I’ve been thinking about this sense of being different from the average person. As if there’s this majority of people who, broadly speaking, form a fairly homogenous group - people who fit together naturally and for whom society is basically designed. And then there’s this smaller group who just don’t quite fit in. It’s like there’s this game we’re all supposed to be playing together, but some of us either aren’t that into the game or want to play it differently.
It’s easy to slip into that “everyone else is an NPC” kind of thinking, but maybe it’s just the result of comparing our inner experience to our external observations of others. It’s tempting to assume that someone with a spouse, a corporate job, a mortgage, a station wagon, a dog, and two and half kids is just living out a script - doing what’s expected - rather than living intentionally. But who’s to say they’re not struggling with the same existential questions as I am?
I think about my parents - about as normal as people get - and I recently asked if they feel normal. They said yes. When I mentioned my lifelong sense of being an outsider, my mom told me that she and my sister had once talked about something I’d done, and my sister had commented, “He’s so weird.” Strangely, that was comforting to hear. It’s not that I see being different as a bad thing - it’s more about that unanswerable question of whether I truly am different, or if I’ve just always felt that way.
Let’s go one level deeper - people who say “I feel normal” do it because saying it is part of that script of life you’re talking about, not because they believe it deep down.
Basically internal life of almost any person other than yourself is impossible to know. And you can’t trust what they say, because they might be lying even to themselves or just don’t want to reveal deep inner thoughts to anyone.
One of the few ways into private thoughts is to get someone blackout drunk. But even that is not 100% reliable.
Curious how being blackout drunk vs general anesthetic vs ketamine (when used in doses that allow it to be an alternative to anesthetic) compare. Never been drunk, but have experienced the latter two. Any part that I can remember, I had enough selfawareness to avoid answering anything I’d want to answer with a clear mind and I’ve never been told about me saying anything I don’t remember actually saying.
These opinions do not reconcile. Either you “know” people (probably because you project your beliefs onto them), or it’s impossible to really know what is in other people for sure and this is all your brand of certified speculation.
I’m gonna say I bet there are people who say they feel normal and actually believe it, rather than buying whatever this is.
Yeah, I think the answer it that question tell you more about the person’s attitude to normalcy / weirdness than how normal they are. Like you say, lots of people want to be normal (or don’t want to be seen as weird) so will present themselves that way, and keep all their divergence secret because it’s shameful.
But there’s also those people who genuinely don’t realise that people are different from them, or what most people are like. They belive that however they are is ‘normal’ and everyone who disagrees is wrong, even if they’re in the minority.