Knowing the right answer. If you’ve ever spent three hours at the kitchen table sobbing over 3 x 7 = ???, you’ll intuitively understand the urgency around finding the “right” answer.
Indeed, in disciplines such as Mathematics or the Natural Sciences, such a thing may even be said to exist. This transculturally enshrined obsession with being right creates social cohesion and harmony on the one hand, but on the other, serves up toxic beliefs like there’s no tomorrow. Harmful harmony, you might ask? Well, yes.
Harmony is often achieved at the expense of diversity, and diversity is the cream-cheese-icing on, and between the layers of, the carrot cake of life.
One of the cooler things about having a divergent brain is that it often comes at things from an unexpected angle, sort of like the Hogwarts’ stairs. ADHD maths is a thing, for example, and the internet is rife with curious calculations which demonstrate the differences between neurodivergent (ND) approaches to sums and those of our neurotypical (NT) friends.
And it’s not just different approaches to problems, it’s also apparent in the different conclusions we draw, as evidenced throughout history, in its entirety.
Neurodivergence is a relatively new term which refers to the different flavours of thinking, learning and behaviour found amongst us homo sapiens. “Neurodivergence is a term originally attributed to the 1990s sociologist Judy Singer. It is a non-medical umbrella description of people with variation in their mental functions,” explains Kelly McCain, Head of Healthcare Initiative at the World Economic Forum.
Now, in order to preserve harmony, and therefore, social cohesion, it’s often easier to promote conformity rather than reward sharp turns left by the Hogwarts’ Stairs Brains. This has led to the remarkable and soul-shredding phenomenon of masking amongst the ND community, which includes but is not limited to people with ADHD (attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder), ASD (autism spectrum disorder) OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), anxiety disorders, depression or borderline personality disorders.
Masking means hiding behaviours or emotions, and is a conditioned response to repeated correction or criticism, and stigma. The use of the term “disorder” clearly denotes difference as deficit.
ND’s reject this ableist terminology, preferring the term ‘condition’ to the medical and pukey label currently in use. One intrepid TikToker, Connor deWolfe, contends that the ADHD label, rather than describe the mindful-of-bees and hyper-emotionality of this particular neurological condition, merely lists its most annoying attributes. DeWolfe suggests DAVE as a more inclusive and affirming acronym for this flavour of neurodivergence; Dopamine Attention Variability Executive-Function, which better reflects the struggles of life without working memory or impulse control or executive function regulation.
Philosophy, like Science, only ever claims to know as much as it knows, and remains open to new information, albeit after a few initial centuries of tortury murdering. Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Dr. Luther King Jr. Society has historically tried burning new perspectives as a first response. Like monkeys, we attempt to smash the scary thing with rocks.
So how do we seek out new knowledge without startling ourselves into the “smash it or burn it” primal response? How can we search for explanations without falling into the spiky-jawed traps of implicit bias or its close cousin, confirmation bias? How on earth can we ever hope to understand perspectives alien from our own?
Well, we’ve all lived through The Teenage Years, the dread-weight of ‘knowing it all’. The crippling certainty. Finally realizing that I know nothing was like a drink of cool water after the drought that was the teens and twenties. Not having a clue, ‘nere a single inkling is simply marvelous.
Spectrum is the key word to remember when thinking about human learning, thinking and behaviour, and this is certainly the case when it comes to ND and NT categories. Harvard University defines the concept of Neurodiversity as “the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one “right” way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits.”
The tendency to pursue the “right” answer then, is contingent upon false dichotomies and incomplete knowledge.
And that makes sense when you are placating a barbarian horde or The Mongols or a toddler.
But if we shift our understanding from the rigid thinking of right-and-wrong, good-and-bad, black-and white to the spectrum model, suddenly the ambiguity and nuance necessary to comprehend the human condition in all of its magnificent stupidity opens up, all shiny and waiting to be explored.
And if the pursuit of enlightenment isn’t enough, the promise of great joy and bounteous happiness will shift you into the grey, the magical zone of possibility. Last month, Neurodiversity Celebration Week across the world celebrated this “fascinating and crucial field, by exploring what employers can do to understand and harness the wide spectrum of neurodiverse talent that’s proven to make an enterprise more resilient, creative … and productive.”
In an increasingly globalised and multicultural world, it simply makes sense to consciously question the “right” answers and principles that govern our lives and to resist bias or ignorance when we meet them. Call them out with kindness. Call them out with humour. But call them out!
The mental schemata built up through education and conditioning allow us to feel some comfort in our shaky certainty about the world. Yet, the universe operates in absolute and utter chaos. We need explanations for scary things that happen every day. Illness. Death. Suffering. To the conscious mind, ambiguity is anathema. The unknown is a downright “Hold my beer.”
Most ND’s mask exceptionally well. Trying all the time to behave “right” is exhausting. AND it clips the wings of our feather-brained flights of fancy.
Cleaning the fridge for an NT, I am led to believe, is a pretty linear task. Open fridge. Remove items. Clean. Replace.
Not for my flavour of ND. Oh no. We open fridge. Begin to remove items. Notice the eggs are nearing their expiry date. Decide to rustle up a quiche. Remove all quiche dishes to wash them, along with everything else in the cupboard. Move cupboard and rug and lamp to the other side to the room to create a better flow between the oven and the quiche receptacle. Maybe the fridge is the problem? Redesign the entire living room and paint the wall which is now behind the sofa to tie the décor together. Taobao an entire new fabric motif for the cushions to compliment the fresh layout, and then decide that it feels far more South American now, and French quiche simply will not do. Replace the eggs and close the fridge.
When it comes down to it, NDs are the unwitting masters of faffing around and finding out. Newton’s apple. Dr. Fleming’s penicillin. Arthur Guinness’ Guinness. All happy accidents. Now, we have an explanation for gravity, antibiotics, and Guinness. But before we didn’t. The right answers aren’t always the best answers. Before the invention of penicillin, for example, fresh air was a cure for TB, strep-throat could see you pushing up the daisies. A paper cut could be the end of you. The right answers to these afflictions pre- Dr. Fleming’s “oops-I-forgot-to-clean-up-my-moldy-dishes-for-2-weeks” game-changer are now, thankfully, wrong.
We have newer, better explanations. Imagine the ignominy of dying of a paper cut.
3×7=21. I learned that in the end. But there are newer, better ways.
