"expecting the majority of people not to be insinctively disgusted by your sexual practices is anti-social."
You should not make such strong statements, you betray poor knowledge of history.
Ancient Greece, and Rome here were were quite accepting of homosexuality. Hiduis have entire temples with states engaging in various sexual activity, including honosexual, group sex, etc.
Also what is "being anti-social"? Like what does it mean in this context - is anyone disagreeing with 'status quo' antisocial?
Was Ghandi anti-social, are histers and goths antisocial?
It might be a construct but it's not fictional? The very "subscribing to" the social order is what makes it real. There are very real (social) consequences for people who go against the grain too much.
No! It's just the normality, from a statistical point of view.
People have the right to expect statistical normality in other people. Respecting everyone is fundamental, but people cannot be required to anticipate anyone's quirk.
> No! It's just the normality, from a statistical point of view.
No. Cultural normality may at times be very similar with, but is not the same dimension as statistical normality.
It's easy to see in soon-to-envelope-the-world trends.
A small sub-sect of people do something abnormal, the image generated is pushed throughout society and media as an actionable concept (sociocultural normal), and then the trend becomes achievable en masse. If the trend is a huge hit, everyone does it (statistically normal).
>People have the right to expect statistical normality in other people.
Let me play devils' advocate here for a moment.
Apply that argument to any sociocultural phenomenon or identity, and see if the argument seems humane and considerate.
That statement precludes a lot of people, and I don't think it's anywhere near a right.
It is not clever to call it "a right to expect normality in other people". You have the freedom to have wrong expectations about other people and should not be punished for that, as long as you change your assumptions once you know the persons reality and don't mistreat them for not matching your expectations. And that last part is not that easy because people tend to not verify assumptions, yet act quickly and in hostile ways to perceived failure to fulfill expectations.
Note the closeness of "Expecting someone to do/be something" and notice how many in this thread tell stories of trying to have a normal sleep-cycle, failing, getting shunned by society, being unable to function properly after forcing themselves to conform, feeling wrong, feeling defective, and that over decades, often going back to childhood. People compare it to left-handedness and how our society mishandled those in the past, and are fearful our society might expect them, even consider it normal, to get chemical treatment in the near future. People try to fulfill absurd expectations and suffer from it.
The way you phrased your demand makes you sound ego-maniacal, like you demand a right to mistreat people for not matching your expectation, like you blame your lack of empathy and decency on them being quirky, like you disrespect people for not being normal. Those are the worst interpretations of your words. There is some truth in the best interpretation, i can see that, see the freedom i mentioned above, but that "being disgusted", "anti-social" and "tyrannical" in your now flagged comment doesn't sound like you are "fundamentally respecting everyone" at all.
> People have the right to expect statistical normality in other people.
Except, that there often is a disconnect between statistical normality, and normality. For the longest time, people were expected to be men, despite how glaringly obvious that is false.
Still, people are often expected to be rich (median wealth in US is below 100k), well-educated (more than half have no degree).
Our society is still filled with things we expect to be normal, but it is often unclear which becomes first. Is society starting up at 7am because there are few night owls, or are there few night owls because society starts up at 7am in the morning?
I'm not sure about that. To keep with the examples you stated earlier as being normative (namely being disgusted by homosexuality and being an early riser), for example, I am neither. Which according to your opinion is abnormal and should be shunned by society, because you consider not shunning homosexuals and nightowls anti-social. That sounds fairly dogmatic in these specific cases, and in general the attitude that minority behavior and tolerance of minority behavior should both be punished is itself a dogma.
To be fair, I don't see how dogma is avoidable. My assertion that minority lifestyles should not be shunned as long as they don't harm anyone is also dogmatic. It's just that we all have a habit of calling principles we disagree with dogma.
But if I had one shot to change your mind about this specific issue, my argument would be like this: there are so many opinions to be had and so many behaviors to engage in. Chances are, you are yourself also holding opinions or doing activities that are not shared by the majority. Do you consider those tendencies abnormal and anti-social? You may not like homosexuals or nightowls, but surely there are things where you diverge from the statistical everydayman? Would you then apply those policies of social repercussions to these activities by default because their existence threatens the integrity of the majority? And if so, why do you allow yourself those outlier behaviors, but don't apply the same tolerance to others?
> expeting the majority of people not to expect you to be productive at 8.00 AM is anti-social
> expecting the majority of people not to be insinctively disgusted by your sexual practices is anti-social
I strongly object to this characterization.
How is letting people live their life "tiranny (sic) of the minority"? You think instinctive disgust for other lifestyles is and should be the norm?
I realize that the term diversity has been poisoned in public discussion, but for lack of a better term: diverse cultures are stronger, both in biology and I would argue socially as well. On the other hand, the authoritarian monoculture you advocate is a joyless and brittle construct that has to be policed strongly and viciously all the time or it will fall apart immediately, and it also doesn't have any immune response to radicalizing forces.
In this specific case, a society with nightowls can do more than one without. There are plenty of jobs that have shifts where not being a nightowl destroys people. An ex girlfriend of mine had to do regular night shifts at the hospital. It became a real health issue for her, but me being a nightowl freelance programmer at the time voluntarily keeping the same schedule, I was doing just fine.
Being a nightowl is also a social equalizer to an extent, because it allows people who are not rich enough to live distraction-free lives to carve out a time of the day where interuptions are virtually non-existent.
Good point, thank you! I have the bad habit of editing posts for a few minutes until they're done, and posting raw versions as I'm working on them. I should probably stop that.
