To be Normal or Peculiar—which is better?
The question is loaded. Most would recognize this immediately. What is normal? Peculiar in what way(s)? Better for who? Of course the evolutionary process would grind to a halt if every member of every species was normal. Most famous people were not normal. That’s a big reason biographies are a favorite read for me.
Terrell Owens recently stated: “I do not need a vote by some (mostly obscure non athletic sports writers) to validate my athletic achievements.” Their opposition to acknowledging his athletic achievements were stated to be his ‘peculiar’ personality which was not to their liking. The absurdity here is plain enough. Without his ‘peculiar’ genetic degree of willpower and his learned (from his grandmother) focus on his personal goal to be the best wide receiver possible, he could never have developed his limited athletic ability enough to get to the top of the mountain. In his case the willpower and focus amounted to extreme selfishness as his saw it and this ‘selfishness’ was enough to deny him entry into the Hall of Fame for several years.
As a strong advocate of the Golden Rule as the basis of an innate human genome for ethics, I try to employ this universally accepted moral principle as the basis for my own ethical mantra, albeit like others, the Golden Rule is too often overlooked as simply too inconvenient at a particular time for varied reasons. So how would the application of the Golden Rule work in Terrell’s case? Using a bell shaped curve would hardly make Terrell Owens ‘normal’. But then the questions becomes, ‘what does his peculiar ‘lifestyle’ do to hurt others?’ Terrell was essentially all about his football performance and all other aspects of his life were essentially ignored, for which he paid the price in these areas. It would be a real stretch to say anything Terrell did in practice, or off the field, in anyway made other teammates a worse football player. All his antics after touchdowns, his one man self serving cheering squad was irrelevant to the performance of any other players, and living socially in his self created bubble prevented both himself and others from meaningful social interactions. The Golden Rule states we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Owens created his bubble (for whatever reason) and so he made it clear that he wished to be left alone in his bubble. That being how he wished others to leave him be, then they, to be ethical, needed to leave him alone in his bubble. This would constitute fairness to both sides.
HIs media bashers refused to do this. They had their own notions about how available he should be to them personally, how he should behave after touchdowns, how friendly and interactive he should be in the locker room, how much he should hang out with other teammates off the field, and so it goes, on and on and in all these areas of behavior, important to his media enemies, Owens refused to dance to their tune. This then, is all on them since they clearly could not handle his ‘peculiar’ life style, despite it being, if anything, both detrimental and advantageous to T.O., not to them or anyone else.
Peculiarity (diversity) is one of the kingpins of the evolutionary process. To be intolerant of diversity, as a personal basis for prejudice against others, is to essentially be waging war against the very laws, created by God, to run the process. If diversity was bad, it would have long ago been eliminated from the evolutionary process. After all, the whole purpose of the process is to eliminate features of the process which are not suitable to effectuate evolutionary progress. When I was young and in undergraduate school I was a huge fan of Barry Goldwater. Both of us were innocently naive at the time about diversity, and I was amazed to find, decades later, that we both independently had changed our political philosophies.
It seems we can, in good conscience, be true to our own peculiarities and limitations so long as they do not hurt others. The number of times someone has defended me by stating, in one way or another: “Well, Dr James is Dr. James and changing him seems impossible. But his efforts are on behalf of others—never self serving actions to gain more money, titles, power, administrative favor, or reduced workload for himself. His results are often admirable, at least for those he represents, and so what are we to condemn him for—being peculiar?”
Obviously being peculiar required me to be saved by others many times. Or at least caused key others to defend me. But it is also clear, in the big picture, that we cannot condemn anyone for being ‘peculiar’ or ‘normal’. Normal, in this musing, are those who are around the center of any bell curve psychologists create for normalcy. Normalcy, after all, is just a term for numerical majorities. Plenty of normal people commit crimes against others of physical, mental, or ethical natures. More crimes are committed by ‘normal’ people simply because there are so many more of them.
Fundamentalists of varied religious sects believe God created humans, expects them to follow certain scriptures and rituals—but fundamentalists do not behave as if God is behind the creator of all humans, just certain people. There is no furor which compares to religious furor against certain human differences. Jesus though, spent most of his time amongst the ‘undesirables’ in his community, those despised by those in the majority. So once again, diversity is a major player in the evolutionary process, and I assume God, however envisioned to be, created the laws which govern the evolutionary process. To the extent my assumption here has validity, diversity is to be seen as good, not bad. Certainly normalcy cannot be bad since God’s evolution process laws have given us so many of them, while diversity cannot be bad because diversity is basically what makes evolutionary progress possible.
The truth seems to be that most of us, given the power to change ourselves, would want to make ourselves peculiar (different) in some positive way like greater sexual attractiveness, intelligence, athletic talent, musical talent, career talent, social popularity, etc. The problem here is that God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process are not geared to provide any individuals, of any species, exemptions from these laws. There is no evidence that God, via prayers to God to make individual exemptions, ever does so. However, the evolutionary process has given humans, alone among all other species, the power for us to help each other via our innate sense of ethics—the Golden Rule.
We are not, by any logical thought process, the end product of the evolutionary process. For humans to gain the status we currently have among all species, we used our brain power, intolerance of others (humans or other species), our propensity for violence, revenge, greed for material wealth, power, titles, popularity, control over others, etc. to wipe out enemies (human or other species).
In terms of absolute numbers, we have successfully dominated all other species. We are, so to speak, king of the hill—the same hill dinosaurs were once the king.
Unfortunately, the same traits which enabled us to abundantly reproduce, are now counter productive to further progress. The laws which govern the evolutionary process have dealt harshly with any species overpopulation. No species has ever successfully thrived in an overpopulated environment of that species. We are innately smart enough to understand the consequences of overpopulating the earth, but the traits listed in the paragraph before this one are too strong right now for us to suddenly reverse course. It seems more likely, given the current collective mental state of humans globally, that we will correct overpopulation by killing ourselves off. It may be by various methods since just about everyone now has the means to engage in massive human destruction—from dozens at a time to millions.
The situation right now is difficult to correctly assess as to what it all means for the future—both here in the U.S. and world wide. We kill many Americans today via war casualties, individual domestic murders, terrorism, suicide, and recreational drug overdoses. Domestic murders presently kill far more Americans than war casualties, terrorism, suicide, death from AIDS and recreational drug overdoses. The actual death rates are not going to reduce our population size in any significant way presently. However, war casualties, domestic murders, suicide, and recreational drug doses are rapidly rising. More significantly, they are rising mostly in the lower economic class and lower middle class. Those living in our urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes are far more likely to die, as a war casualty in a foreign land, as they often sign up in order to get an income. It is this segment of our mercenary soldiers who end up in the killing fields. Those in these, ever growing in size, ‘ghetto’ areas are exactly where the deaths are higher from suicide, deaths from inadequate health care, deaths from murder, and deaths from overdose of recreational drugs. Individual terrorism is increasing at an exponential rate and this affects all economic classes.
Our overpopulation starts with too many human individuals trying to get a bigger piece of the economic pie (wealth). Our natural resources are limited and this factor is now coming into play. There is no way every human being on our planet could live the lifestyle the more affluent now do. There simply are not sufficient resources available at this time. Another reality is that the ‘system’ is rigged, no matter the form of government, for the affluent to have a much easier time accumulating more wealth than the non affluent. The tax laws favor the wealthy in endless ways—lobbyists ensure legislatures vote their interests, the affluent have better developed genetic potential via better schools, better teachers, more stable families, better health care, better career opportunities, and so on. This means that the available wealth in any nation today gravitates at an exponential rate to the already affluent. Interestingly, at this time, this exponential rate is greatest in the United States.
The above paragraph is the basis for a very threatening situation globally for our human species. Something has to give. In theory, humans have the intelligence to interpret the situation and make the necessary corrections. Some humans really do see, in varying degrees, the problems facing our species and corrections needed. Unfortunately, these people are in a distinct minority and lacking the personal nature to win the kind of brutal conflicts which are now converging globally on our species. This is becoming increasingly a global political game in which various kinds of ‘thugs’ are winning control over the situation. The kind of political leaders now emerging across the globe are uneducated, violent, intolerant toward diversity, greedy, highly partisan toward their political base, and see violence as the means to their ends.
In addition, what is different today, compared to past human history, is that the major problems today are almost all global and can only be solved by global cooperation and enforcement. Climate change is a global problem. In a global economy, which we have today big time, livable wages is a global problem, and until global livable wages can be enforced, the majority of workers cannot escape increased poverty. As already noted, until human overpopulation can be reversed globally, we are trapped. No nations are really working on these major problems—rather, the political energies are all directed toward pointless and uneducated feelings. In some sort of senseless way, the affluent are increasingly making a deal with the ‘Devil’ to appeal to all the prejudices in human societies against each other, and in return the affluent get to preserve all the economic and legal devices which enable the affluent to gain an even bigger share of a nation’s economic wealth. The reality here is brutal. This further increase the amount of a nation’s wealth in the hands of the already wealthy can’t possibly come from the poor—they have nothing left to give, and thus it must come from the middle class—pushing more and more of them into poverty.
Somehow, but not surprisingly, I have veered away from the musing title. But even here the last few paragraphs above have meaning. Whether we are personally ‘normal’ or ‘peculiar’ on the Bell Curve of human personalities, we will not, if alive, escape the consequences of the laws which govern the evolutionary process. Mother nature bats last and her corrections can be brutal, long lasting, and yet in the end, progress continues, never at a constant pace, but so far progress always has been the winner.
Od course no one votes to become ‘normal’ or ‘peculiar’. We are what we are. Either way it might be a blessing or a curse. Ethics is not related to whether a person is ‘normal’ or ‘peculiar’.
