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Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world t

Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world that's inhuman? Is it a coincidence that the condition was first "observed" around the onset of industrialization a couple hundred years ago? There are numerous evolutionary advantages to being tuned-in to your environment. Certainly every tribe could've used at least a couple people like that. But in an industrialized world, with industrialized education & work processes, where you're called-upon to sit still for hours doing things that don't matter (and that you hence, don't care about), where subtly you tend to find more success the more you act like an automaton, it's apparently maladaptive, a liability and an aberration. Because we've made it one. It's industrialization itself that's maladaptive.

Afton 7y ago
The is sort of the issue with most deviations from neurotypicality. It's a disease only when it stops you from doing what you and society wants you to do. That's why lots of people manage without treatment. But what are you recommending? That people with ADHD should just move somewhere they can live in a non-industrialized setting? I suspect also that you may have an outdated view of ADHD. It's more about a lack of executive function than 'hyperactivity'. In fact one of the ADHD types is 'inattentive'. Did you read the whole article? The author discusses some of this.
- rdiddly 7y ago
  I'm not recommending anything. This isn't a charged environment like Twitter, where it seems 100% of statements are either recommendations that will FIX THE UNIVERSE, or attempts by opponents to misconstrue them as same, for purpose of finding fault (since no recommendation will ever be 100% valid in all cases). RE reading the article, that's where I'm getting it. "My mind flutters from the window to reading the little scribbles people left on the desk to my imagination and then back out again" = I am observant of my environment and probably the first one to be aware of new opportunities or threats arising from that environment. And I dream. "I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents..." = I pay attention to tangential (i.e. "touching," related) things and take action on them, investigate them. She looks them up on Wikipedia, learns all about them, and suffers no loss of attentiveness when the topic is meaningful to her and chosen by her. Given that new knowledge tends to come most readily from tangents, and not from out of the blue, and not from some well-intentioned-but-flawed, "legible" (i.e. bureaucratic/"makes logical sense"/industrialized) lesson plan, this is not a bad approach to learning. The problem only comes when you need to get through school, where those lesson plans are de rigueur and the pertinent skill is actually overruling/ignoring what you are interested in and not taking action on it. Huge waste BTW, whether ADHD or not. "Executive function" - well I would simply open the question of whether the "executive" (slight pun) who is in charge, inside us, is always the one who we think it is. Our parents'/teachers' voices, or our own? Something is always being executed, even when we're not executing on our plan to do homework. The "fitting in, getting by" part of you made a plan to do homework, but the (I would argue) real part of you already realizes it's all silly bullshit & doesn't matter. The former is the one we reward with good grades & good jobs, but the latter is the one who's right.
  - Afton 7y ago
    Your first paragraph is strawmaning. At no point did I demand that you recommend a 100% fix. You made a claim about how the industrial age was the problem. I was trying to make a point that even if true, that doesn't really buy you anything, since we live in the age we live in. If I failed to communicate that well enough, I apologize. As for the rest, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's like you're building a superpower out of failure to be able to focus when it's necessary to focus. Like if someone couldn't stand still, and you said something like "I bet it's really useful, because you never get stiff, and you burn more calories", but ignoring that it's fucking terrible, because you can't ever sit still even when it would be advantageous to sit still. Note that executive control is also about planning. Of course it can be useful to rush of without planning, like when being chased by a panther. But it's not a good idea to have a significant deficit in the ability to plan. "Silly bullshit [that] doesn't matter" can mean not having the ability to pay for food, and it can mean having terrible stress over accomplishing trivial tasks (like filing out tax paperwork!). Anyway. You're welcome to continue to not-buy ADHD, but recognize that people who live with, and who study it, think it's a thing.
    - rdiddly 7y ago
      Well yeah of course I know what age we're living in, and that it's a thing, otherwise I wouldn't be saying these things. We're saying the same thing basically, but you asked what I recommend and I'm just saying I don't have an answer, because that wasn't the point. In other words it's outside the scope of my comment to make recommendations of any kind, or try to state what an appropriate course of action might be. It might've sounded like I was accusing you of something - I wasn't, sorry, just pointing out that rushing to a conclusion is part of why Twitter sucks. Nobody can just talk about an idea or let's say, one particular side of an idea, without it being construed as carrying a flag for that idea to take over the world and exterminate all other ideas. I'm only mentioning one thing, that doesn't mean all other things are false. But I'm focusing on this one side of it partly because nobody really needs me to enumerate the BAD aspects of having ADHD, I mean that's the side everyone has already heard!
      - 7y ago
jmchuster 7y ago
Even in these comments here, you can see there are people for whom this article resonates deeply, and those for whom it doesn't. So at the very least there's something there that impacts people differently, and since the impact is usually detrimental, that's enough to classify this as a Disorder.
munificent 7y ago
> Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world that's inhuman? Is it a coincidence that the condition was first "observed" around the onset of industrialization a couple hundred years ago? To some degree, you are right. Many illnesses are defined by "suffers from ___ to a degree that it interferes with their ability to function effectively". The latter half of that means that mental illness really is affected by our surrounding culture and institutions. You need food to live and in our world you need a job to buy food. In a world where all the jobs require effective social interaction, even mild autism could be debilitating. But in a world where there are jobs that mostly involve working with machines or animals, it could simply be within the realm of healthy mental variation. So is being on the autism spectrum a disorder or just a difference? Depends on what's on the classified page today. But it's also important to realize that for ADHD, ASD, and other mental conditions, many people are far enough along their respective spectra that these are unequivocally real diseases that cause them profound suffering in ways that can't be blamed on "society". Watching someone with untreated ADHD fail to hold down a mind-numbing meaninless dystopian capitalist hellhole job is one thing. Watching them struggle to reach their own personal goals ("just one more YouTube video and then I'll work on that novel"), take care of their physical health ("I'll start exercising tomorrow"), and build healthy long-term personal relationships is another ("I'm so sorry I forgot to call you back, again"). ADHD fundamentally interferes with a person's ability to enact long-term planning over time. This is a fundamental human need independent of the effects of industrial civilization.
anon_d 7y ago
You have basically the right idea, but I think you are missing something important. ADHD is a "disorder", but it's root cause is intrinsic, genetic. Different people are different. ADHD isn't about "being human", it's about being a certain type of human. Everyone is somewhat maladapted to the inhumane world that has been created, but people with personalities at certain extremes adapt much worse. I "have ADHD". Most of my relatives have ADHD. I view the modern world as an act of aggression, as an attack. If I want to survive, and I want my descendants to survive, then the modern world must be destroyed.

Afton 7y ago

The is sort of the issue with most deviations from neurotypicality. It's a disease only when it stops you from doing what you and society wants you to do. That's why lots of people manage without treatment. But what are you recommending? That people with ADHD should just move somewhere they can live in a non-industrialized setting? I suspect also that you may have an outdated view of ADHD. It's more about a lack of executive function than 'hyperactivity'. In fact one of the ADHD types is 'inattentive'. Did you read the whole article? The author discusses some of this.

rdiddly 7y ago
I'm not recommending anything. This isn't a charged environment like Twitter, where it seems 100% of statements are either recommendations that will FIX THE UNIVERSE, or attempts by opponents to misconstrue them as same, for purpose of finding fault (since no recommendation will ever be 100% valid in all cases). RE reading the article, that's where I'm getting it. "My mind flutters from the window to reading the little scribbles people left on the desk to my imagination and then back out again" = I am observant of my environment and probably the first one to be aware of new opportunities or threats arising from that environment. And I dream. "I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents..." = I pay attention to tangential (i.e. "touching," related) things and take action on them, investigate them. She looks them up on Wikipedia, learns all about them, and suffers no loss of attentiveness when the topic is meaningful to her and chosen by her. Given that new knowledge tends to come most readily from tangents, and not from out of the blue, and not from some well-intentioned-but-flawed, "legible" (i.e. bureaucratic/"makes logical sense"/industrialized) lesson plan, this is not a bad approach to learning. The problem only comes when you need to get through school, where those lesson plans are de rigueur and the pertinent skill is actually overruling/ignoring what you are interested in and not taking action on it. Huge waste BTW, whether ADHD or not. "Executive function" - well I would simply open the question of whether the "executive" (slight pun) who is in charge, inside us, is always the one who we think it is. Our parents'/teachers' voices, or our own? Something is always being executed, even when we're not executing on our plan to do homework. The "fitting in, getting by" part of you made a plan to do homework, but the (I would argue) real part of you already realizes it's all silly bullshit & doesn't matter. The former is the one we reward with good grades & good jobs, but the latter is the one who's right.
- Afton 7y ago
  Your first paragraph is strawmaning. At no point did I demand that you recommend a 100% fix. You made a claim about how the industrial age was the problem. I was trying to make a point that even if true, that doesn't really buy you anything, since we live in the age we live in. If I failed to communicate that well enough, I apologize. As for the rest, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's like you're building a superpower out of failure to be able to focus when it's necessary to focus. Like if someone couldn't stand still, and you said something like "I bet it's really useful, because you never get stiff, and you burn more calories", but ignoring that it's fucking terrible, because you can't ever sit still even when it would be advantageous to sit still. Note that executive control is also about planning. Of course it can be useful to rush of without planning, like when being chased by a panther. But it's not a good idea to have a significant deficit in the ability to plan. "Silly bullshit [that] doesn't matter" can mean not having the ability to pay for food, and it can mean having terrible stress over accomplishing trivial tasks (like filing out tax paperwork!). Anyway. You're welcome to continue to not-buy ADHD, but recognize that people who live with, and who study it, think it's a thing.
  - rdiddly 7y ago
    Well yeah of course I know what age we're living in, and that it's a thing, otherwise I wouldn't be saying these things. We're saying the same thing basically, but you asked what I recommend and I'm just saying I don't have an answer, because that wasn't the point. In other words it's outside the scope of my comment to make recommendations of any kind, or try to state what an appropriate course of action might be. It might've sounded like I was accusing you of something - I wasn't, sorry, just pointing out that rushing to a conclusion is part of why Twitter sucks. Nobody can just talk about an idea or let's say, one particular side of an idea, without it being construed as carrying a flag for that idea to take over the world and exterminate all other ideas. I'm only mentioning one thing, that doesn't mean all other things are false. But I'm focusing on this one side of it partly because nobody really needs me to enumerate the BAD aspects of having ADHD, I mean that's the side everyone has already heard!
    - 7y ago

jmchuster 7y ago

Even in these comments here, you can see there are people for whom this article resonates deeply, and those for whom it doesn't. So at the very least there's something there that impacts people differently, and since the impact is usually detrimental, that's enough to classify this as a Disorder.

munificent 7y ago

> Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world that's inhuman? Is it a coincidence that the condition was first "observed" around the onset of industrialization a couple hundred years ago? To some degree, you are right. Many illnesses are defined by "suffers from ___ to a degree that it interferes with their ability to function effectively". The latter half of that means that mental illness really is affected by our surrounding culture and institutions. You need food to live and in our world you need a job to buy food. In a world where all the jobs require effective social interaction, even mild autism could be debilitating. But in a world where there are jobs that mostly involve working with machines or animals, it could simply be within the realm of healthy mental variation. So is being on the autism spectrum a disorder or just a difference? Depends on what's on the classified page today. But it's also important to realize that for ADHD, ASD, and other mental conditions, many people are far enough along their respective spectra that these are unequivocally real diseases that cause them profound suffering in ways that can't be blamed on "society". Watching someone with untreated ADHD fail to hold down a mind-numbing meaninless dystopian capitalist hellhole job is one thing. Watching them struggle to reach their own personal goals ("just one more YouTube video and then I'll work on that novel"), take care of their physical health ("I'll start exercising tomorrow"), and build healthy long-term personal relationships is another ("I'm so sorry I forgot to call you back, again"). ADHD fundamentally interferes with a person's ability to enact long-term planning over time. This is a fundamental human need independent of the effects of industrial civilization.

anon_d 7y ago

You have basically the right idea, but I think you are missing something important. ADHD is a "disorder", but it's root cause is intrinsic, genetic. Different people are different. ADHD isn't about "being human", it's about being a certain type of human. Everyone is somewhat maladapted to the inhumane world that has been created, but people with personalities at certain extremes adapt much worse. I "have ADHD". Most of my relatives have ADHD. I view the modern world as an act of aggression, as an attack. If I want to survive, and I want my descendants to survive, then the modern world must be destroyed.