Deviance

Can we cut the moral-play we so often include?

Usually when someone uses the word deviant, or the notion of deviance, there is often some kind of (or a version of) morality embedded in their use of it. 

But the reality is, there is deviance involved in nearly everything…and it has no moral quality.  

Sorry. 

Because deviance itself has an antecedent. 

In other words, it is an attempt to describe something that is considered abnormal (although, I prefer something closer to non-conforming better). And, though often times this descriptive language is actually used to qualify or impute value, it is much more simply about describing things as they are. 

What is normal anyway? Isn’t it primarily a description by the majority of what things look like or should look like? A norm is a common description of what most things look like. And, it is worth noting, the majority are often the ones that are describing that pattern, of what is (or, what should be). 

But, by implication, we know that nothing is perfectly conforming. There is variety everywhere. And we know for whatever description the majority describes, there is also deviation from that description — deviation simply exists. It isn’t after all really a question of whether it should exist or not, it just does. Perhaps it would be more helpful to think about it in terms of categories where that deviance is not attached to a moral quality. 

Plants might be a good example. Just take a walk and notice how many species of plants there are, how many plants seem to proliferate in any given area, how there are always some plants that don't seem to make it like the same ones right next to it do.  Consider how many plants, often referred to by the same name, are not exactly the same when they are grown in another part of the world — how some varieties survive in some areas, and not as well in others, often because of environmental conditions.

Once you introduce this idea in the context of all living things, it’s not hard at all to spot deviance from the norm in almost everything that lives. Yes, there are pervasive patterns, but those patterns are not all inclusive. There are also exceptions, versions, variations of all kinds of things. 

So, the question really starts to emerge, when and where do we attach value to the things that are not perfectly conforming? Where do we do that? Why do we do that? What is driving the value-play that is so often attached to anything that deviates from the norm?

Descriptions of the norm are created both by the group of people whom the norm describes and by the people that it doesn’t. So, in that way, these descriptions, which coalesce into norms, are self-reinforcing. And perhaps it is at this point that the morality component is introduced — where we load the term deviant the way we do. Because anything that is self-reinforcing tends to need to be self-reinforcing. And the reason that it needs to be self-reinforcing is that there are certain benefits which those who are described by the norm receive. And those benefits, whatever they are, are often desired — to be retained and perpetuated. When benefits end up becoming the (or a primary) driver for those being described within the norm, then other things (deviances) can very easily become threats to those benefits and therefore to those whom the norm describes. 

But, quite simply, norms are just descriptions and there is a majority, by necessity, that they describe. Deviance is simply anything that does not completely conform to that description. And, it exists across-the-board. It simply is not the description of the majority.

All of this to say, when we encounter deviance, we have an opportunity to ask ourselves what else we are bringing to the equation, as we evaluate what we are observing. 

...especially when we intentionally (or inadvertently), include a connotation of morality (what we often mean when we use deviant as our label of someone) along with our description. How much more accepting (not to mention free) could we become if operated from a premise like this?