Email: The examined life [SD]

I think human beings have more commonalities than differences. This is what makes developmental psychology and everything Pia [Mellody] teaches work, after all. Again, it depends on what we are talking about. Oxygen is normal for you just as oxygen is normal for me. No arguments there. When it comes to preferences, there are norms and generalities -- but also some divergences and differences. For instance, I could tell you from five years of scanning women’s personals ads that if it is a black woman’s ad, it has an 8 in 10 chance of being written all in capital letters.

I think observation is the great teacher for any person who hopes to comment or draw inferences on norms as well as differences. I think my journalism career has given me many opportunities to observe industry and society and to make observations about “what is really going on.” (Polling and surveys are actually a very precise specialization of investigative journalism.) As it is, I don’t think you could take a room of 100 people and find 100 opinions; you would find one majority opinion, one (or two) minority opinions, and a handful of people with opinions that didn’t fit those generalizations or that were truly unique.

This is a far cry from saying “we are all unique, we all have a different perception of what normal is to each individual.” I often ponder what people really mean by that. (Does how I taste nutmeg differ from how you taste nutmeg?) I suspect they just don’t understand others, so they conclude it is all a mishmash; we have more divergence than convergence. My lifelong experience tells me otherwise. Yes, certain populations will have greater values-based differences than others: Muslims to Mormons to Japanese to goth teens and so on. However, I do believe that I understand a person if I know him well enough to predict (or suspect) what he is going to do or say, and in fact that is what happens.

I didn’t suggest that you go see What the Bleep Do We Know? I said it would blow your mind and you would not be able to understand it. One thing at a time! I again suggest that you work on the personal issues that are so greatly occupying your attention right now.