Sounds stupid I know. I mean really what is normal????????? Alot of people tell me "Most normal people would do this" and stuff like that. If I do somethin that is consider not "NORMAL" in their eyes then they look at me like I'm stupid. They say I'm weird. I mean I'm just having fun and/or being myself. Since when is it a crime 2 be yourself!?? Why is it that if u do somethin that alot of people consider not "NORMAL" they look at u like ur stupid?? So being yourself is considered "WEIRD"??? There may be somethin that u like 2 do that someone else may think is weird. I believe u should be yourself and be different, but if u do people then turn around and say your "WEIRD" So basically what is normal? and why is it that if u do somethin "DIFFERENT" they say ur weird?
Each person will have their own ideas of what is normal. In general what is considered to be "normal" is something that is generally accepted by the majority individuals in a society. What is normal in one society or country might be considered abnormal in another society or country. It looks like most of the answers to this question have been around for the last 7 years and the asker has not picked one. That could easily be considered as not normal.
What you see on average, is what's normal. Example: if you see a person hiccuping that usually normal but if its nonstop for days or months, that's most likely not normal. Also if a person was born with something like six fingers on each hand may not seem normal to us but it is normal to that person. So sometimes it's an individual thing that no one else will understand.
iI you really want a sociological answer then look up Foucault's work for his influential argument on how the the 'normal/ pathological' dyad replaced the evil/good dyad to become the focal point of governance in the dispersed discourses of power in the early 19th century.
'Normalisation' is the central way we are governed and govern ourselves and others. This mode of social control, introduced first in the newly medicalised discourses of the new modern insitutions of the teaching hospital, the panopticon prisons and the mental asylum , was based no longer on the torture of the body but on the detailed control and surveillance of the body of the person needing reformation. This reformative discourse was then dispersed through schools factories, welfare and health programmes right into the private sphere of the family and ,even deeper, into our own consciousnesses So we became constant 'on the ground' surveillance officers dominating each other, and our own, behaviour by the key judgement 'are you behaving normally or pathologically?'
This is such a powerful way of speaking and thinking that we locked people, especially women, away for years if they did not conform to the 'normal' way that women should act. (see ref 2 below)
So using Foucault, 'normal, normal normal ' is our dispersed and ongoing form of subjugation.
Paradoxically though Foucault points out that this is also a positive In being subjected to normalisation, we create our subjectivites or 'selves 'through 'it. Whether we conform to, or (for example in yours and in Foucault's own case,) resist the discourse ...... ... either way .... we are still subjected to, and by, it.
"Normal" is a description for how society expects one to behave. I personally believe that "normal" seeming people are actually crazy/scared of not being accepted/fearful of being themselves because NO ONE actually fits the definition. There is nothing wrong with being yourself! Continue to be you regardless of what your peers say. They probably secretly wish they could be just like you and not care what others think. Normal is boring. Period.