ADHD: Bad for us, but a boon for our ancestors?
ADHD: Bad for us, but a boon for our ancestors?
ADHD is commonly called a disorder. But new science suggests it may have helped our ancestors find food and survive.
press X to doubt
I can't forage for missing sunglasses that are right in front of my stupid fucking face. My dumbass would be bringing back half a handful of poison berries like "This is all I could find and I have no memory of picking them but they probably didn't come from the poison bush I guess."
I have similar opinions about the "iT's nOt a diSoRdEr iTs mOdErN sOciEtY" thing that's going around lately. Even if we lived in a utopia, I'd still be expected to listen when others speak, cook without burning myself or the food, speak without repeating myself, speak in a way that makes sense to others, keep appointments, read and comprehend instructions, transport myself from place to place without injury or forgetting necessary items....
Yeah, I feel largely the same way. ADHD can have its occasional perks - it's fun to hyperfixate on a topic of interest when I can afford to do so, and sometimes all the bits of random information that happen to stick in my brain can come in handy - but it's not a "secret superpower." It's a disorder.
Exactly. NT's don't hyperfocus. Instead they can get themselves to focus on a task repeatedly and become good at something over time. Not only that, the more often they do the thing, the easier it gets for them to start doing the thing. They can make themselves do the thing even when they don't feel like it! Start on time they want to. They can rely on themselves and others can rely on them too!
Now that's a superpower.
I think you might be missing the true depth of problems modern society has created. We live in atomised family units with walls and fences between us and our neighbours, and very few third places where community can be built. Society doesn't just react to us, it changes us.
It's fairly well documented that simply having someone else present makes an enormous difference in an ADHD person's ability to focus on a task for instance. Plenty of ADHD people will recognise that they can't clean their own house to save their life but they can go all day helping a friend, or with a friend helping them.
I understand that not interrupting people is a thing, but even the character of that behaviour changes fundamentally when you have to self edit in front of an authority figure, and there are so many expectations around how people must defer to a mechanistic existence that surely must change the way that we speak. Even the anxiety that so many neurodivergent people have I think is linked to this. I wonder how much more able to wait to speak you would be if you weren't under this constant atmosphere of domination and control.
We are extremely time poor, and if we had more time to just hang out and tend to one another we would be much more able to learn each other's quirks, be more patient, more able to negotiate a better way of interacting for each person.
The very idea that society is so normative guarantees that some people will be left out because they lack the ability to conform, whatever that looks like, and yet that same society that created these normative conditions refuses to acknowledge its failures in this regard, and it has to brand anyone falling outside of its demands such that they can't live a normal life as "disordered".
I'd still be expected to listen when others speak
I love chillin' with other ADHD'ers: most understand if you zone out and tell them that.
My colleagues also accept a "sry, that may sound a bit stupid; but my brain just cannot focus on this topic right now. I'll come back to that later or tomorrow" (and as long as it's occasional even a "sry, but my brain cannot do that at all. Can someone else please do this?")
cook without burning myself or the food
I got a kitchen machine that does it for me. I can even forget my food without any chance of burning it. Worst case it's cold.
speak without repeating myself, speak in a way that makes sense to others
Again, this is a problem I only have with neurotypicals; no problem along fellow neurodivergentd
keep appointments
Again just something that normal society expects. I have one single appointment per day I can't miss (start-of-day-meeting). Everything else is movable most of the time. I don't meet people at certain times, I meet them "that afternoon" and we will write each other when we're ready
read and comprehend instructions
I know many neurotypicals that cannot do that.
transport myself from place to place without injury or forgetting necessary items....
Nothing to say against these points, actually...
What I want to say is that most of the problems you listed are based on the expectations of neueotypicaldom. All of my friends and some of my colleagues are neurodivergent (most ADHD, some ASD, some both, I'm both) and honestly: As long as I don't have to interact with the neurotypical world I don't run in that much problems. It's still not perfect, but way more manageable.
Id argue its a lot more useful for innovation and novelty seeking. Getting bored and finding a new food source or a new hunting ground is useful. Getting obsessed with a bunch of different subjects and tying disperate concepts together to generate new ideas is useful. Staying up later at night to protect the tribe when others would have gone to sleep hours ago is useful.
There are always trade offs and no neural diversity is going to always be useful. Sometimes its debilitating and sometimes its useful. Unfortunately in a world where you are expected to sit still in a gray cubicle under florescent lighting for 9 hours a day 5 days a week until your body falls apart too much to do it anymore, there are more cons than pros. But id argue that the majority that apparently arent driven mad by that dyatopian nightmare are the weird ones.
I mean being to smart was a weakness in yee days cause half our problems had no thinking solution, not being too strong has way less benefits - society is always changing and how 'good' something is is really only how we utilize it; ie others speak and an AI is able to translate the important bits if you miss them, timers that autoset themselves when youre cooking, projects are as easy to start and stop as blinking, and sweet Jesus Christ hopefully society will grow past the need for a million forms and appointments for anything important
(I compared my universities ADHD accessibility process to making the wheelchair accessibility office only accesable via stairs; theyre directly punishing what theyre supposed to help)
ADHD I think, falls partly into the "society is partly at fault for not harnessing the strengths of ADHD" and it being a disorder. Its clear to me that the way the economy and society itself are built does a terrible job harnessing human potential but OTOH there are things I must do to function in any society that ADHD makes harder. I need to remember to take my medication or I get sick or worse. I need to put my contact in or Im almost blind. I need to remember to drink or I can become very dehydrated. I need to take care of things around the house and if I have children, do all the stuff needed to make sure they are happy and healthy. I dont have the option of just not doing that stuff.
Unless you’re part of a large family group (or are rich.)
Having a tribe keep on top of on top of one another removes almost all the detriments of ADHD. Someone will remind you to drink and eat, someone will remind you to take medication, someone will pitch in with the kids.
But modern day living doesn’t have the tribe to fall back on.
Or, if you’re rich you can just have a personal assistant/maid/nanny to handle all the mundane shiz.
Remember how good you are in a crisis? Ancestors were in crisis mode quite a lot I reckon, no food, no shelter, big storm on the way, sabertooth hunting us, aight, time for a novel and inventive way to shove these pointy sticks ina big cat. dibs on the pelt/hide.
I think ADHD ancestors could have been innovators and problem solvers who dove heads down hyperfocused into some problem while the others hunted and gathered. They can also be helpful during crisis because their mind gets right into problem solving mode in any crisis. Similarly, I think OCD ancestors might have been good guards/trouble spotters since they're drawn to order and patterns to a great extent.
What are you talking about? I have ADHD and when I get into any crisis (usually they appear due to me procrastinating or not getting in the right mindset to do stuff correctly) I just get nervous and depressed. I absolutely don't get more productive in stressful situations, either I just lock up and try to ignore it until it inevitably bites me in the ass or I try to do it last minute after putting it off for as long as possible and do a shitty rush job.
But maybe that's just me getting the bad aspects of ADHD and Autism without most of the ones seen as more positive since I am also neither orderly nor able to form routines, things that are stereotypical of autistic people.
Have you never started working on reports or projects only when the deadline approaches? To be clear, I'm not saying ADHD people are immune to stress during crisis, but they thrive on that to an extent, because a normally dull task suddenly becomes exciting when there is a consequence to not doing it within a certain period of time. Not all crisis are suitable for ADHD people, I think. They do shut down when they come across certain crises that only creates dread without the benefit of creating excitement.
I doubt that. I recon they were more likely to be the trial and error that others could learn from. Like the poisoned partner effect in rats for example. Most rats will avoid eating strange foods, but there will always be one who snacks on something without care. If it's poisonous, he'll get sick or die. The other rats keep track of what "that guy" ate and avoid the poison berries. This is why rat poison only shows sings after days have passed, after which it kills. It's so that the rats deem the poison safe to eat before it has an effect on them.
Recon ADHD is our poison eating "that guy."
Innovation takes skill and time to hone. The brittish museum has a lot of stone tools. Take the Jade Axe for example. It took days of working and polishing to make it so smooth and perfect. That ain't ADHD work. It would have taken a longer time than a few days of hyperfocus to become that skilled a stone worker in the first place. Let alone then repeat the craft enough to make the damn thing. At best, an ADHDer would have an idea, and someone else would make it a reality.
You're underestimating the ADHD hyper focus duration. As long as the problem is interesting, ADHD people can hyper focus on one problem and only that problem for days/weeks at a time until they solve it, or the problem gets boring, or they find a different shiny thing. Creating/inventing a jade stone tool is exciting. You can spend days trying to make it just perfect, finding ways to sharpen it that others don't know; that's an ADHD person's cup of tea. However once you make the first tool, it's no longer interesting. You move on to hyper focus on something else.