Normalcy

I isolated a specific element of your argument. My direct and very specific question was this:

“Is normalcy a goal worth striving for?”

You have chosen to not answer my direct question but instead to divert the discussion back to responsibility for feelings.

Since you go there, let’s run with it and take a few examples.

Let’s say a woman finds out her husband has been sneaking around behind her back and sleeping with one or more women despite an exclusivity agreement. Everybody in the town knows about it except for her.

Until one day she finds out.

She feels hurt and betrayed. She feels frightened that he may have passed on a venereal disease that can make her sterile (chlamydia), drive her insane (syphilis) or even kill her (HIV).

But hey, those feelings are on her 100% because she’s responsible for her own feelings. According to you, her husband’s behavior has nothing to do with how she feels.

Let’s take another example.

A football player bites another on the football field. The man who is bitten feels pain; he feels hurt and shocked. Although he has experienced physical pain, it is primarily the shock of his opponent’s aberrant behavior that puts him completely off his game.

Is not the biter responsible for the feelings of the man he’s bitten?

Where is personal responsibility?

If somebody calls another names or abuses his position of power to elicit sexual favours or simply attention from someone who would normally be out of his league then he can reasonably expect that he is going to make that person feel uncomfortable.

Another example: If I forget or fall asleep and don’t pick up my child from a concert that ends at midnight as agreed, then I can reasonably expect that child to feel abandoned and frightened.

Actions have consequences.

In particular, lies have terrible consequences:

Read about them in The Ethical Spectacle, the best essay I ever read about lies.