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Women who were interested in STEM were also called witches back then too.
But we only can know the yellow. I wouldn’t be surprised if the blue line had a positive slope over a ten thousand year scale. We are less and less fit for the environment we make.
Or, there’s just no such thing as “typical” within an organ as complex as the human brain. There is only social contexts in which some brains thrive and others struggle… combined with the innate human instinct to form in groups and out groups.
We can’t know whether the prevalence rates have changed or by how much and its foolish to assume it’s only because of better awareness. The world we exist in has changed immensely and we are subject to the affects of those environmental changes.
further than that, our cultural expectations of what is ‘normal’ have shifted drastically over the past two generations.
i’d argue that what once in the ‘normal’, is no longer, hence leading to greater need and identification of various differences where none were previously seen. Sort of like how you think all birds are the same, until you become a bird watcher, then you see every birth as different by species, and if you are a scientist studying a particular population of birds, you would gain the ability to identify them by their individual personalities and characteristics.
but I, as a lay person, have no idea wtf the difference between a sparrow and a chickadee is, they are just all brown/black bird blobs of a similar size that try to steal my food when I eat outside. they are just ‘birds’ to me. but for someone with a PhD in ornithology, they are two completely different things.
To further that point, it’s guaranteed that what was normal, isn’t, anymore. Some things are, much isn’t. For example, few men, relatively, know how to hunt anymore or would be willing or able to kill an animal. Becoming able to do that has wide ranging impacts on who they are. This used to be normal. If we accept that the environment shapes us then when it changes, so do we, and with that, what is considered normal, shifts.
Yeah, normative skillsets and social roles and expectations are in constantly changing.
My BIL grew up hunting and farming but he can’t ever talk about it anymore because people view negatively in his current social environment of professional urban liberals, who think it is considered psychopathic to hunt/kill/dress animals. He used to hunt, trap, skin, and all that to make money as a teenager. What was totally normal for him, is considered borderline criminal behavior to the people around him now.
Yah, urban liberals can be exceptionally closed minded, in their own unique way.
And if you confront them about it. they tell you how ignorant and wrong you are, because they can’t possible be wrong because they are just so ‘open-minded’ if you can’t see how open minded and correct they are, clearly you are a close-minded fool.
Yep. Their moral arrogance makes them socially aggressive, especially in the face of uncomfortable, practical realities. They refuse to acknowledge that they are the modern day version of the very morality policing they vilify from previous generations. They don’t see it because they don’t hold the same values or beleifs that the past generations did, and it is the beliefs and values they disagreed with, not the system.
I look at them and see the a similarly oppressive, prejudice, abusive social control system. They see that the beleifs and values are different. It was never that the whole system was wrong, it was that the system didn’t support their beleifs and values. Now that it does, and they control it, they’re content to engage in similar oppression and prejudice of the groups they dislike.
It has always been about control, in service to self interest. It was not about building a better, more just and fair society. It’s part of why the left and right are so far apart today and how Trump is in the white house, again, abusing the power of the executive almost exclusively for personal gain.
So, not trying to step on any mines here, and I get this is literally only a 2D representation of a phenomenon.
But what jumps out to me, is how “neurodivergence” is being defined kind of ahistorically. It supposes that neuro divergence is an essential, natural quality in humanity. That has real problems when we try to describe objective reality, especially the parts of us that aren’t tangible.
Did ancient people mostly have 2 arms and legs, 10 fingers and toes at birth? Yeah, by all accounts. Were ancient people as intelligent as modern people? That question gets a little funky, because who and what gets defined as intelligent, is really historically and geographically dependent. European kings sent away to the most far flung monasteries to bring in trusted advisors who spoke multiple languages and could write awesome cursive; at the same time Fibonacci was bringing algebra and the foundations of calculus home from Turkiye and publishing them in Italy as brain teasers. Now cursive is worthless except as a craft, maybe some marketing, and calculus became the intellectual basis for the industrial revolution.
So if “neuro divergence” can be defined historically like intelligence, which in some ways the graph itself supports this claim, then we can’t rely on an idea of human nature to make a point, especially since we are talking about scientific medical detection of a concrete divergence or disorder.
So like, what is divergence? What is being diverged from? The baseline has always been a vibe.
I’ve read studies that show better outcomes, increased happiness, better social integration measured among children and students with autism who spent time working on farms around animals. Structured, satisfying, hands on work, that used to make up most of the population. Now farmers is a micro minority, either owning land and charging people to work it, or working land for not enough money – hard, degrading, difficult, exceedingly dangerous work.
Other factors like screen time, social media, increase in dietary simple sugars, all show measurable changes in behaviors of people with ADHD, social anxiety, autism, bipolar, borderline disorders. Academics like Michel Foucault have studied how mental health treatment and psychiatry (additionally schools, and hospitals) are directly descended from the development of mass imprisonment and incarceration during the industrial revolutions in England, France, Germany, etc.,
Foucault also reviews sources that show more kind and forgiving attitudes in society toward people with severe social dysfunctions and intellectual disabilities. I wouldn’t go nearly as far as saying that people with disorders and divergences were better off – I believe that the medieval monastery was a “safe” place for a lot of people with what might now be described as neuro divergent, but also acknowledge the medieval church exploited poverty and mental illness for official and unofficial purposes.
But it does raise the question of how people, who may be intellectually “equal,” when raised under different conditions develop quite differently. And the way our current system functions, it uses value judgments and certifications, etc., to slot me into a specific place. But once in that place, i have to almost be a certain kind of person in order to succeed. The role isn’t suited to the person filling it, but to the needs of the organization. And usually the org needs to make money.
If there is greater social stigma towards disorder and divergence than there once was, that plays a major factor in whether people even want to be diagnosed. Lots of people have commented on self identification with neuro divergence as being a “tik tok trend” or some such. But a friend of mine, in an unofficial obit she wrote for someone older, made a point to say that previous generations looked at MH like it meant you were off to meet the business end of an ice pick.
For myself, learning I have ADHD and treating it has been holistically helpful. I’m open about it with people, we will see if it bites me in the ass.
I just worry a bit about the framing of “people have always been this way.” While I agree it is true in a way; I think our society is extremely stressful and toxic.
And then to say that the baseline of neuro divergence is unchanged throughout time buys cover for people who are responsible for the environmental changes making people unwell, and getting richer because of it.
As a person who’s special interest is calligraphy, what do you mean by cursive? I had always thought that scripts were on a spectrum between gothic and cursive, with more strokes per letter or less strokes respectively. Though I mostly practice ornamental penmanship (fancy spencerian), so I don’t know much about the history of hands in Europe.
I guess I’m drawing a line between the late medieval period when there was accelerated social development of the EU, but not enough scribes and scholars, and so their work suddenly became very sought after in a new world made of contracts and written agreements. So I’m probably talking about arguably two different things. First when writing in a very formal manner was a literal sign of intelligence, because that kind of intellectual work became a necessary component of late pre-modern statecraft, and hence highly valued by the ruling classes of the time and place. The second connection is to cursive, which is a formalized writing that had real legal and business value just a few generations ago.
So I’m sure I am butchering the history of any actual scripts that were mentioned in this effort post. But as someone who has a pretty lively fascination with handwriting, font and text in general, I’d love any questions, clarifications, resources, criticisms and reprimands that are due!
Well I don’t think the vocabulary is particularly important here, since they likely didn’t use the words in the same way we do. Like some scripts like batard or English secretary hand were evolutions of the formal script that reduced pen strokes to be faster to write making them more cursive.
But I’m curious about the history of connected letter scripts like Italian round hand. But most of the books I’ve read about handwriting have been in the American tradition, and it helps they are easy to find on the Internet. Some cursory reading on the subject seems to point to it coming from Italy in the form of old Roman cursive. To my eyes old Roman cursive seems related but is too different for me to call a flowing connected letter script. This isn’t surprising though since it was used to write on wax tablets.
It seems like something we would recognize in the modern world as a connected letter cursive originated in the late 15th century Italy out of italic script. But I don’t speak Italian or Latin so I don’t know how to find any primary sources on this.
Italy is a fascinating region to study language, it was broken up into city states well into the 1800s, with some of those city states serving as the center of culture and intellectualism for all of Europe, at various times. So there was like these very advanced areas of Italy, and these very backwards parts, and the 1800s was all about getting people all speaking the same language, the Florentine dialect.
I bet if someone took on such a study it would be a very uninteresting read. Also Italians are friendly and speak good English I bet you could connect with someone who could help explore the topic more!
I can answer all your questions here. Interested in talking live some time?
Also the un-taboofication of it… see, the “left-handed epidemic”
As a trans, let me warn you about the pathologization of normal human social patterns.
That seems disconnected from the point being made here
Can you elaborate? I do not get it.
Maybe ‘Autism’ is a social construct. And ‘neurotypical’ is not based in biological reality, but in expectations for middle-class professionals under a certain social order.
upper middle class professionals are the class by which everything else is measured, yes. conformity with their expectations and behaviors are considered ‘success’ and anything less than or different is ‘failure’.
But autism rates are higher among the middle and upper middle class… because they have the resources to diagnose and treat the difference. as a working-class person, i never ever heard of anything about autism or adhd or mental illness until I got to college in my working-class rural town, none of these ideas existed in day to day life or conversation. nobody had depression, anxiety, or any of that. and the freshman year college, all the sudden these terms became daily parts of my vocabulary. i never even really saw them on the internet for most of the 90s and 2000s.
none of these ideas existed in day to day life or conversation. nobody had depression, anxiety, or any of that.
I think the important distinction is that nobody knew they had depression, anxiety, etc… The whole point of this graph is that people had it and were simply undiagnosed. So the people who had those various neurodivergences were likely unsupported and struggled in their daily lives much more than they would have if they had proper support.
Look at the graph of left handedness over time:
When we stopped trying to beat the demons out of kids and forcing them to write with their non-dominant hand, they were suddenly able to exist openly. And that graph shows that as they were able to exist openly, the rates of left handedness steadily increased until it reached its natural levels. It doesn’t mean more kids were suddenly left handed. It means previous kids (now adults) had been forced to struggle more than their right handed peers, because they got beat if they used their dominant hand. And there were 100% adults at the time (mostly entrenched teachers who still wanted to enforce right handedness in writing classes) who would have been decrying the sudden increase in left handedness as unnatural, simply because it wasn’t being unnaturally suppressed anymore.
To be clear, I agree that many of the natural rates likely aren’t a flat line over time. Depression and anxiety diagnosis rates both seem to be particularly dependent on external/environmental factors. So as the world becomes more and more depressing, people are naturally diagnosed more. But it’s not really accurate to say “nobody had it” before, because it definitely existed. It’s simply that nobody was diagnosed before.
You are being revisionist.
Lead was completely banned from gasoline in 1996. It’s first phase outs began 1975. It took 20 year to remove it. Was the ‘natural’ state of car use, leaded or unleaded gasoline use? Why didn’t we ban it outright completely in 1975 if it was so horrible?
Neither. It was just a social change based on the understanding of the negative effects of lead, which had not been previously known and became known and better understood over time.
There is no ‘natural’ state of things. There are just choices we make. Leaded gasoline persists in many parts of the world still. Just like many children are still being beaten into right handedness in other societies.
I seriously doubt anyone is ‘liberated’ by being able to be left handed or right handed anymore than are liberated by what car they buy. But they certainly do convince themselves, and are convinced by marketing, that that Jeep makes them cooler and more fun than that boring losers who don’t drive Jeeps! I have met a few Jeep lovers who tell me my Honda means I am clearly oppressed, and I should get a Jeep like they drive and be liberated by the massive repair bills they come with.
Are you actually trying to equate left handedness (which is a natural innate part of someone’s lived experience) to choosing a car? I used left handedness as an example because it’s a personality trait and the rates have been extremely stable over time, but the natural rate wasn’t really known until we stopped punishing kids for being left handed. Anyone can choose to drive a Jeep, but nobody can choose their hand dominance.
And if you think left handed kids aren’t more “liberated” than they used to be, you’re simply refusing to accept how much they previously had to struggle to learn to do everything with their non-dominant hand. The entire point of my previous comment is that those kids were needlessly forced to struggle much more than their peers, for something that they had no control over. Instead of properly supporting them, the system was focused on hammering down the nail that stuck out. Because the system prioritized conformity instead of support.
You’re toeing a very close line to some of the “being gay is a choice, and they could stop being oppressed if they just chose to be straight instead” talking points.
Yes. They self-identify with the brand and make it part of their identity. Or they inherent it from their families. My family is a Toyota family, for example. I broke ranks and got a Honda, an this was viewed as a ‘betrayal’, much in the same way left handedness was viewed as ‘wrong’.
Yeah, sexuality is a choice. Part of that choice is to conform with social expectations, regardless of if you are gay, bi, or whatever. You very much can change your sexuality. People do it all the time. It’s not some inherent immutable trait you are born with that persists forever. and people around you in our society get to agree or disagree with you. For example, I am straight, but plenty of women I have dated think I am gay because of my non-conformity with ‘straight’ male behaviors. Further, other points in my life, my lack of gayness was also used to mock, deride, and harass me because I was ‘too straight’. So which one is it, am I gay, or am I straight?
Was I needless forced to struggle in my life because my parents were poor ignorant people, vs if they had been well-off and educated? According to some folks I’ve met, I should have never been born because only ‘good’ people should have children. By your style of thought, indeed, I should not exist, because if I had not been born to my parents, I’d have never had to struggle!
The only way for any of us to not ‘needlessly struggle’ is indeed, for us to not to have been born. Do you have kids? I have nephews, they had pretty open-minded and liberal parents. They are now young adults. Do you know what their complaint is? That their parents didn’t oppress them enough, because if they had, they could have been so much more. They think their parents should have pushed them harder and beaten them into more social conformity so they could be more ‘successful’ in life and be popular and be cool, unlike being only average.
Does this graph account for the huge lack of available diagnosis?
We’ve been on waiting lists for YEARS that only grow and grow to get a 2 hour appointment with someone who can diagnose us with ADHD.
It’ll never happen, I’m sure. The government would rather not put resources into diagnosis, so they can claim almost nobody has ADHD, and not provide any support or recognition for it.
Good lord what country do you live in?
I’m sure we can guess
I mean, yes, visibility and legitimacy is a major element in why neurodiversity is more widely recognized. However, STEM folks tend to reassert the authority of science as an institution of capitalism and settler-colonialism by not recognizing that these are not “illnesses” or pathological conditions naturally. Yes, they are behaviours that we have no reason to believe are divergent or new from typical human life, and their status as pathological is conditional on the specific social and material conditions that are facilitated by this system.
We are recognizing it more because it is covered more in scholarship, yes, but also because this system has created the conditions where we are even in the position to construct these behaviors as worthy of identifying to prove that they are real. If neurodiverse people didn’t have to justify their worthiness of human compassion and dignity just because they can’t conform to the expectations and demands of a system that only values human life for its productivity, then there’d be no distinction at all.
Oh, and what social system of order and productivity do you think should take over that authority? communism? anarchism?
What is ‘typical human life’?
Am i better off being beaten into submission and diagnosed and drugged by a communist expansionist dictatorship than a capitalist state of settler colonialism?
My eyes rolled so hard that I could hear them.
I do not live under a communist or anarchist authority (as funny as it is to suggest there’d be an authoritarian anarchist system), and so I can only analyze the system I do live under. If you want to accept dehumanization for convenience and comfort, you can keep that to yourself. I do not, and therefore I criticize this system the way it deserves to be and do so to better understand how to build something better, whatever that may be.
Either way, it was truly boring to read this comment. If structuralist and postmodern theory from fifty years ago is shocking to you, I’m afraid you aren’t the right person to be discussing this with me.
Yes, you are so superior. Wow I am so dumb. I should just listen to you, you so smart.
It can’t be that postmodern theory from 50 years ago is total naval gazing shit from pompous bourgeois academics types… who have enough money and power to sit around all day bitching about how oppressed they are and how much smarter they are than everyone else… weird how they dehumanize anyone who doesn’t agree with their theorizing… just you do.
It can’t be that you yourself, are the very thing you hate so much? Perhaps you, are the system of oppression and misery you so loathe? because instead of being a productive memory of your society, you see yourself as too elevated and sophisticated to participate in it in a meaningful or productive way that would measurable improve it?
“Academic types … who have enough money and power…” Gee, that’d be the day. That prestige and wealth is largely denied to academics specifically because this sort of scholarship was so challenging to a capitalist system and so difficult to commodify.
I’m honestly not sure what the rest of this is meant to mean in this context, as it is mostly incoherent anti-intellectualism that could not come from academic experience in the slightest. Quite literally, scholars are punished for doing what you claim to think they do here. They want you to have four publications and several community outreach initiatives before you’re even done your Ph.D. in many fields now.
Also, it isn’t dehumanising to say you’re uninformed and wrong, humans do that all the time. To reduce that term to the meaning, “you were mean to me on the internet (I wasn’t),” is honestly gross and embarrassing. We use that term to explain cultures that systemically eradicate groups of people, you’re going to sit here and pretend you’ve experienced a fraction of that victimization in an internet comment thread? I’m not sure where you get off acting that entitled to deciding truth, but I wouldn’t even say something like that anonymously and be happy with myself that night.
I won’t be reading anything else you send.
Am I reading this meme right when I think it’s implying that folks are getting over-diagnosed with mental disorders? Because that’s some RFK jr shit. Shame on you.
EDIT: I did misread it, I fully agree with OP.
Sphericity of planet Earth ---------------------------------------------- /---------------------------- / / / Fraction of Mankind who believes the Earth is spherical -------------/Doctors still haven’t figured out I’m telling the truth about how the military industrial complex is manipulating me as part of a case study to see if doctors are actually listening to their patients. I mean, I told my ROTC cadre that my nonexistent sister got me pregnant. What else would they have me do? Stare at goats? We got enough of those guys, so I hadda go learn how to be an idiot online to be of service to my country, amongst other things.
