The Myth of Normal 6

Why Normal Is a Myth (And Why That Matters) The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. —Erich Fromm, The Sane Society In the most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well. Health and wellness have become a modern fixation. Multibillion-dollar industries bank on people’s ongoing investment—mental and emotional, not to mention financial—in endless quests to eat better, look younger, live longer, or feel livelier, or simply to suffer fewer symptoms. We encounter would-be bombshells of “breaking health news” on magazine covers, in TV news stories, omnipresent advertising, and the daily deluge of viral online content, all pushing this or that mode of self-betterment. We do our best to keep up: we take supplements, join yoga studios, serially switch diets, shell out for genetic testing, strategize to prevent cancer or dementia, and seek medical advice or alternative therapies for maladies of the body, psyche, and soul. And yet our collective health is deteriorating. What is happening? How are we to understand that in our modern world, at the pinnacle of medical ingenuity and sophistication, we are seeing more and more chronic physical disease as well as afflictions such as mental illness