Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

by Jeanette Winterson

In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens to community – to society? As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, in the spirit of her friend Ronald Reagan, celebrating the Me decade of the 1980s, ‘There is no such thing as society …’

Living with life is very hard. Mostly we do our best to stifle life – to be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquillised or raging. Extremes have the same effect; they insulate us from the intensity of life. And extremes – whether of dullness or fury – successfully prevent feeling.

And our madness-measure is always changing. Probably we are less tolerant of madness now than at any period in history. There is no place for it. Crucially, there is no time for it.