Is everybody disfunctional?

Question

Do some just hide it better than others? Or, are there really some people who aren't wacked out?

Answer 1

"Or, are there really some people who aren't wacked out?"

I think this gets to the point....is there *anyone* who isn't dysfunctional in some way? Consider for a moment what the word means: things work, but in a messed-up, generally unhealthy way. And....some third party gets to decide *where* the bar is, what the standard is, and what "messed-up" is.

So yeah, I think you can pick one of the following, keeping in mind that *my take* on it is probably a mixture of both of these things:

--Yes, I do think there are some people who aren't whacked out. However, and I think much of human history backs me up here...this is rare. People have to be *really* lucky in order to avoid being "whacked out" in *any sense* of the word. They have to have good parents, not live in poverty, have good siblings (or no brothers/sisters at all), have to make good grades in school (but not too good) and have lots of friends (but only of the right sort).

And it goes on and on. Essentially you have to *start* from a position, or a life, where all of your *Big* ducks, are lined up in a row: social, economic, family, faith, everything....on the big issues that involve how you connect with and relate to humanity, everything has to be *well done to perfect* from the get-go, from Day One. From *birth*.

--Which leads me to this: Maybe the bar is too high. Maybe we have an unrealistically *high* definition of "functional", given the nature of the times, given that many of us live in a society where *Wal-Mart* is the only employer who is hiring, and they never hire for the kinds of full-time labor with benefits that can *let* someone be comfortably self-sufficient, and going *without welfare*. Really, if you can spot patterns at all, you can spot *this one*....We've lost *too many* jobs where people can earn a full-time wage with benefits, and they've been *replaced* with jobs that insist on temps, part-timers, and zero-perk, dead-end labor for all. Which has the effect of killing off *all hope* for self-sufficiency, and a comfortable, *Non*-dysfunctional life.

But I digress. Sorry.

My point is: We've always done better as human beings when our goals and expectations are *high BUT ALSO attainable*. We do better when we know that we *can* in fact get there and *can* in fact meet the standard.

And with every decade since the 1970s, the bar keeps getting raised higher and higher in terms of what's "functional", and it gets raised on a geometric curve. It gets raised for economic needs, for what people have to make to both raise children and buy a house at the same time, while staying self-sufficient...

And this bar-raising goes *double* for social situations, for the peer pressure kids feel at school, for the pressure adults feel from peers and managers at work, from the neighbors, from everyone else around them.

The bar, socially, economically, keeps getting raised, "functional" keeps getting re-defined and put further and further out of reach.

It used to be, that as long as you worked for a living, and were polite, kind and gentle to everyone you met, that *that worked* as functional, and people didn't pry into the rest. Now we do....now our presidents have to be *celibate* practically to keep their sex lives from being turned into a political angle. Among other things.

Basically...."normal" ends up being a distant dream, something the Media likes to trot out once in a while, to polish up and use to sell more poisoned Chinese goods. For the most part....ordinary, non-CEO, non-billionaire folks have to settle for "whatever works" and hang in there as best they can, because it just seems like there's no "getting there", no meeting the standard, no end to the endless bar-raising and being told "you're not good enough."

Really. If more people *could* meet their goals in life, do so definitively and get it *done*, we'd have more functional people and a lot *less* dysfunction.

Hope this helps. ^_^ Thanks for your time.

Answer 2

Everybody has something. Some people hide it better, but it is always there.

Answer 3

Yes, everyone is nuts, crazy, dysfunctional, whatever you want to call it. Some are crazy because we think they are normal.

Have a Crazy Day.