Normal

Normal. The term is so boring. Not to mention relative. There is no real definition of normal to the point of any exactness. For example, what is the limit of normality? Surely there is no derivation that satisfies this value in any form of calculus that is true in spirit. Yet, this concept is as familiar to most people as if they consumed equal proportions of normal as the air they breathed since being born. Or their mothers’ milk- if their infancies were normal, in the normal sense that is.

OK. While this may not seem normal as a topic of discussion, it’s rather important as a matter of awareness. The risk that ordinary mortals run is one of being normalized before they ever have the chance to be different. This is the individual level danger.

The greater evil of this system is the hidden trap of conformity that is driven by the political-marketing conglomerate that actively confuses and controls the minds of the people with its not-so-subliminal messaging on the acceptable standards of normalcy.

Globalisation is normal. Your religious and communal heritage is not. Political correctness is required in public, even if you don’t agree with the subject in particular. Subscribing to causes is the proof of your empathy with normal public causes, even if it costs you money from the hard-earned post-tax benefits that reap from your apparently ‘normal’ nine-to-five-or six- or ten- or whatever grind that you struggle through while the speculative barons of the stock market create pretences of the level of normalcy of the economy, based on their normal practices of greed.

Normal lives are what you empathise with on satellite television as you convince yourself that the trauma undergone by American characters in Iraq is more painful than the trauma of the Iraqi nation, dismembered without remorse by the normal market interests of the capitalist West.

Normal is feeling good for all the dollars apparently donated to good causes like the Red Cross, to buy medicine for the suffering millions, displaced as the result of war-mongering promoted by capitalist coalitions that most probably included your own country’s government, all the while never asking why the arms were allowed to reach the killers in the first place.

Normal is feeling good that you have a job that pays you a fat packet, with a multinational corporation that has no soul in its people practices, either employee or customer- let alone affected parties of its product. It’s not normal to question, as long as your next paycheck is guaranteed. It’s never normal to want to opt out of the system on principle.

Normal is accepting that celebrities are worth the endorsements they are paid for, yet never accepting infidelity in your own personal circles, even if the reasons were better than Tiger Woods’.

Normal is questioning the motives and sanity of the other branch of us that don’t subscribe to this crass commercial need to express our normalcy through retail therapy.

There are still some of us left that can stay clear of sporting the latest I-Tampon that Mr. Jobs has convinced the rest of the herd-mentality homo-sapiens that they can’t live without, regardless of whether their government has provided basic healthcare rather than worrying about 3G telecom networks that really aren’t essential, apart from greasing the wheels of the normal politico-marketing machine.

Normally, I wouldn’t give a damn, but then again I never hoped to be normal.

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