How I hate the word "Normal"

Out of the many philosophy sections, I think it fits this one the best. It's another thing I've given a lot of thought to, on reading the "creepy" thread in the personal section of the FFnet forum. What makes people's skin crawl, etc.

Other than clowns, I would say one of my pet hates is the idea of normal. The word itself invokes quite a strong feeling of angst in me, for so many reasons. I think that in spite of the fact that many people in society believe in normality as a necessity to create a harmonious community, in fact it seems to be the cause of many ugly rifts that separate the peoples of the world.

Firstly the word itself. I the dictionary it is interpreted as this-

normal
adjective
ordinary or usual; the same as would be expected:

normality
noun [U] (US ALSO normalcy)
the state of being normal:

Not only is the word incredibly dull, invoking feelings of mundane, grey, boringness (pardon my use of made-up words), but also the word is incredibly vague, leading to its interpretation being varied across different communities and peoples. Which actually defeats the meaning of the word because surely no-one can ever agree on the specific definition of "normal", everybody has a different version, making this stupid word quite redundant.

Of course you will always find those people who believe their definition of "normal" is the ultimate which everyone should follow,anything else rendered unacceptable in their eyes. They will always try and inflict this uniformity on other peoples, even though other people would see their idea of "normal" as wrong, possibly quite a lot so. A big example of this is America, who keep trying to inflict their idea of what it is to be a "normal" country on other countries who devoutly believe in their own ways. And they won't take no for an answer. If you are not like America, you get invaded.

My own experience of the evil of "normal" came just recently, when my brother's girlfriend decided to take it upon herself to tell me that my method of child rearing is completely abnormal, and that I should start following her way, the "normal" way. I would not say my methods are normal or abnormal, just individual, they are my own. So what place does "normal" have in my methods? As long as my child grows happy and healthy, do I really need to pay attention to "normal"? And so fricking what if I would rather talk on forums to like-minded people than drag myself out to a bar with a load of slags people who I do not understand or get on with, why would I subject myself to any kind of torture for the sake of "normal"??!!

Now that I've had my little rant, I want to know about other people's experience of the evil that is "normal", and if they agree with me at all. I'm a huge believer in individuality, the right to make my own life and include the things I want to include in it, whether they be normal or not. What the heck, probably what I do here is quite normal to you guys! At least we're happy!!

normal does not exist
period

Hmmmm try telling popular people that!

I am not normal, and I don't care. If I was their version of normal, would I be me? Certainly not!

you cannot really define normal
so there is no normal.
WHAT is normal.... because what is normal for one person is weird for another....
so there is no normal

And that is my point.

So why the hell do we have to have "normal" at all? Why do so many people insist upon it, when it quite obviously has no place in human society?

because humans are stupid

Ooooh yeah I forgot about that one!

But I certainly refuse to be something I know I am clearly not, no matter how many stupid people will press the word "normal" on me. You can tell I certainly wasn't the popular type at school! I was know as the "Eccentric One", which even though it is a stereotype, it seemed pretty cool because nobody else had that label! But even so, it leads us on to the issue of labelling, which is the area where the nonsensical word is abused more than anything. And even though I enjoyed having a label then, I definitely say down with labelling now!!!

Pah, humans are stupid. Their logic is that everything has to fit into categories, even people. It sucks!

you can't label people because everybody is different... no 2 humans are the same

You would think that people would understand that by now, wouldn't you?

have you no ears?
HUMANS ARE STUPID!

Surely not all humans?

mehhh most humans ar tupid

Yeah. Normal is supposed to be a synonym for average (as in mean), like add two numbers and divide by 2 to get the "average" person having 2.5 kids and a dog. If somebody had 2.5 kids, we wouldn't call them normal. We might call the cops, but we wouldn't call them normal. Through common usage, "normal" has come to mean "within a range to either side of the most common features" (or in most cases, "most popular features"). This would be a reasonable definition of the word normal, if people would stick to it and not change it for their own purposes. People changing what "normal" is on a whim in order to cast out those they don't like is the most common problem to do with this, and I, for one, don't see it changing in the near future. Unless there's an "Ugly People Rebellion," but that's unlikely because few people would admit to joining. So on and so forth, and Normal in itself is not bad, it is application that is bad.

I totally agree, it's a shame that the application is what makes me hate the word. It gives me the creeps.

*rips out normal in the dictionary*