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Different Kinds of Human Operating Systems

In her excellent link-laden newsletter Curious About Everything, my friend Jodi Ettenberg highlighted this passage from Steve Silberman, the author of Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity who died last week (italics mine):

Sometimes the word “neurodiversity” is framed as if it’s merely a political stance or a political conviction. It’s not. It’s a living fact, like biodiversity in rain forests. We clearly have people with many different kinds of minds. There are people with dyslexia, there are people with ADHD, there are people with autism, there are people at all points of the spectrum. And all of these labels are the names of “disorders,” but if you look at them another way, they’re just different kinds of human operating systems.

We have to get beyond the fact that these conditions were discovered by people looking for forms of illness, basically, and recognize that they’re just there. They’re part of the human fabric. They always have been. People with these conditions have been making contributions to the evolution of science, art and technology for centuries โ€” invisibly, mostly. You know, most of the labels were invented in the 20th century. We have to start looking at those labels, instead of the checklist of modern disorders, as human resources that we have not learned to tap fully because we’ve been so busy treating those people like carriers of disorder.

You can read the full 2015 interview with Silberman from which that passage was pulled.

P.S. The Kindle version of Neurotribes is on sale for $4.99 right now.

Discussion  4 comments

Matthew Cohen

I absolutely agree with this sentiment. But. There are a lot of people with, for example, autism for whom it is absolutely a disorder. Who cannot speak, or use the bathroom on their own. Who need 24-hour care. Who, when they are fully grown, express their anger and frustration at their condition by physically assaulting their caregivers. We need to make room for the idea that there is more than one way for people to think and feel and be in the world, while also recognizing that some of those ways of being render those people incapable of taking care of themselves, or put those people (or the people that love them) in harm's way.

Andrew Lilja

Instead of putting millions a year into investigating or into finding more candidate genes for autism, put that money into investing in ways to give autistic people happier, healthier, and safer lives. What if we were innovating in ways that made life better for the autistic people who are already here, instead of innovating in ways that were purely to prevent more autistic people from being born?

Lisa S.

At the same time, a parent on our arts mini school's Whatsapp recently tried to argue that the mini school parents should ask the province for more money because the school supports "neurodiverse" children. Apparently in the left coast Canadian lingo now, having an interest in something outside applied sciences is "neurodiverse". Sigh. (I mean, in the broadest sense of everyone likes different things so that's "neurodiverse", sure....but that's not where she was going, she was trying to argue a kid interested in the arts is on the spectrum, which...is this where we've landed as a society?)

Lisa S.

(Note I am an arts-loving tree-hugging leftie on the left coast. Just not willing to accept that liking the arts is a "disorder". Though I am great with the idea of alternate operating systems, arts-focused or not.)

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