The question of what it actually normal is a fundamental one, because our way of knowing this sense of normality does not arrive at us via logic, or reason, or intellectual knowledge. Rather, it is a distinctly inwards way of knowing. I will hypothesize that this sense of what is normal arrives to us via the primitive mechanisms of the 'lizard brain', which latches onto certain rules and regulations that a particular cultural and environmental set of circumstances have imparted. In other words, learned information is hypothesized by neurobiologist Paul MacLean to be stored in the "striatal complex" --- "the major part of the reptilian forebrain" ( p 137):
Maclean's theorising suggests that what may appear to us to be most natural, most normal, is in fact probably learned behaviour (and I would say, in accordance with the above, it is learned CULTURAL behaviour) that has become naturalised in our brains.
We are not able, therefore, to distinguish between what feels like normal or abnormal behaviour in a way that transcends the functioning of our own brains. And, our brains are instruments that take in information that is certainly relative to other forms of information, and makes this information seem objective, by making it the main reference point for "normality".
Here, I am alluding to the necessarily hidden nature of cultural bias on the part of abitraters who concern themselves with issues of human normality. The psychological nature of their sense of what is normal is no longer evident to them after the point that they have internalised cultural norms as an inward standards of normality.
This also concerns guardians and policemen of normality, who believe they are unbiased because you have clear inward emotional signals about what is "normal". That clear sense of things -- far from being a sign of your lack of bias -- is actually the normalisation of your bias. It has been writ large, for instance, in your feeling of having a clear conscience about your estimation that the other is less than normal, and needs to be brought into line.
Every person's lizard brain polices zones like national and social boundaries, on the basis of their cultural and social conditioning, in order to maintain and defend a precious feeling of normality. It is "natural" and "normal" for all of this to take place -- but this is no basis for ethics.
"[I]n addition to being a neural repository for innate forms of behavior, the striatal complex constitutes part of a storage mechanism for parroting learned forms of emotional and intellective behavior acquired through the participation of limbic and neocortical systems." [p 145, Paul D. MacLean, CEREBRAL EVOLUTION AND EMOTIONAL PROCESSES: NEW FINDINGS ON THE STRIATALAlso see:
COMPLEX].
Is it possible that through these neural elaborations nature has revamped the striatal complex so that it serves as a playback mechanism not only for ancestral behavior, but also for currently learned performance? We are all aware that once having acquired a verbal or other skill, we can later repeat it, so to speak, almost instinctively. Indeed, if we stop to think how we do it-as, for example, playing a musical piece learned by heart-it may interrupt the continuity of performance. As Plutarch taught us to say, custom or habit is “almost a second nature.” Moreover, we recognize in other people, if not in ourselves, a tendency to a life style in which they are as set in their ways as the proverbial reptile. (p 146, MacLean)
Maclean's theorising suggests that what may appear to us to be most natural, most normal, is in fact probably learned behaviour (and I would say, in accordance with the above, it is learned CULTURAL behaviour) that has become naturalised in our brains.
We are not able, therefore, to distinguish between what feels like normal or abnormal behaviour in a way that transcends the functioning of our own brains. And, our brains are instruments that take in information that is certainly relative to other forms of information, and makes this information seem objective, by making it the main reference point for "normality".
Here, I am alluding to the necessarily hidden nature of cultural bias on the part of abitraters who concern themselves with issues of human normality. The psychological nature of their sense of what is normal is no longer evident to them after the point that they have internalised cultural norms as an inward standards of normality.
This also concerns guardians and policemen of normality, who believe they are unbiased because you have clear inward emotional signals about what is "normal". That clear sense of things -- far from being a sign of your lack of bias -- is actually the normalisation of your bias. It has been writ large, for instance, in your feeling of having a clear conscience about your estimation that the other is less than normal, and needs to be brought into line.
Every person's lizard brain polices zones like national and social boundaries, on the basis of their cultural and social conditioning, in order to maintain and defend a precious feeling of normality. It is "natural" and "normal" for all of this to take place -- but this is no basis for ethics.
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