Normal People
“I do, often, wish I was like... more normal, you know?” (BH, Year 9) The Pantheon, Rome (architectural cross-section) Normal. What does it even mean? And why does it mean that? There’s quite a history to the word, it turns out. But untangling the history of the word ‘normal’ has helped me to better understand the history of subjugation that ‘abnormal’ or neurodiverse people have faced for centuries. And it could help us figure out what we should do next. When Anaximander of Miletus travelled from Greece to Sparta two and a half thousand years ago he brought with him an idea. If you place a rod, he said, perpendicular to the base of an upright hemisphere, then when the sun was out the shadow cast by the rod would tell you how far through the day you were. The rod was known as a gnōmōn , with the prefix gno-: to know; the shaft of the sundial was the part that knew the time of day. Later, when Roman carpenters were describing the set square used to build their grand edifices (many of