@soatok I leaned into this mentality a very long time ago.

I guess being a babyfur gave me the drive to be like "fuck it, this makes me feel good and doesn't hurt anyone so imma enjoy myself."

@soatok
https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutta

As the Buddha taught in the Kalama sutra:
But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering’, then you should give them up.

The whole sutra is an encouragement for free thought, free inquiry, and for questioning authority and tradition.

@soatok a lot of times I find myself seeing the word "normal" as meaning "consistent with norms", which is honestly way more useful for ignoring it than the common definition of " the most common expected behavior".

Something can be completely normal (of norms) even if doesn't reflect anyone's actual behavior or experience.

@soatok

Take a look at some of the extraordinary videos of my multi talented client I’ve posted here.

She used to think something was wrong with her for years. But in reality she’s exceptionally artistically creative in a number of ways.

@soatok Normal is the opposite of being interesting and unique.

Fitting norm is still a thing but it always ends the same and predictable.

As long as what people do makes them and others happy and fulfilled there is no question its the right way to be 💜

@soatok

Normal is boring. Normal never once managed anything extraordinary. Normal cannot and will not save your life.

Give me the weird. Give me the abstract thinkers. Give me the people who don't see the world the way everyone else does. Hell, I'll even take the people who see things no one else can.

They're seventy thousand times more interesting than normal people. And they might have insight into how we survive normality destroying this world.

@soatok

Forty-seven years (and counting) on this rock, and I'm pretty sure that "normal" is a statistical artifact at best, a massed delusion at worst. "Normal" just means "what we think other people are comfortable around."

Whether something is harmful, healing, or harmless is a much easier variable to evaluate for, and objectively a better guidepost.

I don't always care about making people comfortable. I *do* care about doing minimal harm.

@soatok I use "normal" as a put-down for, well, normies.

I mean, who the fuck wants to be "normal"?

@soatok

Everybody got to deviate from the norm

@soatok we traded “Normal” for “Baseline”

Normal is a circularly desire for an acceptable state of being .

Baseline is a starting point to which one may or may not return, a place where all journeys start

@soatok I'm a cosplayer, kig, and a furry.

Nothing I do while practising these hobbies is harmful. In fact, it is anything but. I have had good and bad reactions, of course, like other furries and cosplayers, but the positive ones way outnumber the negatives.

Even if it's knowing that people still remember an obscure 1980s Saturday Morning cartoon about anthro characters fighting toads. 🤣

@soatok oh.

OH.

Thank you for that. I think it's exactly what I needed.

@soatok also "normal" is such a flawed word, because it silently conflates "typical, common" with normative "as it should be", with so many people not realizing this.

My pet peeve is that both N-words: "normal" and "natural", should not be used anymore.

@soatok homophobia is normal

racism is normal

misogyny is normal

“normal” isn’t a particularly good metric for if something is okay, let alone good lol

@soatok When I began to study statistics, it confirmed my self-concept that I was pretty good at math, but it absolutely undercut my half-baked ideas about every aspect of what was "normal" for human beings. At first, this was bewildering, because despite being good at math, I was mostly a dumb oddball of a kid. Over time, though, it was liberating.

What anyone who studies the reality of living organisms, human beings in particular, understands: even if some hypothetical person occupied the "central tendency" of every single trait that a human can possess, that in itself would make them an extremely rare and "not normal" human specimen.

Variation is the only "normal" we can ever have, thankfully.