What is normal? Who is normal?

These are questions I have asked myself and others throughout my life and never gotten a satisfactory answer. The Quakers have an expression "Everyone one is a bit crazy except thee and me and even thee is a bit odd:.

People are so very different and yet we all want basically the same things; food, housing, companionship and some fun and pleasure in our lives. Perhaps normal is defined by the majority. A person with seeing eyes would be considered normal by most but in the land of blind that person would be abnormal and would not be able to see. In the land of the mad a sane person would be abnormal. Here in the land of the modders they are normal and those who not mod are abnormal. Well maybe not because modders do want people to use and appreciate their mods. Of O were set down in the midst of the Amazon jungle among a primitive tribe I would have no skills to survive. The primitives would be normal and I would be abnormal.

Is the definition of normal an individual thing or a group thing?

That's a good question and since no unilateral, satisfactory answer can be found, because it's always in the eye of the beholder, it's best left to people with a degree in philosophy. This methinks.

Kosh, methinks you are right. Let philosophers waste their time.

Nonsense. Philosophers love to debate with others, that's how they hone their skills. And if the other side has no philosophy skills to use in the debate, philosophers are even happier - they get to show off.

You may waste your time, but you are making them happy. Is that not a good thing?

Make a philosopher happy? I was about to ask why but then realized that Confucius was actually a political philosopher turned by his followers into a religious leader. The Oriental Voltair.mm.Since Voltaire came after confucius I guess he was the European equivalent of Confucius except for getting holized.

See? That ought to confuse them (why people mix philosophy with cult worship) and then they can spend many more hours philosophizing why they do that.

So we have now made some philosophers happy! Good.By the way does anyone know if they ever solved the problem of which came first; the chicken or the egg? Or is that a totally different subject? Am I the Dreamer or the Dream? Beware I can come up with hundreds of these. Some may even make sense, most won't.

I think those cliches were meant originally as a starting point to discuss ideas of a philosophy nature. My favorite one is, "Why?" When I was in school, I was told that one word was the final essay for a college level philosophy class. The student who got the highest grade on it answered, "Why not?"

That is a good answer. Maybe the only answer.

For some reason it reminds me of one year when I had to teach a logic to the Upper Form (7th/8th grade level). The first thing I had to get across to them was that the basic proposition had to be true. If it isn't the whole discussion is invalid. It is natural for young children to ask why but somewhere along the line we adults manage to quash this. Too bad in my opinion.

True. But sometimes, when we adults don't quash the right ones, the children grow up into very irritating adults - possibly very talented, but still irritating adults.