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“Does Normal need to be Redefined?”
Presented by Malwina Stinson

Does the term normal need to be redefined? 

As we evolve our understanding of what constitutes 'normal' also changes. Historically, the word normal comes from the latin for a right angle, used by carpenters, to ensure correct alignment of parts. In Victorian times when statistics became commonly used in theoretical and applied social sciences, the word normal started to be used frequently to describe individuals and groups. The collection and sharing of large amounts of data about people leads to comfort in making conclusions about what is normal and abnormal, but there are so many factors involved in our ideas of what’s normal there isn’t any consensus on what normal means any longer, except for very defined medical and legal issues. 

Normal used to mean you were born into a way of life, usually class divided, and fulfilled the expectations of your class; such as achieving a certain level of education, working, marrying and procreation, according to fairly narrow expectations. Without being able to travel and without access to much information being born as a serf or a noble made up the majority of what normal meant for you. 

We now have more information available to us and more opportunities to move beyond what our family or community thinks is normal and to include more variation in what normal means to us. Instead of waiting to see what future generations will think is normal, we could purposely define normal to better reflect our current reality, both on an individual and societal level. Do we need to redefine what it means to be normal, as our way of life is quickly changing? 

Redefining normal with modern insights in an ethical and purposeful manner requires consensus on the scope of the definition and the comparative data used. 

Let’s take a look at how we can redefine what is a “normal” person and what leads us to want to redefine “normal”? Would a new definition be helpful or is it unnecessary? Do we want a definition to include as many people as possible or do we want a definition that allows for the easy differentiation to point out individuality? 

Here are a few points I think we could delve into: including but not limited to;

1.  Define normal - individual normality is behaviour consistent with that person’s common behaviour. Social normality is conformity to a large group’s shared common and accepted often informal set of behaviours.  

2. The impact of technology and social media on our perceptions of normal. This is especially evident in younger generations. 

3. The role of cultural and socioeconomic differences in defining what is considered normal.

4. The medical definition of 'normal,' particularly in relation to psychological, psychiatric and physical norms, and how that impacts what governmental institutions do, or don’t do for individuals and groups. Normal often means an absence of disease or disability. In the past abnormal people were segregated from society. Now there is greater attempts to integrate differently abled individuals, with an understanding that differences are normal in large populations. 

5.  How institutions carry inherent or outdated biases about what's normal, affecting individuals who don't necessarily fit into the statistical norms used to create institutions’ structures.  Examples include economic status and racism influencing who has access to which schools, medical treatments, and employment. 

6. How the definition of 'normal' has changed with passing generations, and whether this evolution allows us to predict what future generations might consider normal.

We could also consider how to define normal for ourselves as individuals, families, communities, regions, countries and as a whole of humanity, since some aspects of these change faster than others in terms of what is considered normal.