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Health, like beauty, is averages. If you take a group of people and average them, the resulting person is very likely considered pretty and healthy. https://le
by shawn 8y ago
Health, like beauty, is averages. If you take a group of people and average them, the resulting person is very likely considered pretty and healthy.
https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/average_faces_01.jpg https://leadingpersonality.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/avera...
https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-faces-of-men-and-women-around-the-world/ https://leadingpersonality.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/average-...
There are evolutionary reasons for preferring averages. And the further you deviate from average behavior, the bigger the risk you run.
- Brian_K_White 8y agoSo health and rightness and validity are a popularity contest? On average, a lot of people do a lot of things that I am happy to be deviant from. A lot of people eat at McDonalds and bury themselves in credit and loan debt. That overwhelming popularity does not all by itself constitute validity.
- qpooqpoo 8y agoBut "mental health" also implies specific value judgements which are relative to the dominant ideology of a society or civilization. It's these value judgements that determine how the "averages" or the data in general, is interpreted. For example, if you lived in the middle ages and you were a radical atheist, no doubt that under that system of education and propaganda, you would have been deemed by that society to be "mentally ill" (or similar contemporary equivalent). The charge of "mental illness" or psychological pathology in general, has throughout history been weaponized to isolate and/or suppress politically incorrect or heretical ideas that run totally counter to the prevailing world-views.