I often wonder about notions of normality and weirdness. Obviously there's a whole spectrum to it, with a lot of wiggle room between the slightly odd and mind blowing eldritch horrors (imagine a nightshift at Walmart). For the most part though our common conception of the abnormal seems to be just that, a deviation from the norm. Or rather something anomalous in context of our frame of reference and the attribution of a negative connotation. Could be as simple as ordering ketchup on your hotdog, instead of adhering to a somewhat arbitrary local tradition. Does it really matter? Maybe, maybe not.
Beyond that I suppose you could consider some expressions of weirdness as displays of apparent dysfunctionality, some of which the average person might see as red flags. Like a guy with a combover who doesn't brush his teeth, wears a pair of mismatching tube socks, and keeps invading your personal space during unsolicited conversations. Might not be pathological, but might as well be (in their eyes). That's the sort of stuff you'll be judged upon and will determine your social status. And that's just your appearance. Then there's the whole deal with what's going on in your head and the things you end up saying.
Personally I think most people aren't actually interested in the truth, or coming to some kind of rational consensus after carefully weighing arguments. I get it, because I don't like debating about "the Jesus" while standing in line for milk either, but that's the tip of the iceberg. I'm talking about the kind of social chameleons that generally treat communication like some sort of political calculus. They don't actually care, they're just reflecting the status quo and apply that opportunistically.
Now, this might be a little unfair, but imagine an archetype of a person who becomes a royalist during WW1, a nazi during WW2, a socialist in the GDR, and keeps going from there. Meanwhile in a larger context neither the German Empire, nor the Third Reich, or the German Democratic Republic were exactly normal. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, but I'd be willing to bet back then millions and millions of people might thought otherwise. To them it WAS normal and so it went. Were they normal? I bet they thought they were.
By the way, there were social experiments involving group consensus. Basically they hired a bunch of actors and them conspire against individual probands, during phony group discussions. In some versions they were told to disagree with whatever the proband was saying, or to disagree with him on some seemingly obvious facts. Like the curtains were blue but they kept saying the curtains were red. I believe only a minority of probands managed to see through the game and most either submitted to the group or were driven into a mental breakdown. Might have been B. F. Skinner, but ChatGPT argues it was Solomon Asch.
Just mentioning the latter part to illustrate the psychological toll of standing against groupthink. It's not easy. Same goes in terms of more conventional authority figures, as seen with the Milgram Experiment.
I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about psychology of human being. It is true that living in any society we will have the "norm" that is considered to be normal in that particular area, country, society and there are always two group of people one who blindly accept that, without consideration if that was true or not but others although they understand that it is not right but they do not reveal themselves because they do not have problem. Such people might still follow their way of believe but will try to do it openly. By the way, I forgot about the third group when people will not be able to keep silent and openly protest this tend to be a small group and often they have no chance to break through.
I come again and again to Ukraine war and how nowadays we see that there is a large group of people in Berlin who demonstrating against further support for Ukraine. What I always wonder if those people would be Ukrainian and if that would be them and their families who would suffer and receive no support and hearing that war need to stop and they need to give up what would be their reaction?
I believe for us who are away from such conflict it is always easy to choose a side and present arguments I do not want to be in such position. It is hard but we all know that it is so easy to manipulate people and there are many who know very well the "art of human psychology". Thank you for such great comment and for a chance to think about the issues.
I've more or less given up on understanding the Russio-Ukrainian War. I remember being heavily invested during the events of Euromaidan, but that was more than a decade ago and I'm sure the conflict will keep on going for decades to come (in some way or form). Personally I just think there's a lot of naive young men on both sides who are being fed into a meat grinder, only benefiting old farts suffering from some strange type of erectile dysfunction. Although, that's a little unfair, because we made a lot of progress and nowadays there's women killing people, too. So there's that.
Anyhow. Robert Anton Wilson used to write about a concept he coined reality tunnels. Basically he argued we're being constantly bombarded with unfathomable amounts of data. So much so we can't even hope to parse a fraction of it, hence we're forced to pick and choose. Some of it might be conscious, most of it happens subconsciousley. When you start focusing on a specific number you start seeing it more often. Doesn't mean a change of distribution, just a shift of perception. That said. Once you're looking for reasons to hate somebody you'll always find more reasons to do so.
To tie a bow on this post. I think one of the most beautiful moments in modern history was the 1914 Christmas Truce.
That is true the moment peace for Christmas time after 5 years of war for who and what for? This is also something that children here learn in School when time comes to Christmas, of course, good but still silly to gather together one evening and kill each other following days.
I wouldn't blame them for it. Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory seems like a good illustration of the potential backlash the participants were facing. Later on the Nazis had a law called Wehrkraftzersetzung, that among other things was meant to punish soldiers who (vocally) doubted victory. Probably in part because decades earlier the Great War was cut short by a naval mutiny, or rather something Hitler types would end up feeling very Dolchstoßlegende about. The kind of nincompoops who keep on gambling trying to cover their ever-increasing loses. But next spring they're going to win. This time for sure!
There's certainly some romanticism to that whole notion of a heroic death, when it's more or less just a glorified pawn sacrifice. Meanwhile pawns actually refusing to strike eachother? Now that's very bad news indeed. The King told me you should be more like that brave cowboy from Dr. Strangelove, who rode that bomb into target and ushered in the apocalypse while waving his 10-gallon hat. Be less like Stanislav Petrov, who refused to press the red button back in 1983.
Great insight!