Emotional illness and Subculture

This musing actually started with the old question: "Do crazy people know they are crazy?"

Looking back at my twenties, I can see clearly that I was nuts. At the time, though, it was not so clear. I knew something was wrong, that I was unhappy, but that was all. Every once in a while the magnitude of my emotional injury would be clear to me... and then I would go back to not really understanding my problem.

I got to wondering why this was. Perhaps it was because I didn't have the coping skills to face my madness entirely. Maybe it was like being in a car crash. All you really need to know is that you need to go to the hospital. You don't need all the gory details. Maybe it was familiarity. I had been screwed up for so long, it seemed "normal".

Then I realized that most of the people around me were also screwed up, in similar ways.

Is emotional damage endemic in some places?

Think about how we find a comfortable social circle. We tend to gather with people who are like ourselves in some way. Not necessarily in a good way. Alcoholics and heavy drinkers hang around with other drinkers. They hardly ever meet non-drinkers. Stoners socialize with stoners. and so on. So, when you look around you, you fit in. You are "ok". Your social setting becomes "the norm".

So why not a society of damaged people? Women who think that if they love their husband enough, he will change. Men who cheat on their women. People who deceive themselves, and everyone around them. Grifters. Users. A whole culture of it.

It's not so fantastic. I lived there.

Rural East Texas in the '80's. People listened to country music songs about cheating and getting drunk. (while complaining that their kids listened to rock music that was all about sex and drugs!) They all cheated and got drunk. It seemed that nothing could be accomplished without a cooler of beer. The people I moved among married and divorced, and fought. They got busted for drunk driving. Anyone I met that was over 21 had an ex, and children. Sometimes children by several different exes. "Friends" lied about each other behind their backs, women saw each other as threats, and no one had a financial plan. All the women were miserable.

So, I would look around me, and decide that I was sane.

But, deep down, I knew better.