Say, do you know the difference between:
- normality as defined by majority, and
- normality as defined by society?
What is the difference between society and majority?
Society is time bound. Majorities are interest bound.
When you heard Obama say “on the wrong side of history” he was talking about society.
When you hear Trump say “it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass” he was talking to the majority.
The thing is: you can talk about societies and to majorities, because societies are hard to grasp but majorities are simple. Nothing outside of religion ever grasped whole societies, while the correct lowest common denominator will always get you a simple majority.
Politics is the fight between society and majority. A society includes both the majority and the minority. The political game is the constant attempt of the majority to seize the power of the minority.
It doesn’t matter who looks on the side of the Good. It doesn’t matter who is right. It doesn’t matter who fights for worthy principles.
Democracy should be the power of society, but instead is the rule of the majority. Simple majorities make democracies soft on the inside. Sure, the shell is hard, the exoskeleton of feudalism, slavery, masters and servants all died and made the tough protection which keeps us in the warmth of our democracy. But its all soft on the inside, like an armored bug.
A democracy without the power of the minority will revert to extremes, which do only one thing: break societies. Whenever the minority is powerless the society is corrupted. It’s that simple. Maybe extremes are the mutation we need to evolve. Maybe not, and extremes are the things which hold us back as a living species for a hundred thousand years.
What is normal?
Normal is the stability of a certain group of people. Normality defines the base metaphor on which the entire education process is based on. There are many types of normality, depending on their area of influence: personal, family, group, social, biologic and so on. The sole preoccupation of normality is stability. I am sitting on my normality so that the absurdity of my existence does not crumble the matchbox of meaning I made.
When societies define the normal, the normal is weak and generic, but it will permeate all aspects of life, it will suffocate all individuality. When majorities define the normal the normal is strong and particular, but it will pierce through diversity relentlessly. Individuality is not the same thing as diversity. Many unique individuals do not make a diverse society. A diverse society has powerful minorities and strong individuals. A society of strong individuals and powerless minorities is fascist. A society with powerless individuals and powerless minorities is totalitarian. A society with powerless individuals but strong minorities is a fallen civilization.
Neither form of normal works for the greater good of mankind. But because we are guided by ourselves we’ll constantly choose between the two types of normality. In an ideal world we’d quit even using the term. But we don’t and we strive so hard to be normal.
I would choose the social normality over the majority normality, because societies are time bound and hence change fast. Only natural disasters, wars, disease and major technological breakthroughs break majorities, therefore their normal is stable and long lasting. What do you choose?