Dr. Gabor Maté - The Myth of “Normal”

One of the talks that I give is entitled "The Myth of Normal" which is to say that we think that there are people who are normal over here and then there is the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, or addiction or shizoprenia, or Bypolar disorder or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or any number of other conditions. What I see is a continuum. They we are all in continuum. These traits to one degree or another are present in almost everybody. And it's a mythology to think that there is the "normal" and there's the "abnormal". According to the research, the best place to be a shizophrenic in the world is not North America with all its pharmacopoeia; It's actually in village in Africa or in India - where there is acceptance, where people make room for your "differentness" where connection is not broken but is maintained, where you are not excluded and ostracized but you are welcomed, and were there is room for you to act out whatever you need to act out or to express whatever you need to express. Where the whole community might even sing with you or chant with you or hold ceremony with you and maybe find some meaning in your "craziness". It is contextual and it is cultural. So, disease is not an isolated phenomena of the individual - - it's culturally manufactured or culturally constructed paradigm. Society that cuts us off from our spirituality that cuts us off from society by idealizing individualism and by destroying social contexts - which is our society does - which ignores our emotianal needs is going to be a society which generates pathology. I think it has to do with very nature of the economic system that says that what matters is not who you are but how you are valued by others. And our society values people - it's materialistic society which specificaly means that what we value is not who people are but what they produce or what they consume. And the people that neither consume nor do produce are shunned to the side  and totally devalued. Hence the rejection of the old people because they no longer pursue to produce and not rich enough to consume either. So, the very nature of this materialistic society dictates, generates and promotes that separation from ourselves. There is an intelligence - and I'm not speaking about an operative creature up there or out there somewhere doing things and deciding things - but there is an inteligence in Nature and Creation that if we ignore we are creating suffering for ourselves and other people. And aligning with that intelligence and aligning with that connection is really - wheter we do so consciously or whether we do so because we are called to do that in ways that manifest compassion and connection and love - that's the way we're meant to be. Recognizing this and striving for this is what I call spirituality. The paths are many, some find it through religion sometimes religion is an obstacle to that - in fact, often it is - but it may be a conduit to it as well depending who and how and where, it's what people are seeking, many other that paths are not religious but fundamentally there's this spiritual nature that if we ignore, we are actually ignoring an essential part of ourselves.