Off the norm

Some people confuse the idea of unorthodox with illegal or unethical.  That's too bad.  That group of people hear unorthodox and think of practices that would be taboo for them.  They certainly miss out on many things that are good, innovative, futuristic, and otherwise right and true.

One of my favorite very early movies is The Music Man.  A man who had no training as a music director comes to a town and innately knows how to help people pull together and make sweet music.  Finally, the socialites of the town find out that he has no training and force him to leave town even though the music man had done more than any other director to help these people make good music together.  In particular, what the socialites didn't like was the man's unorthodox way of directing everyone.  He encouraged people to be better than they were and to be independent.

In sociological terms, you could say that people with influence didn't like individuals to rock their boats of established networks.  And, that scared people in the established social circles because it made people unpredictable.

Jack Nicholson starred in a later film called Anger Management.  He played the part of a psychologist who used the most unorthodox methods to help his clients deal with anger.  The film depicts Nicholson's character as eccentric, so people tended not to take him seriously.  But, his methods were based on true life experiences rather than talk therapy to edge clients away from the anger issues they were having.  Regular people viewed the psychologist as crazy, but it turned out that his method worked really well.

The message of the film was pretty clear.  What people do in a society of following the status quo is to label people different from them with some term to show the degree of difference they are from the norm.  People in the established social networks call others a little crazy, crazy, insane, insanely crazy, or absolutely insane, sometimes off-the-chart insane when others stray from established norms.

The word orthodox itself cropped up in the Greek world during Greece's Golden Age, 5th century BCE.  Athenians wanted everyone to have correct opinions or to have the proper things to make them prestigious in other people's eyes.  So, they coined the word orthodox.  Our society took in the word without making any changes to its meaning.

From what I have seen of society, the ones who make a difference in other people's lives are not the ones living by all of the norms established by socialites, politicians, and schools.  People stand out due to their departure from the norms.  It is those who innately know what is good, right, and true and develop methods to instill in others the same who are true to their personalities rather than true to straightjacketed norms others want them to perpetuate.

I give tribute to all the music men and looney psychologists who make a difference in their zany way to this very orthodox world.  My hat is off to unorthodox people.

And kudos to Bill Murray, for sure, for portraying a long list of unorthodox characters starting with the movie Stripes and including his last two movies, St. Vincent and Rock the Kabash .  I hope the world fills up with people who don't take beaten paths.