"Normal" is a weasel word.
Surprised ? Didn't expect this ? Didn't notice ? I wouldn't blame anyone - that's how it's supposed to work.
Let's look up the definition -
nor·mal
1. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
Or, "Reasonable" - how about that ?
rea·son·a·ble ( adjective ) -
1. (of a person) having sound judgment; fair and sensible. "no reasonable person could have objected"
Similar: sensible, rational, ...
2. as much as is appropriate or fair; moderate. "they have had a reasonable time to reply"
Similar: within reason, practicable, sensible, appropriate, suitable ..
... and it goes on ...
We can see the same with a lot of these words, and eventually they end up going in circles, or deferring to an unstated source of judgement.
Now, let's bust out our favorite tool - the Inconvenient Question - and apply it to all of these -
The Inconvenient Question for all of these words is - "According to whom ?"
Normal - according to whom ? Do you want to.. conform ? Be like everyone else ? Or else, you will stand out, you will be ridiculed, pointed at..
Reasonable / sensible / sound judgement - accoridng to whom ? Whose judgement ?
Aha.. and once out of options, they change the topic.
The thing is, whenever these occur in a "hoarding" discourse, the "abnormality" of deviating from that is implied, but the "according to whom" source of judgement is hidden - it's the author's judgement, or whatever imaginary typical / average / regular person.
Ever run into this manipulation from a spouse or a family member -
"It's not normal, what you do / keep. Who else does that ? Look at the neighbours - does anyone else do this ? .."
Translation:
"Behave. Conform. Or you will stand out, and be ridiculed."
As a side note, personally I'm not trying to conform to anyone's notion of "normal", so those tricks don't fly with me.
I'm not even in the same dimension as the "normal" in question. None of what I do is normal.
Other examples of manipulative language include
* Leading Questions / Statements ( e.g. "refuses to discard" - implies requirement / obligation to discard )
* Prescriptive Valuation - ( e.g. "worthless junk" ) - passing some arbitrary judgement as a given - worthless according to whom ?
* Coersion used as "Motivation" ( e.g. nagging and yelling - authors float the prospect of "healing the relationship" - but the relationship is very likely fundamentally coersive and abusive.. )
* etc. - other patterns may yet be revealed as we continue paying attention and looking out for these tricks
It is so subtle it's exquisite - I was for years detecting something off about the whole thing, but couldn't put my finger on it until zero-focused recently.
But once one becomes attuned to the particular linguistic tricks, that one begins to fully grasp the full scope and scale of manipulation in the mainstream discourse on "hoarding" by the experts.