Joe PolishFounder of Genius Network and President of Piranha Marketing

Gabor Maté: The Hidden Dangers of What We Call “Normal”

19 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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A speaker (Gabor Maté) argues that contemporary society, despite technological and cultural achievements, is a 'toxic culture' because it denies essential human needs. He contrasts the medical meaning of 'normal'—a biologically healthy range like blood pressure or body temperature—with the social use of 'normal', warning that what is familiar in society is often mistaken for healthy and natural, when in fact those conditions can make people sick.

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I'm saying that this society that we're living in is a toxic culture because it, for all its incredible technological and economic, scientific and cultural achievements, it denies essential human needs. And the final comment I'll make is that in medicine, when we talk about normal, we're talking about the range of biological conditions within which human life can sustain itself. So below or above a certain range of blood pressures, you know, you can't live if it's too low or too high, you die. Or body temperature, There's a normal range, in which sense the normal is equated with healthy and natural. But we make the mistake in society that we think that the conditions that we used to, and therefore we think they're normal, are also healthy and natural. No, they're not. They make us sick.