Taboo Everyday

Everyday Taboo

crazy would be normal
if we only shared how crazy
it really is to be normal

Author's Note

Reviews

[TPK Stories]

I always that it was okay to be a "little crazy" because "normal" was boring. Excellent write and packed a punch in just a few lines!

[Darkswing]

Crazy is what makes a person unique, who shows their true-self. Being normal is as equal to living the illusion of being who they are not. Hope that makes sense. The poem was short and well written. Love it!

[Arya]

I really like it because it actually makes sense.
Normal is overrated anyways.

[Davidgeo]

And underrated will become normal one day; rinse, repeat.

[Shep]

Normal is overrated met normal people and they are boring

[Davidgeo]

One man's normal is another man's abnormal. The definition is more contingent on frequency of occurrence, internal satisfaction's, neuroticism's and group/self expectation's than any specific act. It's not necessarily 'normal' things that you find boring but more likely it is excessive repetition, excessive familiarity and a lack of subverting your own expectation's that you find boring. A person who climbs mountains all day does not have the same definition of 'normal' and 'boring' as a person who sells home mortgages all day. The definition for 'normal' or 'abnormal' when it comes to everyday reality doesn't really mean anything, it's just a thought process of identity formation we've created to compare ourselves to the "other".

[Dara]

A question I often ask myself, "What is normal?" For me I find it can be quite boring. A little crazy in one's life can spice it up. :-)

[Davidgeo]

'Normal' has always been to me more about the repetition of an act instead of the actual definition of that act. In that sense a little variety, or 'crazy', is certainly to me the best way to make things immediately more interesting. It's an interesting thought to know that some people's 'normal' is other people's 'crazy'.

[Aurora]

This is the gist of Foucault's 'Madness and Civilization'

[Davidgeo]

That book is about a whole lot more than that. I see that book more like a history of the evolution of how the definition of insanity progressed on a large scale. During the renaissance and the beginning of the classical age Foucault describes the insane as being treated very differently, understood very differently and not necessarily excluded from society en masse. It wasn't until the late 1700's - early 1800's when society began to separate the 'normal' people from the 'insane' by confinement via mental institution and by ostracizing them from society via the social stigma of having some kind of "moral failing" or inherently devious natural flaw. He also writes quite a bit in that book about other sociological forces that had to do with economics and institutional discrimination that lead to the reevaluation of how the mentally insane were classified as mentally insane and treated as medical patients. But there are some very serious problems with that book as well. He almost romanticizes how society treated the insane during pre renaissance times when it's abundantly clear they were treated very poorly, abused, taken advantage of, vilified as "sinners" and shunned from mainstream society. He kind of cherry picks his sources for the first half of the book that paints an unrealistic picture and damages the credibility of his conclusions throughout the book. When he talks about and critiques relatively modern treatment and the institutions in which that treatment takes place he does a lovely, insightful job. But his writing on the historical timeline is too riddled with errors and omissions to be taken seriously.

[Aurora]

You are a well-read man.

[Davidgeo]

I have a whole lot of time on my hands and you can only masturbate so many times in a day. But really it probably only just seems that way, I just happened to be familiar with Madness and Civilization specifically.

[Zoya]

True. One day you start going crazy and realise mental hospitals aren't as bad as we thought them to be.

[Davidgeo]

Most mental hospitals throughout history have been, in terms of human suffering and effective medical treatment, some of the worst institutions in the history of institutions. It hasn't been that long since the treatment of the clinically insane finally got away from barbaric and immoral methods of care. It was only just 1949 when the Nobel Prize was awarded to a dude named Dr Moniz for inventing a procedure known as the lobotomy. Some people argue that today's heavy reliance on heavy doses of powerful medication is akin to a chemical lobotomy and that mental illness, when it isn't being exploited and misrepresented for marketing/entertainment purposes, is still shunned by mainstream society.

[Zoya]

Thank you for enlightening. I agree, mentally ill are rejected by the society even to this day, which is terrible considering the number of people going crazy these days. And yes, mental hospitals used to be awful institutions, but looking at the bright side, most of them have turned out to be good sites for ghost hunting :)

[gram linski]

flipside ;
normal would be crazy
if we only shared how normal
it really is to be crazy,
go figure, lol

[Markus Anthony]

being crazy is relatively normal, i love to be crazy in love and it is the best thing

[Davidgeo]

As long as it's not illegal and with a human.

[Travis Gibson (poetic h..]

Crazy is indeed the norm... most are just better than the few at keeping secrets. Great write. You give the reader something to think about in so few words.