The Generalized Other: What Is It Likely To Be Normal?

Albert Camus asserts that “nobody realizes that people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” Accordingly, every individual is inattentive of his or her laborious modification of behavior to remain normal as per the social standard. The act of being normal is not bounded by any particular set of guidelines as a behavior that seems ordinary to one might be deemed odd to another. Correspondingly, the individuals in a society follows the concept of The Generalized Other, in which one tries to imagine the perspectives of other people and use that information as a guide for his or her own behavior. Through the process, individuals would have to devote effort so as to match the social expectation and avoid social sanctions for violating
When a person’s conduct deviates from the social expectation, there are sanctions imposed on the individual by other people in the society. The correlative situation is that when there is more air been blew into the balloon, there is an increase in the balloon’s pressure resulting in its expansion in size from equilibrium and risk of explosion. Nevertheless, the balloon would remain normal despite stretching and not explode. Equivalently, an individual’s attempt to adjust in his or her conduct due to the social sanctions is analogous to the balloon stretching due to additional air and hence increased pressure. Whereas it is difficult to gauge the hardship of a so-called individual’s effort in adjusting behavior to stay normal, a stretched balloon with strained and thinning plastic barrier better demonstrates the difficult process of remaining normal. Thus, Professor Avery’s balloon analogy detailedly substantiate Camus’s claim in which tremendous energy is required in the process of staying
The quote is also important to the study of sociology as it explains why an individual would behave in a certain way. Common activity such as an individual holding in farts in public is governed by Camus’s assertion. In the medical perspective, letting out a fart displays many health benefits such as reduce bloating and relieve abdominal stress while holding in farts could negatively impact internal organs. However, the foul smell of fart is generally regarded as displeasing and inappropriate by bystanders that are being victimized. Subsequently, farting in front of people would produce negative feedbacks and sanctions, so it is not within the social expectation. According to the sociologist Émile Durkheim, “the public conscience restricts any act which infringes them by the surveillance it exercises over the conduct of citizens and by the special punishments it has at its disposal” (Durkheim). Respectively, an individual who farts in the public is deviating from social expectation and would result in punishments such people giving the offender a stink eye or dirty looks and perhaps even curse at the offender. Thus, under the social pressure and sanctions the individual receive, he or she would rather to opt out the natural human reaction of releasing the fart to stay normal with respect to the social expectation. Camus’s claim