I just saw the title term for the first time. I guess I’ve been living under a rock at least in terms of the philosophy of brain function, because apparently the term was first coined in 2000.
I immediately had a negative response to the word, At first I was just mildly irritated, but for some reason the word stuck in my head and festered until I was pissed off. I was now pissed off for two reasons. The first was the as yet unexplained annoyance I mentioned two lines prior, and the second was because I have this obligation to find out more about the things that piss me off.
So now I had to go and google neurodivergence, and that wasn’t how I was planning on spending my time. To be truthful I didn’t really have a plan for how I was going to spend that time, but it sure as fuck wasn’t reading about someone’s epiphany that different brains function differently.
I should probably add that my initial annoyance was because my immediate reaction to the word was for fuck sakes, almost everyone is divergent in some fashion. My second reaction was that the term was another attempt to imply that behavioural divergence is free from consequence or even judgement, because it’s not the fault of the divergent. There’s nothing they can do about it. They have a condition, and so the onus is on the neurotypicals to accommodate.
But all of the above was conjectural, and so I grudgingly googled.
Turns out I was right to be annoyed.
To be fair I suppose I should amend the above statement to I was mostly right. The reading I did emphasised that the concept of neurodivergence was more about altering perceptions, and the sites went to great length to point out that they were talking about a philosophy as opposed to science. Most of the literature was focussed on autism and ADHD and I was sort of okay with that. But, depending on the authors they went so far as to suggest that society needs to see the neurodivergent as assets and alter our perceptions to advance that notion.
I don’t have a problem with altering our perceptions of anything. But I still hold to the idea that we need to lose warm and fuzzy and let reality intrude as necessary. For example Tourette’s was mentioned repetitively as one of the neurodivergences we need to rethink.
I’m fine with that. People with Tourette’s aren’t stupid and so we can and should be accommodating. However, I have to speculate over the wisdom of whether a person with this particular divergence is the right choice for a press secretary or a stadium announcer or a 911 dispatcher.
I mean come on people, lets be realistic.
Most of the stuff I read dealt with ADHD and autism. I know people with attention disorders but I can’t say that I know anyone with autism. Which is kind of weird when I think about it because pretty much everyone I know is vaccinated. So with those kinds of people in my life you’d think I’d know at least one perron somewhere on the spectrum. I might know someone though, because evidently the spectrum is wide and there’s a host of variances. I know this because just like the term neurodiversity, I was forced to google Autism to get a handle on symptoms and behaviours. The impression I was left with was that the idea of the good doctor is pretty fucking rare. The vast majority of the autistic are facing a struggle without moments of diagnostic genius sprinkled throughout their day. The day to day truth is that autism is not a gift, and I think that portraying it as such isn’t a good approach.
And so I started to wonder if it’s possible to be compassionate but not necessarily accommodating, and I’ve decided that yes, it’s possible and sensible.
So I guess that from where I sit, it’s necessary to be accommodating until that accommodation causes as many problems as it solves. If you are neurodivergent then depending on your specific divergence I think it’s prudent to exclude you from certain actions and responsibilities.
And I’m certain that my perspective would trigger the authors of the neurodivergence papers I just finished reading. What I found kind of irritating from the advocates was how they could hold their autism is not a detriment opinion and still make generous use of the terms high and low functioning. It seemed to me that even when you’re talking about an autistic person as high functioning, then the implication is that person is mostly functional. Which means they aren’t entirely functional. Which means they really shouldn’t be put into situations which require fully functional.
Or I suppose we could dispense entirely with fully functional as a criterion for any and all things.
That would be interesting.