Translator: Themis Scalco Reviewer: Claudia Sander I've been a psychotherapist for more than 40 years. I'd like to tell you that, besides neurosis, besides psychosis, there's a horrible disease. It's indeed an abominable disease, which Jean-Yves Leloup, Pierre Weil and I have come to call "normosis," the pathology of normality.
I must say that maybe this is one of the delights of this great encounter, TEDxLaçador: it's that normosis is being discussed since the beginning. What is normosis? It's habits, attitudes, a group of behaviors supported by social consensus, pathogenic and pathological in some sense, to some extent.
Legal war, for instance. It's an example, perhaps the most lethal, of what normosis is. As far as I can understand, there are two founding pillars, the most important, of normosis.
One is situational, systemic. The other is evolutionary. The systemic, situational one is concerned with the fact that normosis hasn't always existed, neither will it exist forever.
Normosis is a typical disease of moments in which we are in a given context where what prevails is violence, lack of listening, carelessness, lack of responsibility, where corruption and inhumanity prevail; in just one word, egocentrism. So, being "normal" is to adapt to a sick system and keep it that way. I've been working, for more than 31 years, for the International Peace University, Unipaz.
And people think that peace means doing well, being fine; that peace is the absence of conflicts. No! Peace is the good battle.
The opposite of peace, as Chinese wisdom states, is stagnation. (Singing) How many wars will I have to win to be at peace. We need to militate for peace.
But with different weapons. The weapons of consciousness, responsibility, of compassionate love. So, likewise, health isn't the absence of symptoms.
Sometimes healthy people are those who can present symptoms. Conscious symptoms. Sometimes, even a conscious or lucid despair, a fair indignation.
This reminds me of a family parable. When my daughter Isabela was 5 years old - today she is 34 and has a son of 8 - her mother asked her, "Which is your favorite princess? Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty?
" She thought and answered, "I like all of those who faint. " Me too. Me too.
I have great respect for people who faint. Often because they have the capacity to feel in their own skin the pain, the contradictions, that normotic people can't feel. People who looked me up because of their panic syndrome, for example, were all very sensitive people, sensitive in a broader sense; they foresaw, sensed, had opened portals to perception.
Fear that isn't just your fear. It's fear of the family system. It's fear of humanity in a risk of extinction group.
It's fear of animals that are being extinguished, of forests becoming desertified. And these people faint! I have great respect for people called psychotic and neurotic.
Not everybody is competent enough to go crazy. That's the reason, in Africa, people who are considered crazy are also considered saint. Because they are like lightning rods that capture cultural and systemic contradictions.
Sometimes they sink. As Laing has already said, the difference between a saint and a crazy one is that the saint can swim where the crazy one can't and sinks. Maybe these people, at least to some extent, those we call psychotic, are actually failed saints.
I have great respect for neurotics, who at least have the decency to feel conscious pain, insomnia. The problem is normosis, it's people who don't care. It's inhumanity.
Then I remember an occasion I came here for a seminar, to teach, and the taxi driver, upon knowing I was a psychotherapist, told me, "Doctor, I have a problem at home. My son is a good boy. He's kind.
He gets up so an older person can sit down. He doesn't swear. He's kind.
. . He's a bullying target.
People mock at him, ridicule my son, what do I do with him? He's good. " Do you understand what I mean by normosis?
I should say then that all the people I admire and respect are all unadjusted. Fortunately! Like the wonderful team who organized this event!
(Applause) They swim against the tide. At this moment, it's necessary to go through a disadjustment. So, you spoke about normosis, about sexism, racism, homophobia, about several exclusions.
Normosis. . .
We could discuss environmental normosis. Normosis in ultra specialization, when someone knows almost everything about hardly anything. (Laughter) And this auditorium is now burning and each one is looking at their "minimum minimorum" and doesn't realize that their existence is meaningless.
We're inside an inexorable globalization, someone who's merely a specialist is incompetent. But it's not about defending the generalist. Isn't it what computers do?
Maybe there's a concept in this education that has been pointed out here as a possible solution, which I call vocation. It's the deepest voice of desire that has caused us to incarnate. It's what brings us to an auditorium like this.
Here we're honoring a promise we've made. We haven't come here just for a picnic. We have come to tell a story.
And only you can tell yours. If you don't tell it, it'll get lost. So, a pillar of normosis is the situational pillar.
There's another, very important one. It's the evolutionary. It's also been discussed here today.
It's the question we need to ask ourselves. What is the difference between human beings and other species? How different are we from birds, from a serpent, a monkey?
I recall a friend of ours, from Unipaz, an alternative Nobel prize in economy in developing country, Manfred Max-Neef, a Chilean. When I met him in Mendoza, he told us that since boyhood he wanted to know how humans differed from other species. It's intelligence, isn't it?
No. Is it language? No.
It's culture. No. It's humor.
No. One day, talking to his father, whom he respected very much, his dad told him, "Isn't it dumbness, son? " (Laughter) A little light went on and he says he's become the first "dumbologist.
" (Laughter) "Dumbology" is a science we must study. It's different, for example, from imbecility, which is absolutely naive. I like to remember Rolando Toro, creator of biodanza, a great brother, who used to say it's necessary to be a hypothalamic idiot, to be a good animal, allow the cerebral cortex to go on holiday.
The question is dumbness, because it's enveloped by rationality. A person can be highly dumb and highly rational; have degrees from top universities; and act like someone who's talking about development, with tables, sophisticated graphs, or act like a person sitting on the branch of a tree, sawing it. Einstein used to say that for him only two things were infinite: the universe and human dumbness.
And Einstein added, "Regarding the universe, I'm still in doubt. " (Laughter) But I need to say that I disagree with Einstein and Max-Neef, even though I respect them and consider that they're pointing not to the characteristics of the species, but to normosis. Human beings, by their nature, aren't dumb, on the contrary.
We were born to be, to blossom, to serve. That's why I prefer to think about Confucius, who said, about 2,600 years ago, that the difference between our species and others is the unfinishedness, the incompleteness. We are not born human.
We make ourselves human. A turtle is born a turtle, you see? And goes to the sea.
We don't. We are born incomplete. That's why, Confucius said, human beings need education.
Have you ever heard about schools for turtles or tanajuras? It's education, it's improvement, we're improvable. It's not only about cultivating the brain: since the 17th century it seems we just have to train the brain.
No. It's about cultivating the dimensions of the soul, of the psyche. Developing emotional intelligence, relational intelligence, oneiric intelligence - related to dreams.
Learning to read the book of the night. It's also necessary to develop consciousness literacy, to develop consciousness where ethical values from the heart come from. Confucius himself summarized his long existence like this, "At the age of 15, I geared my heart to learn.
At the age of 30, I settled my feet firmly on the ground. At age 40, I didn't feel perplexed anymore. At age 50, I knew which were heaven's precepts.
At age 60, I listened to them with the ear of idleness. At 70, I could follow the path set by my own heart because what I wanted then didn't exceed the boundaries of justice. " The same that therapists from Alexandria used to say two thousand years ago, "You change clothes in five minutes.
It takes a whole existence to change the heart. " That is the task. In this sense, normosis refers to an evolutionary stagnation.
It's about people who didn't invest in human potential, per se. That's why I like to believe that the greatest discovery of the 21st century will the human being. Otherwise, the question is, will there be a 21st century for humans?
That's exactly what is at stake: the future of new generations. Therefore, normosis is terrible, because it's insidious, it's silent, people don't realize it. It's not easy to become a human being.
Darwin didn't understand human evolution. He was a naturalist. He explained the natural evolution of human beings, but humans, according to Teilhard de Chardin, is the space where nature itself can learn, can know about itself, to be, to smile, to pray, to serve.
Somebody asked an ipe tree, "Tell me about God. " And the ipe blossomed. There's perhaps just one way to talk about the great mystery of life: blooming, as the human beings we potentially are.
So, I still want to tell you a story we tell at Unipaz. More than 30 years ago, Betinho learned about this story. There was once a burning forest.
And all the animals were running away, all of them. Except a hummingbird, that would get a drop of water from a water source and toss into the fire. And it would return, resiliently, get another drop, and toss it into the fire.
And it would return, patiently, iwith its wings burning already, and it would toss it into the fire. A runaway armadillo, upon seeing that, said, "But, hummingbird, do you think that with these ridiculous drops, you will end this hellish blaze? " And the hummingbird replies, "I know I won't, armadillo friend.
But, I'm doing my part. " We're very tired of revolutionaries, of people who want to change the world, society; very often meaning well but always in an arrogant fashion, without transforming themselves first. It's not our task to change others neither the world.
Each one of us is a small part of a public park, and our first responsibility is to introduce a bit of peace, a bit of order, a bit of love to this small part of the big world that has been assigned to us. And if we can't do that, how can we be facilitators of transformation? That's why revolutions have failed and keep failing.
I like to talk about the conspiracy which is to breathe consciously; with oneself, with another, with others, with the world and with mystery. I recommend a book to you, "The Aquarian Conspiracy," by Marilyn Ferguson, who has deeply studied these spontaneous transinstitutional movements from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. The hummingbird doesn't have any ideology.
It doesn't advocate any causes. It's not blaming anybody. It's not pushing anybody.
It's doing its part. And that we can do. We can stand.
We can do our part. As a matter of fact, since this morning I've seen hummingbirds come, each of them speaking about their own drop of water. And all of you here in this room, will one day be here, not necessarily on this arena, but on the arena of your life, telling your story, and tossing your drop of water, because we can always light a candle rather than complain about darkness.
I'd like to conclude saying that this is indeed a time to rethink. It's also time not to think. Meditation.
Because when our minds go blank, our cups overflow. It's renovation season. I love poets.
I believe kindness, compassionate love and poetry will save the world. I'd like to conclude with a poem by Cecilia Meireles, "Renovate yourself. Be reborn in yourself.
Multiply your eyes, so as to see more. Multiply your arms to sow all you can. Destroy the eyes that have already seen.
Create new ones, for new sights. Destroy the arms that have sown, so they forget to harvest. Be always the same.
Always another. But always high. Always far away.
And inside everything. " Thank you very much.
