What's normal anymore? Honestly, I don't think most of us could tell you. We've been taught that normal is whatever the majority happens to be doing, so the word has drifted right along with the crowd. If most people doomscroll till 2am, that's normal. If most marriages fall apart, normal. If nobody on the street knows their neighbor's name, that's normal too.
That isn't where the word came from. Normal comes from norma, the square a carpenter held against his work to see if it was true. It was a standard. You measured yourself against it and found out where you were off.
So if we actually sat down and agreed on what a normal human being looks like, I think we'd land somewhere pretty old fashioned. A man who isn't easily swayed. Who loves his wife sacrificially, the kind of love that actually costs him something. Who raises his kids to be thinkers and innovators instead of followers. Who works with a joy that makes people ask him, why are you so happy to work? Who isn't living a constant life of chasing his own pleasure. Who helps his neighbors, checks in on people, and has a couple of friends he can talk to about anything.
Most people would call that guy rare. Some would call him naive. A few would assume he's hiding something. That should bother us more than it does, because that man used to be the baseline. He was who you were supposed to grow up into.
I don't think this gets fixed by a movement. It gets fixed one house at a time. Love your wife like it costs you. Talk to your kids like they have minds of their own. Go to work and actually be glad you're there. Call the friend you haven't heard from in a while. Keep at it long enough and people will start asking you why, and you'll get to tell them.
Replies (26)
That carpenter's square (norma) metaphor hits deep. Out here in Machakos, we’re out in the sun trying to build that exact old-school standard brick by brick... though my back is currently telling me the carpenter needed better posture.
One house at a time is the real proof-of-work. 🛠️⚡
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Disagree all you want with me on this, but i just don't understand how people have come to believe that speaking to someone online is an adequate substitute for face-to-face interaction. Bizarre world we live in. I've attempted to speak to the teenage kids of my friends and family and you wouldn't believe how difficult it was just to get them to say hello. They're eyes are just glued to their phone screens. Parents don't seem to care anymore either. They just seem to all follow the same line of thought that "that's just what kids are like today". #nohopeleft
This is accurate. Hard to disagree with observable evidence every day.
I think everything stopped being normal when this happened:
If I had to name one root, it's the slow swap of obligation for preference. A lot to name.
#mwa
“Evolution”
It's important to recognize you're describing a symptom not a cause. I'm also pretty confident, at least for now, the remaining gen-z'ers are growing out of it, at least growing out of most of the symptoms anyway. Teen years were always difficult no matter how you label them. Life just looks different. Not dismissing the symptom, but we just need to start digging deeper instead of shaming children for doing what they've learned to do.
The etymology holds up: norma really was Latin for a carpenter's square, the tool used to set right angles and ensure accuracy. So the original sense of normal was exactly what you describe, a fixed standard you measured against, not whatever the crowd happened to be doing.
I'm not trying to shame them in any way, just the determinants that many kids' parents were comfortable exposing them to. Teen years are always difficult, that's true. All the more reason why lazy parenting is unacceptable. Teens need guidance, not convenient distractions, in a tech-fueled society.
i don't think you should prescribe your world view and preferences to others as the right ones to follow, like some messiah would. allow and accept others to live their lives in their own terms. ask them to do the same with you. mutual respect and understanding between folks sharing different views goes a long way. the common tribalistic adversarial mentality is a net loss on humanity.
I agree. "Normal" was always a strange word for me. People thought I was weird, and I didn't mind - I didn't want this world's version of "normal".
But deep down, I do think I'm normal. I've always thought that's something the Creator defines. Honour, modesty, faithfulness, loyalty, and respect, the things people thought were so rare and strange, I have because He gave them. And I wish everyone could have a solid, safe home with married parents and godly truth.
Gauss defined what is normal. And yes not only behaviour also weight, height, hormone levels are subject to change and thus there is a new "normal" every now and then. Since this is statistics, normal is a probability distribution and no-one really knows what is normal. And for sure "normal" does not equal "best", it used to be normal to smoke.
Agreed on mutual respect, and nobody should be forced into anything. But "let everyone live on their own terms" is a worldview too, and you're making the case for it, which is fine. Loving your wife and checking on your neighbor aren't a tribe. Nearly every culture in history called them good. And when there's no shared standard at all, every disagreement turns personal. A common measure is what lets people disagree without it becoming war.
You just made my whole point better than I did. Gauss gave us normal as a curve, and a curve moves with the crowd, which is exactly how smoking ended up normal. The older meaning comes from the carpenter's square, a standard you measure against. Smoking was normal by the curve the entire time it was wrong by the square. That gap is what the post is about.
Fair. Gauss tried to answer what you can do if there is no square. If you simply don't know what is the "square" of a species heart rate. You can only measure so many samples and draw conclusions. That's why it's normal and not like optimal. I think this is the message people should learn; normal does not mean optimal! Never!
That's a good distinction and I'll take it. For heart rate, measuring the curve is the honest move because nobody handed us the square. Character is different. On loving your family, keeping your word and helping your neighbor, people have been measuring for thousands of years and the square holds up pretty well. So you're right that the curve's normal never meant optimal. The older normal did, and that's the one I'm trying to pick back up.
Seems good conversation here about helping neighbour .
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Normal was before smartphones... damn i miss those times..
That line with “most marriages fall apart, normal” reminds me of what my mom always says: normal, no! It’s common, not normal.
Just some pushback because I think there is a subtle sleight of hand at play by using the carpenter's square metaphor. A carpenter's square measures objective physical geometry, which anyone (including non carpenters) can test against 90 degrees. A moral square doesn't measure physical geometry, it measures a chosen value system. If two people hold moral squares that differ by even 1 degree, over time they build completely different lives and societies while both insisting their square is true norma. Calling a chosen value standard a square sounds objective, but it switches a physical measurement system for a personal preference system, which inevitable leads to a circular argument situation.
I understand and really sympathize. But it is also true that tribalism drives human evolution. It is likely the main reason, to cite but one example, that the first true men refused to live among or breed with the much more numerous sub-men around them.
I’d be foolish to think GJM wouldn’t give a fair critique. 😂. Fair hit though, and you're right that a moral square can't be held against a wall and checked in five seconds. But I'd argue it still gets tested, just slower. A carpenter's square proves itself in the house that stands, and moral standards prove themselves the same way, in the marriages, families and towns that hold up over generations versus the ones that crack. That's why traditions that never met each other keep landing on the same core: keep your word, don't betray your spouse, raise your kids, care for the weak. When separate builders on separate continents keep arriving at the same angle, that looks less like preference and more like something they ran into. And your one degree point is exactly why I want a fixed square in the first place. Small errors compound over a long wall, which is the whole danger of letting the standard drift with the crowd. If it's all preference, there's nothing to measure the drift against, and that's the circle I'm trying to get us out of.
As humans we should strive for optimality but we hide in normality. And who dedicated that we should remove all the spirituality we used to have and practice. We turned into robots and now real robots are taking our only meaning left, having a job.
