Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal

I’ve started reading Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture and there is a lot of good info in there.

Maté’ writes, “I will make the case that much of what passes for normal in our society, is neither healthy nor natural. And that to meet modern society’s criteria for normality, is in many ways, to conform to requirements that are profoundly abnormal in regards to our nature given needs, which is to say, unhealthy and harmful on the physiological, mental, and even spiritual levels.”

This is consistent with what he has been writing about for years. And I recognize that this message is consistent with what Indigenous leaders have been saying for decades, and is consistent with the values and norms in many non-Western cultures.

It is not “normal” for societies to prioritize corporations, and bottom lines and profits over people, and families and communities.

The way Western culture is organized pulls apart the foundations of healthy families and communities.

Western society, led in many ways by the US because of colonialism, is making us sick, in mind and body and spirit.

We need to make serious changes, and some of those changes are within our reach and within our spheres of influence.

I do not blame people for “quiet quitting,” for folks to not want to work at minminum wage jobs that cannot keep them housed and fed.

It is not all just in our minds that this society and out culture and our jobs can be soul sucking, mind numbing, or alientating, they very much are and our bodies are bearing the burdens.