The Rule of Normal

July 29, 2013

As an animal still dependent on our own survival, humans still require a degree of normalcy.

For reasons of self-defense, we, like most animals demand a visual and emotional sense of sameness in the world and the people around us. As individuals and groups, we set arbitrary rules of appearance and behavior relative to our own, which we set as a general rule of normal. This normal range, is what we consider safe, and anyone or anything in that range, we can be somewhat relaxed around.

This is the way it is, and has been since the beginning. It is part of our natural instinct for survival and only our intellectual side sees anything wrong in this behavior.

After all, any creature needs a way to judge the environment around it, in order to survive. When you see a person or group that is outside your own rules of normal, you're instinctively “on guard”. They may dress differently or speak differently, or even be a different color. No matter, in the back of that cluttered and domesticated brain of yours, are still a few cells bent on your personal survival, and they start waving red flags.

Your intellectual side may argue the point, but unless you are a very well-balanced human being, you'll be on guard until something proves otherwise.

This rule even carries over to people you know, even friends and relatives. If their behavior is outside your personal sense of normal, those brain cells will start waving those red flags again. Maybe something as simple as a difference in political views, but that feeling will still be there.

An odd side effect to this ancient survival tool is that you are “on guard” with anyone who is not comfortable with you. Survival instincts butting heads.

Every wonder why optimistic, outgoing and caring folks seem to just instantly fit in wherever they go? It's not just because they accept everyone around them, but because there behavior is so comfortable, that even total strangers are instinctively more comfortable with them. In the background of course, are hormones, pheromones and unnoticed body language that communicates this, and radiates around them. There is also probably stuff going on at the particle level, that subatomic world where information passes between everything, all the time.

So the next time you suddenly feel uncomfortable around someone, or something, keep in mind that a few crazy brain cells in that big gray meatloaf in your head are simply doing their job, making sure you are still here tomorrow.

Krash

Place Mark Books
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