I grew up in a small town, where people were, for the most part, small minded. I mimicked the speach I heard every day and started to believe what I heard and what I was saying. I got approval for that, because that was normal.
I joined the army and became what was normal there. Spoke the way they spoke, talked about the same things, acted the way that the guys would act. I got approval for that, because that was normal.
I left the army, met a different group of people (academics) and started learning what -their- normal was and melded myself to that. Throughout my whole life I have acted 'normal' depending on what my situation was, and that has been incredibly helpful in a lot of ways because it helped me fit in.
Now, I am trying not to overreact and trying to remain rational, but I did want to point out that the tone of your post comes across as quite condescending, the way one would talk to a young child. I just wanted to point it out because it's a trigger for me. I doubt you meant it to come across that way, but I'm oversensitive to that sort of thing.
The point I was trying to make wasn't that learning what is moral is the same as learning what is normal. To learn what morality is takes a lot more work than learning what normalcy is. My point was purely that it is entirely possible to learn normalcy from things other than a trusted person. Morality is an entirely different animal, and takes critical thinking processes to learn if you can't trust someone to teach you.
See here's the problem, not all of us can trust someone to guide us and therefore must rely on ourselves alone. I'm saying it's possible to become a 'normal and moral' person without that guidance.
I joined the army and became what was normal there. Spoke the way they spoke, talked about the same things, acted the way that the guys would act. I got approval for that, because that was normal.
I left the army, met a different group of people (academics) and started learning what -their- normal was and melded myself to that. Throughout my whole life I have acted 'normal' depending on what my situation was, and that has been incredibly helpful in a lot of ways because it helped me fit in.
Now, I am trying not to overreact and trying to remain rational, but I did want to point out that the tone of your post comes across as quite condescending, the way one would talk to a young child. I just wanted to point it out because it's a trigger for me. I doubt you meant it to come across that way, but I'm oversensitive to that sort of thing.
The point I was trying to make wasn't that learning what is moral is the same as learning what is normal. To learn what morality is takes a lot more work than learning what normalcy is. My point was purely that it is entirely possible to learn normalcy from things other than a trusted person. Morality is an entirely different animal, and takes critical thinking processes to learn if you can't trust someone to teach you.
See here's the problem, not all of us can trust someone to guide us and therefore must rely on ourselves alone. I'm saying it's possible to become a 'normal and moral' person without that guidance.