Again, I think you are severely misunderstanding what I'm asking about here. If I come across as rude or anything now, I apologize in advance. I do not intend to be, but some of what I'm about to say may seem rude, simply because I'm running out of ways to explain what I mean. So, again, sorry if this ends up seeming rude, it is not meant to be.
Your previous posts seemed to try to explain what is a good way of living versus a bad way of living. I didn't ask about neither of those. They seemed to try and explain what you'd view as good and bad norms. Again, that is not what I asked about. You seemed to try and explain what is positive and negative to desire. Yet again, this is not what I asked about. Actually, unless there is a tie-in to my actual question about the definition somewhere that I've missed, these seem pretty much completely irrelevant to what I asked about.
I asked in hopes of getting a definition of the word "normal"; a universal (relative to the context of the question this was to be used with) definition of the word itself. A definition would be objective, and not take into account what is good nor bad. For example a definition of the dollar, quoting Wikipedia:
The dollar (often represented by the dollar sign: "$") is the name of the official currency of many countries, including the [list of countries]
It doesn't say anything about whether the dollar is a good currency, nor if the current economical model in general is positive or negative.
"Normal", in the context I presented above, is a slightly more diffuse word. Some subjectiveness will likely be required regardless of trying to be objective, but it shouldn't touch the subjects of what is personally considered good or bad.
I did create my own definition prior to posting about how people here would define the word, but chose to hold it back a bit as I wanted to see how people would define it hopefully removing any chance that my definition would influence others, or lead to "what you said" responses rather than actual definitions... however, I guess I should post after all as an aid to what I mean when I say that I'm asking for a definition.
My definition of the word "normal" in that context would be:
The collection of the tentative common factors that is perceived as contributing to being labelled normal for a mainstream mass. Relative to your geographic local, regional, national and/or geographical international society (say your city, county, state or country, or even relative to i.e. "the Western society"). In layman's terms, the major populace(s) that you will be confronted with and compared to.
Does this make any more sense of what I'm asking about when I say that I'd like to hear your definition of "normal"?
And being completely honest here (and not with the intention of being rude), I didn't actually ask what people here would choose... just asked for the definition of "normal". The reason I at all mentioned the context it was related to is that "normal" can be used for so many other thing (i.e. "normal amount of money spent per month", "normal temperature rates for a specific climate type", "normal operation values of this piece of machinery") and tried to put it into a context to get the right category of definitions I wanted (namely related to eccentric personalities vs. normal ones). It's not that I'm not interested in the opinions of people here, quite the contrary... it's just that you are reading something I never asked, or rather, reading too much into what I've written.
That said, I accept and respect that you have different opinions on what is good and bad compared to me, and that none of our opinions are less valuable or necessarily more or less correct than the other. I just wanted to have that cleared, so that you don't think that me saying I was mainly interested in definitions meaning that I find your opinions wrong or less valuable, as that is something I definitely do not.
If you really wanted to give your opinion on the subject that the definition was meant used in then I won't stop you from doing that. However, if you do so, I'd like to say that the question itself allows you to only choose between the two... you are right in that there are several other paths than those two I've mentioned, but the other paths simply doesn't factor into the specific question I asked. It is an "either/or" question, not a "where on a scale from x to y" question. To quote the question from the place I posted it so that it gets completely correct:
If you could choose, would you be an eccentric outsider, or a relatively quite normal person? Why?
I hope this makes more sense now, and that you don't take it the wrong way. I can't stress enough that this post is not meant to be rude or insulting in any way (but I somehow feel that it is easy to interpret as such)... I just can't find any other ways right now of explaining exactly what I mean.[/list]
