What is normal?

On Tuesday I attended my first Disability, Diversity and Social Exclusion tutorial. Turns out that most of us doing this unit are psychology students. My tutor made a comment, "all you psychology students, going to change the world"... damn right we are. Eventually anyway, after 6 or more years of study!

She also said something else, something that came up for me during my mushroom trip last Friday night. "What is normal?" This question is asked of psychology students the moment we begin. We are actually taught common definitions of normal, how normal is measured. You know, because we like to categorize things. If you are acting in an accepted way, if you are part of a majority (socially, physically, whatever), or if you are deemed to function well (all 3 factors dependent on culture and context), then you or your behaviour could be described as 'normal'. What you do could be 'normal' in one culture or context but could be 'abnormal' in another.
As you'd expect I took a different take on it with shrooms in my belly. My mate said we should watch something 'normal'... my mind started racing as I asked the familiar question to myself: "What is normal?" Did he mean that he wanted to watch something we would usually watch, or did he want to watch 'normal' people, like reality shows? Are they even 'normal?' I don't think so... they seem pretty outrageous. Well, what do 'normal' people do? Were we going to watch a show where people sat around and had breakfast and went to work? Complained about traffic and workmates? Picked the kids up from school? What a boring show. I would rather watch something trippy. Would these TV people even think about stuff? Would they wonder what normal is? As I type this, the word 'normal' is losing its meaning. Is that normal? Does that happen to a majority of people? Is it specific to my culture? If so, which culture? Drug culture, Australian culture, language culture?

Life's endless questions...

I just looked up at my formatting toolbar for this blog and saw that 'normal' has been automatically selected for me. Blogger assumes that we all want normal as well...

So I started another subject, Social Psychology of Relationships. And get this... one of my unit learning objectives is "to observe and code behaviour"... Yes, I will be doing more categorizing, but I will be learning how to read you guys! Be afraid!
My lecturer made the point that whenever he says he is a psychologist, people always ask "Oh can you read my mind?"... I actually get that a lot too. We don't mind read but turns out we watch your every move... Seriously though, I am really excited that I will be learning something useful, something practical that will assist me in my relationships and my career :)

A last thing I will leave you with for now is another point my lecturer made... That the way in which you code behaviour, depends on the lens you observe it through.
Have a think about how your lens affects the way you see things, that other people may see differently...
My aim, as a future psychologist, is to have a neutral lens... Or at least an educated one.
Educated is the only way to gain a wider perspective, and a wider lens.

Now the word 'lens' has also lost meaning.
Time for bed.