social structures that prevent them from gaining any outside perspective at all on these beliefs or allow them any moment of independence they might use to question, study, or escape what has been laid out in front of them, so that they might be raised in a "God-fearing" environment and schooled with others who believe the same, then passed off to a university with similar beliefs so that they can train to become the rulers (if they are men) or to attract their future forever Godly Christian husband (if they are women and no man laid claim to them before this point). Those that give lip service to the idea of accessibility and accommodation and a desire to be inclusive, but in their policies, designs, and actions show they would much prefer the path of an unrepentant Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol:
To move in the direction of normal, then, more often than not seems to be against one's own enlightened self-interest and against goals that involve the salvation of all or solidarity with others so that everyone may enjoy the benefits of prosperity, industry, and technology.
Which leaves us with the other option, which is not to move in the direction of normal, but instead to grab the frame that defines what normal is and start pulling and/or shoving so that what qualifies as normal shifts away from, or expands outward to encompass more than what currently qualifies as normal, or the frame itself gets dismantled in a cloud of sawdust and nobody gets to have control over what's normal at all, but instead we all have to contend with our own pasts, cultural upbringings, and the accompanying biases and prejudices when we interact with others, rather than some of us getting to pretend that because they are "normal," they get to behave as the unmarked default and everyone else has to accept being defined in relation to them (usually unfavorably.) Demographically, what's "normal" is moving in the direction of less white people and more non-white people. More queer people and less straight people. More neurodivergent people and less neurotypical people. More disabled people (many of them disabled because of health policies, industrial decisions, and governmental malice that specifically treat the lives of non-white people as expendable or less important) and less able people. More of a religious plurality than an assumption that everyone around you is the specific kind of Christian described above. The core of rich white people who are desperately trying to hold on to all of their privilege and are throwing whatever they can at the wall to try and turn people against each other are getting older and dying, but they're doing their damnedest to mine the ground behind them so that it will take even more effort and resources to undo the damage they're doing in their wake, and they are leveraging every undemocratic law, rule, custom, and structural part they can to assist in this sabotage process, as well as trying to tap the pools of rage and resentment they've scattered around so that others will be inspired to commit violence on their behalf. It could be an extinction burst of the old way giving way to the new, or it could be one of the many times where we've tried to bring everyone up Mount Normal, only for someone above us to trigger an avalanche because they don't want us there.
Pulling on the frame is the better option for me. It requires less self-sacrifice, less cutting myself to fit the frame, and less general unhappiness for me and the people around me. And, as it turns out, I have a little bit of a knack for being the good kind of weird for others. I ended up choosing a profession where people who look like me aren't in the overwhelming majority, and then went into the subsection of that profession where even fewer people look like me. And have stuck it out in this spot for my entire career, doing things differently and just being there as a weird thing that exists in other people's lives. I've spent a fair amount of time developing writing skills in the service of what is now the umbrella of transformative works, which is another one of those spots where the stereotypical resident doesn't look like me at all. I've had several situations where I've been accused of some rather nasty things, honestly, because they didn't fit what I was expected to do, or they were womanish behaviors from a perceived man, and that was not okay or normal to do according to the people who believed they had control of the frame.
This one is no longer a believed-fully item because, as you can see, it has an extremely faulty premise. The mere belief that there is such a thing as "normal" to achieve creates a laundry list of problems by itself, and those problems then make the question of whether "normal" is desirable or achievable important, because if there's a shared definition of what normal is (not always guaranteed), there's a lot of "normal" that's actively harmful to the people who are trying to either achieve it or impose it on others.
And yet, even if I am not the sun or the air, I am human and I would like to be loved, just like everybody else does. To have the frame moved sufficiently, expanded sufficiently, that there no longer exists the ability for any one group to capture it, declare themselves "normal" and have the power to impose their definition on others. That, instead, we have to negotiate our own morals and the morals and ethics that make a functional society composed of millions of definitions of what's normal and where those millions can find common ground, compromises, and a shared desire to take care of each other and make sure everyone is happy, safe, and fulfilled in what they do.
So I suppose whether or not this is one that's fully-believed depends on what your definition of normal is.
#7: "It Is Possible To Be Normal."
Apparently, the RNG likes themes, even though I've been putting those themes well away from each other on the list just to try and avoid this situation.
We covered one of the prongs of Mount Normal in the last post. Admittedly, that one is the despair route, the one that encourages giving up, not just on trying to ascend Mount Normal, but on everything else, as well. The Broken route says that self-improvement is impossible and the issues that are present are insurmountable. This route is more hopeful, in that it at least takes the idea that Mount Normal can be summited and there's a way to do so.
That said, a lot of the costs of ascending Mount Normal are the kind that have you changing yourself to suit the people around you. Hiding away, or pruning away, the parts of you that are Weird, so that they only come out when you're alone, or they're something left behind and no longer sought or acknowledged as a part of you. Some of those changes are subtle, and seem like they are easily left behind - changing so that you talk about the local sports team and their activities instead of the neat novel you're reading, because the people around you are sports fanatics rather than novel fanatics, for example.
Some of the things being asked of you to be normal seem deceptively simple, but they take much more out of you or shift you more radically. Changing the language you use to talk about others in the office, either adopting their attitudes toward others and their work, or adopting the style of how they talk about others, which often includes their prejudices and biases. A lot of things that are on the spectrum of objectionable to reprehensible have been normalized, after all. If you want to be "normal" in the United States, there's one big, Eldritch Horror of a belief system that considers you more "normal" the more of it you believe and act on: the specific form of Protestant Christianity that believes
- The white Christian man is the predestined unquestioned ruler of everything and everyone,
- that the amount of wealth that you accrue to your person (and your church) is a direct result of the favor your personal morality has found with the deity,
- that the return of Jesus to smite your enemies (and also institute the perfect Kingdom of God, but really, He's coming back to personally send all of your enemies to Hell and you get to watch it happen) will be happening any day now (and should be accelerated by destroying the planet more so it will be replaced faster),
- that this version of Christianity should be the only allowed form of religion in the country, and government should be composed solely of Christians of this mold and given free reign to discriminate with the government's funds to enforce this belief on everyone, enriching those who are True Believers and punishing those who dare to be public about having some other belief system,
- Anyone preaching liberation and communal help in the name of God are really secretly atheist Communists sent to destroy the greatest country on Earth,
- that the spectrum of human experience is a binary, with men on one end, women on the other, and your place on the binary is fixed, immutable, and it is defiance of God to question this in any way or make any gesture toward changing it,
- and that what God wills is in alignment with the political ideals of the party of White Supremacy, unfettered misogyny and sexism, queermisia, kink-shaming, and taking away from the poor and the alien to enrich the already rich.
And yes, they will cite Scripture for their own purposes, but there's a reasonable chance what they cite is not part of the Christian Foundational Writings or the parts of Judaism that Christianity has adopted for themselves, and if it is, it's a high probability they've cherry-picked what's there so they can proof-text and feel confident that they have God on their side.
It has taken an enormous amount of effort simply to gain sufficient perspectives that can look at this extremely ingrained facet of the society and go "No, that's cultural, not natural," and even more effort has to be expended to persist in objecting to any of the aspects of that culture, much less to try and change those aspects of culture or remove their network of tentacles around any part of the body politic at any level of government. To become normal is to move in the direction of embracing these things and perpetuating them. Suddenly, normal doesn't seem all that appealing, does it?
Normal starts becoming more grotesque and less appealing if you start digging into even one of those aspects mentioned above. How boys are taught to have a limited range of emotions that mostly tend toward violence, are encouraged to be fans of violence in their sport and their media consumption, whether interactive or televisual, and are further encouraged to be violent in their real life encounters in the name of preserving their masculinity or asserting their dominance or proving themselves to be a true "alpha" type who is worthy of the admiration of other men and the sexual favor of any woman they choose to claim. How white people are taught that they are engaged in a zero-sum contest with non-white people, and that it is better to hurt themselves than allow non-white people to gain a benefit, or if it will hurt non-white people more than it will hurt white people. (Even if those decisions can be empirically shown to hurt many more white people along the way and hurt at least some of them just as hard as they were expecting it to hurt the non-white people.) How there are pipelines being built and lobbying being done so that the public treasury is siphoned off in ways that make it possible for a child to be entrapped in school and social structures that prevent them from gaining any outside perspective at all on these beliefs or allow them any moment of independence they might use to question, study, or escape what has been laid out in front of them, so that they might be raised in a "God-fearing" environment and schooled with others who believe the same, then passed off to a university with similar beliefs so that they can train to become the rulers (if they are men) or to attract their future forever Godly Christian husband (if they are women and no man laid claim to them before this point). Those that give lip service to the idea of accessibility and accommodation and a desire to be inclusive, but in their policies, designs, and actions show they would much prefer the path of an unrepentant Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol:
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, … it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons…"
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir…"
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
To move in the direction of normal, then, more often than not seems to be against one's own enlightened self-interest and against goals that involve the salvation of all or solidarity with others so that everyone may enjoy the benefits of prosperity, industry, and technology.
Which leaves us with the other option, which is not to move in the direction of normal, but instead to grab the frame that defines what normal is and start pulling and/or shoving so that what qualifies as normal shifts away from, or expands outward to encompass more than what currently qualifies as normal, or the frame itself gets dismantled in a cloud of sawdust and nobody gets to have control over what's normal at all, but instead we all have to contend with our own pasts, cultural upbringings, and the accompanying biases and prejudices when we interact with others, rather than some of us getting to pretend that because they are "normal," they get to behave as the unmarked default and everyone else has to accept being defined in relation to them (usually unfavorably.) Demographically, what's "normal" is moving in the direction of less white people and more non-white people. More queer people and less straight people. More neurodivergent people and less neurotypical people. More disabled people (many of them disabled because of health policies, industrial decisions, and governmental malice that specifically treat the lives of non-white people as expendable or less important) and less able people. More of a religious plurality than an assumption that everyone around you is the specific kind of Christian described above. The core of rich white people who are desperately trying to hold on to all of their privilege and are throwing whatever they can at the wall to try and turn people against each other are getting older and dying, but they're doing their damnedest to mine the ground behind them so that it will take even more effort and resources to undo the damage they're doing in their wake, and they are leveraging every undemocratic law, rule, custom, and structural part they can to assist in this sabotage process, as well as trying to tap the pools of rage and resentment they've scattered around so that others will be inspired to commit violence on their behalf. It could be an extinction burst of the old way giving way to the new, or it could be one of the many times where we've tried to bring everyone up Mount Normal, only for someone above us to trigger an avalanche because they don't want us there.
Pulling on the frame is the better option for me. It requires less self-sacrifice, less cutting myself to fit the frame, and less general unhappiness for me and the people around me. And, as it turns out, I have a little bit of a knack for being the good kind of weird for others. I ended up choosing a profession where people who look like me aren't in the overwhelming majority, and then went into the subsection of that profession where even fewer people look like me. And have stuck it out in this spot for my entire career, doing things differently and just being there as a weird thing that exists in other people's lives. I've spent a fair amount of time developing writing skills in the service of what is now the umbrella of transformative works, which is another one of those spots where the stereotypical resident doesn't look like me at all. I've had several situations where I've been accused of some rather nasty things, honestly, because they didn't fit what I was expected to do, or they were womanish behaviors from a perceived man, and that was not okay or normal to do according to the people who believed they had control of the frame.
This one is no longer a believed-fully item because, as you can see, it has an extremely faulty premise. The mere belief that there is such a thing as "normal" to achieve creates a laundry list of problems by itself, and those problems then make the question of whether "normal" is desirable or achievable important, because if there's a shared definition of what normal is (not always guaranteed), there's a lot of "normal" that's actively harmful to the people who are trying to either achieve it or impose it on others.
And yet, even if I am not the sun or the air, I am human and I would like to be loved, just like everybody else does. To have the frame moved sufficiently, expanded sufficiently, that there no longer exists the ability for any one group to capture it, declare themselves "normal" and have the power to impose their definition on others. That, instead, we have to negotiate our own morals and the morals and ethics that make a functional society composed of millions of definitions of what's normal and where those millions can find common ground, compromises, and a shared desire to take care of each other and make sure everyone is happy, safe, and fulfilled in what they do.
So I suppose whether or not this is one that's fully-believed depends on what your definition of normal is.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 05:49 pm (UTC)I think that's a truly admirable goal.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-09 10:22 pm (UTC)Honestly I think that being 'normal' and being 'human' are two circles that completely overlap. I don't think you can be abnormal if you are human. You can be a bit unusual, a bit of a statistical outlier, but if you are human then you are part of the undeniable scatterplot of what's normal for humans. The problem is intolerance not normality.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-10 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-10 11:50 am (UTC)That's very true, which is why I think it is entirely normal to vacillate between thinking 'no one's normal anyway,' and 'oh why can't I just be normal!' throughout your entire life with no resolution at all.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-11 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 12:02 am (UTC)