Denial

Isolated at a Young Age

The second excerpt from Jonathan Rauch's "Denial" has just posted at the Huffington Post. Jonathan summons to mind what it means to feel from an early age cut off from all the rest of humanity.

Little boys and teenagers want many things, but most of all they want to be normal. The desire not to be strange is not, I think, the callous invention of a capitalist or racist or sexist or whateverist culture which seeks to repress human beings' explosively variegated diversity. It is, for people, an indivisible part of the socializing instinct. That is why children are so easily embarrassed by their parents. The instinct which teaches children how not to be little sociopaths also instructs them, unremittingly, to conform.

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David Frum

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