Syd's Slow Journal

Hi Syd,

I had a look at the website (it’s got very pleasing visuals actually!) and your entry. I noticed you used the word neurodivergent several times in the article, in fact neurodivergence seems to be the main thread running through the writing.

I wonder though (and have for a while) about this whole neurodivergence thing, specifically where it relates to facticity and actualism. It seems to me that just like a few years ago everybody and their dog were busy switching between the endless array of gender personas, now something similar is happening with neurodivergence, basically it seems to be a bit of a fad!

My Instagram/Facebook feed is full of content about Autism this or ADHD that, and then there is the AuDHD which is a mix of both so you can have it all :upside_down_face: . It is clear that people have turned these labels into personas, it seems like an attempt to alleviate the weirdness and rottenness of the human condition by applying a neat and convenient psychiatric label to its inevitable manifestations. Besides just what is the ‘normal’ which the ‘neurodivergence’ is diverging from? :thinking:

And really isn’t this all the same as say horoscopes? That ‘I’ get to fit into some pre-ordained archetype and then ‘my’ rottenness all of a sudden ‘makes so much sense’. I do strongly question the facticity of all this.

Also (and this is a pertinent point for any actualist) aren’t these labels adopted specifically so that one never has to change? ie “you cannot change human nature”. It’s telling to consider the fact that no ‘neurodivergence’ will survive into actual freedom, it will disappear along with ‘me’.

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