(December 7, 2022 at 2:56 pm)Leonardo17 Wrote: This is beyond religion-based superstition. This isn’t simple dogmatism or religious fanatism or zeal. If there are mental health professionals in the forum they should correct me. But banning Barbie dolls isn’t cultural. It isn’t religious either. I think the brain of this guy is not working properly. I mean what’s going to happen. What was that guy thinking of while he was making that law?
I think it would be an interesting exercise to work out a detailed description of sanity that wasn't in any way dependent on one's own cultural norms. I doubt very much that it's possible.
Aristotle, for example, started with what he took to be universally true about the human animal, and worked from there to figure out what the very best kind of life would be for all people. I can guarantee you that NO ONE on this forum would agree with his conclusions. Our own culture has very different ideas about what kind of life is best.
No doubt lots of other people have tried.
In the '60s and '70s the psychologist Erich Fromm was popular in the US. His book The Sane Society attempted to do something like this -- to work out the norms for all people in any time, which could be used to judge whether a given society was sane or not. There's a lot to like in these books, but they are certainly products of their time. Considering their desire to be universal, the fact that they are so dated seems ironic.
Ideas about what is mentally healthy and what isn't change so fast, I think we should be wary of assuming any kind of one-size-fits-all set of criteria for sanity.
