Escaping the Myth of Normal: Mental Health and the Burden of Society

Photo by Jesse Bowser on Unsplash

“You need to become a psychopath to make it in those spaces…”

This was what a good friend of mine said in one of our many philosophical discussions. This particular time, however, she was referencing what I guess we today call “climbing the corporate ladder”. It’s not my place to lay out her entire life story on this platform; however, you can take my word for it when I say she had first-hand experience and knew exactly what she was talking about.

It was still easy to brush it off as maybe a really bad series of experiences specific to her…. Until I came across this reading….

“To be a ‘normal cultural man’ is, for Kierkegaard, to be sick — whether one knows it or not: ‘there is such a thing as fictitious health’.”

— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

But wait, what is a “normal cultural man” to begin with? Thankfully, Ernest Becker addressed that for us as well:

“This is a perfect description of the ‘automatic cultural man’ — man as confined by culture, a slave to it, who imagines that he has an identity if he pays his insurance premium, that he has control of his life if he guns his sports car or works his electric toothbrush.”

— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Now, yes, this does come off as rather bitter, and it is from a book published in the 70s, so let’s look at what someone else had to say….. Perhaps a medical professional, one who’s still around today….

“I will make the case that much of what passes for normal in our society is neither healthy nor natural, and that to meet modern society’s criteria for normality is, in many ways, to conform to requirements that are profoundly abnormal with our Nature-given needs — which is to say, unhealthy and harmful on the physiological, mental, and even spiritual levels.”

— Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal

Internalizing the “Automatic Cultural Man”

Going back to what my friend had to say, I first had to come to the fact that perhaps these weren’t experiences unique to her. And then I had to turn inward and really assess how much of this — the myth of normal, the myth of the cultural man — I had personally internalized.

One of the 12-step recovery groups I am a part of speaks of being a “productive member of society”. And it is with good reason. Because I myself was anything but that when my journey began. I don’t think they meant modeling my entire personality around what I think society would have me be. Because that is precisely what I obsessed over so much.

I have had to be admitted into some sort of mental health facility 10 times in the space of 5 years. No, that is not an exaggeration. And I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure out why my mental health just wouldn’t hold up. I thought I was doing everything I had to do. I was sober, I was attending meetings, I was praying and meditating, I was journaling. But a reality I couldn’t escape was that what I was so desperately trying to emulate — the “Normal Cultural Man” — was just not attainable for me, at least not at that stage.

The Abantu Bazothini Syndrome

I wrote about what I called the “Abantu Bazothini Syndrome” over a month ago. “Abantu Bazothini” is a Zulu term for “What will people say,” and what I highlighted in that piece is that the court of public opinion is fickle at best. The goalposts are always shifting, and one single shift in circumstance will flip everything on its head. The “Normal Cultural Man” is married to the Abantu Bazothini Syndrome….

Except, this one is internalized. This one looks like avoiding all the mirrors in the house because you cannot stand the man looking back at you. It looks like seeing that man as weak, useless, even. Someone incapable of keeping their shit together. Just a colossal mess of a human being.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

— Blaise Pascal

Now, yes, there are a lot of counter-arguments one can make here, but I would like to zero in on the essence of what Pascal is actually saying.

The world today is undoubtedly overstimulating: cellphones, news, transit, even taking a walk in your street is itself an extreme sport for a lot of people. And I absolutely loved it. I had to be kept busy, every second of every hour, because otherwise, I would be left alone with the mess of a human being I just mentioned…… Until I was forced to do exactly that. Minimal friends, no job, not much going on in my life at all, really, for a few days.

Not only did I learn to tolerate myself a bit more, but I also learned to cater to what my actual needs are, not what people say they should be.

The Courage to Disappoint

And the beautiful thing is, there’s a shift in this direction in the real world.

“We also have to focus on ourselves, because at the end of the day, we’re human, too… We have to protect our mind and our body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

— Simone Biles, on withdrawing from the Tokyo Olympics

“It’s O.K. not to be O.K.”

— Naomi Osaka

“It’s very important that when you do get the opportunity, you are able to go away and refresh your mind, because obviously in Adelaide we need to be not only physically very good but mentally very good as well.”

— Ben Stokes, on taking a break from cricket

The three athletes I just quoted are not obscure by any means. Simone Biles was a shoo-in for the gymnastics gold medal at the games she withdrew from. Naomi Osaka is the hottest prospect in women’s tennis right now. And Ben Stokes captains England’s national team.

Yet they all looked at the pressure mounted on them by the media and spectators alike, who seem to have a tendency of behaving like they own these athletes.

And just as Rosa Parks said,

“No.”

They took the time out they needed. Which of course, still angered a lot of people who thought they needed to live up to what they were billed by the public. Kendrick Lamar made it very clear in his song Savior that he isn’t going to fit himself into the mold created for him through his predecessors and the current expectations of him….

“Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior. Cole made you feel empowered, but he is not your savior… The cat is out the bag, I am not your savior.”

See, what I can say about all of this is that our new normal is utter dysfunction at this point. And that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.

South Africa faces complex socio-economic realities marked by stark differences between men, women, and the broader population. Economically, while the national official unemployment rate reached 32.7% in Q1 2026 — climbing to 46.3% under the expanded definition — women bear a disproportionate burden at 35.9% compared to 31.0% for men, a disparity mirrored among youth, where 39.2% of young women are not in employment, education, or training (NEET) versus 36.0% of young men.

Within marriage dynamics, 41.7% of all South African divorces dissolve before the ten-year mark, but women navigate this process when younger (median age 42 versus 46 for men) and are the primary drivers, initiating 57.2% of all filings. Psychologically, a 2026 modeling study estimates a staggering 70% of South African adults will experience a depressive episode in their lifetime; women report higher active depression rates (5.3% versus 3.6% for men), yet young men globally face an escalating epidemic of severe daily isolation and loneliness — a crisis the WHO equates to the mortality risk of smoking 15 cigarettes a day — exacerbated by a widespread reluctance among men to seek professional mental health support.

These are all statistics I am a part of. That is where my pursuit of being a “Normal Cultural Man” had gotten me, along with a few mental breakdowns and suicide attempts for good measure.

Maybe the missing piece was indeed me turning into a psychopath, as my friend said. But unfortunately, I’m not one. In fact, now that I’ve hung out with myself for some time, it turns out I’m not that bad of a guy.

If these quiet thoughts awakened something within you, join my private letter, where we continue to dig where minds seldom choose to. Subscribe here to receive my foundational series on navigating the absurd.

To support my work and help keep these essays completely independent, you can buy me a coffee over on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/khothatsomoshodi