Snow Ball Paper - additional quotes

What is normal?
Of Excerpt 3 from Chapter 1 of The Politics of Experience, author R.D. Laing describes the concequences of being normal in society and the affects of normality has on man-kind. "What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being." (Excerpt 3 from Ch. 1 - Laing R.D.) Laing believes that what is taught to be normal, in society, does not necessarily have a positive outcome on those who are not normal, but destroys ones inner self of what he/she considers normal. Because one experiences many situations of what is right and what is wrong, it is in ones behavior to believe that there is a certain kind of normality in ones perception of what normal really is.


"There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically 'normal' forms of alienaion. The 'normally' alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane." (Excerpt 3 from Ch. 1 - Laing R.D.)

"Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, an thus to be normal." (Excerpt 3 from Ch. 1 - Laing R.D.)



"But what we think is less than what we know: what we know is less than what we love: what we love is so much less than what ther is. And to tha precise extent we are so much less than what we are." (Excerpt 3 from Ch. 1 - Laing R.D.)