User:NeuroBells123/Normality

Some critical thoughts on normality and their unfortunate grip on humans below. Prompted by the discussion on Talk:Anxiety/Archive 1#Anxiety_is_normal:

Actual Freedom

Richard: [Humanity's] ‘wisdom’ has proved itself to be a condemnation, convicting humankind to a life-view of victimisation; a mind-set that forbids humans to be unconditionally happy. After all, ‘we are surely not entitled to be happy all the time?’, or ‘aren’t you wishing for the moon?’, and ‘we learn and grow through suffering’. Why should this gigantic happening, called the universe, want to demand of humans that one be as miserable as one can be for the term of one’s natural life? This is preposterous to the extreme! It is as if one is only allowed to be happy outside of this life; that is, after physical death. If one believes this balderdash, one commits oneself to a life of continuous Religious or Existential hope and despair ... a purview dependent upon one’s predilection for gloom and doom.

Richard: A normal intelligence is a crippled intelligence – crippled by both the instinctual passions and the ‘being’ they form themselves into.

The study of the psyche blossomed in the West when academic study broke free from the churches and has been formalized in the last centuries as the discipline of - psychology and psychiatry. (...) Thus both the social programming and the neuro-biological programming of human beings are now accepted as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ – inherent in the Human Condition. The instinctual passions of nurture and desire are given credence and kudos whilst fear and aggression are to be controlled within ‘acceptable limits’. - http://actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/psyche.htm