I'm Not Normal

I am not normal. I am not normal because I am not numbers. In its original and properly contained context, the word "normal" originally described a statistical phenomenon. But because we, of the twenty first century, are saturated in numbers, it seems quite natural to us that a word used to describe numerical groupings of things should be used to describe individual specific things. Yes, to us "normal" seems to have been around since the creation of the universe. However, the word "normal" along with the idea of "normal" was invented 1877 by one Sir Francis Galton.

Galton was an eminent scientist of his day noted for his wide ranging interests. He was the first to posit meteorologic anticyclonic action and was the first person to utilize the questionaire. By statistically tracking inheritance he became the father of "biometric" genetics. He was also the first to statistically map human intelligence—or at least his version of human intelligence—and found what we now call a classic bell curve. It is the bell curve from whence Galton arrived at the idea of "normal," likely deriving the word from the Latin "norma," which refers to a carpenter's square.

In Galton's terms "normal" referred to the statistical majority who lay within the pronounced peak of a bell curve. If one's intelligence lay within the major part of the bell curve one was "normal." Normal was desirable. On either end of the "normal" curve one found statistically small samples of morons and geniuses respectively. To Galton's mind the term normal was understood as a statistical descriptor. It described a naturally occurring phenomenon in genetic distribution as pertains to Galton's definition of intelligence.

By Galton's own definition, either end of the curve would be populated by over-desirable and under-desirable people, both violations of the "norm." His whole purpose in tracking intelligence was borne of a desire to move civilization—read England—toward ever greater intelligence. He seems fatally inured to the idea that persons are inviolably indisposed to being socially outside of anything. He had made pariahs of even the positive "desirable" side of his curve, defined and codified as "not like most of us." He seems also to have missed, amongst all his detached objective observations, that "desirable" is an implicitly value laden term. More on that later.

If intelligence were the only sphere of human existence, we could map Galton's curve, say who's normal and who isnt' and be done with it. But, human existence is much richer than Galton and his contemporaries might have imagined. Fortunately for us, standing stridently this side of modernism, the idea of reducing humanity to simplistic intellect seems naive and gauche. Unfortunately for us, Galton's simplistic notion of "normal" grew like fungal mold in the petri dish of Modernity: "Everything is measurable. Everything is controllable. Everything is numbers. Yay! Modernity!" This fungal mold of normal has been spread as liberally as butter over every nook and cranny of our being. It has spilled its larder and smeared itself everywhere. Not only that, it has wiggled free of its statistical connotations and has somehow wriggled itself into our lexicon as an individual and particular attribute. We have come to think I can be normal. You can be normal. But no such thing exists! Normal is a statistical amalgam. Normal is Kierkegaard's Untruthful Crowd. It is No One.

Here's the rub—so well lubricated by normal we scarcely feel it—we all, in some sphere of human existence, feel outside normal. If the idea of normal is applied to everything, then we all are, in something, not normal.

Therein lies the fallacy; normal intrinsically only applies to the interrelationship of a large number of individuals viewed as an arbitrary whole. It is a statistical term and as such it cannot be applied to an individual as a characteristic. Yet in our current context we repeatedly and pervasively apply normal in precisely this way. And therein lies the fearsome power of normal. We all fear, individually, that we are not, individually, normal; even though, in truth, we cannot be "individually" "normal," the two terms are antithetical.

Normality has become a crippling disease, and it is a disease borne of falacy. Thus, I choose not to be defined by an affable English gentleman of the late 19th century. Rather I choose to be defined by The Creator, chosen as His child.