The label ‘neurodivergent’ needs a rebrand

In our rigidly judgmental social order we have parents despairing at oddball children and teachers frustrated, but those kids’ singular minds should be recognised as gifts. There will be a Jeff Bezos or a Bill Gates among them.

We need to rethink the stigmas around neurodiversity. Picture: istock

In neurodivergence lies the future of the planet. For among that precious band of humans – whose brains have developed differently, who think differently – are our game-changers. Our Earth-changers. We need those uniquely brilliant, dazzlingly creative and innovative mindsets that are focused on what is deeply, vulnerably, magnificently human, to counter the march of the machines whose raison d’être is to colonise our jobs, agency, creativity and sense of purpose.

The label “neurodivergent” needs a rebrand. The tired societal cliché is that it’s freighted with complication, is somehow broken, flawed or problematic; somehow, dispiritingly, “wrong”. Yet history has proved that these sizzlingly unique brains are a gift, for all of us. We need neurodivergent people as change agents. As our warriors against the future, despite much of the current tech revolution emanating from those with neurodivergent brain processes. But are those deeply competitive tech bros who lead the AI charge focused on the glory of what makes us blazingly human; those hard to quantify, ephemeral qualities like heart, emotion, empathy and soul? They act with impunity, wanting to capture the mind, replicate it, monetise it – but not nurture it.

In his recent AACTA speech musician Paul Kelly talked about the “alchemy of astonishment” when it comes to creativity, and it’s often the neurodivergent who give us that.

In our rigidly judgmental social order we have parents despairing at oddball children and teachers frustrated, but perhaps those singular minds should be recognised as gifts. To humanity. Assets in an increasingly robotised world. Because some of those minds do the one thing the robots can’t – think outside the box. Professor Simon Baron Cohen, a clinical psychologist and researcher at Cambridge University, says neurodiverse brains have been responsible for key leaps forward in human development, from the wheel to the microchip, as they fixate on problem solving and patterns.

So what of those now who shine with creativity and singularity, who think outside the box, don’t want the box? Why does society seek to quash them so rigidly into it? Trammel the flair, normalise the behaviour, intervene and meddle and force them to be like the mediocre rest? We should be nurturing the uniqueness, for the benefit of humanity. In terms of creativity and innovation, Artificial Intelligence is about the elimination of the messy mediocrity. And in an AI-saturated future it’s the truly brilliant, the daringly exceptional, who’ll rise to the surface to counter it.

AI’s ultimate goal is to render us jobless, submissive and godless. AI is a new type of god for the husked future human, robbed of agency and purpose. It’s a Trojan horse that aspires to infiltrate the very fabric of our existence, presenting itself as omniscient, reliable, calming, all-wise and all-seeing as it orders lives and thoughts; an answer to all our problems. Just like the old gods.

So bring on those who think audaciously, outside the box. Jeff Bezos, who has ADHD, has said “there are a thousand ways to be smart”. And Bill Gates said if he was growing up today he’d probably be diagnosed as on the autism spectrum: “I missed social clues, could be rude and inappropriate, got Bs and Cs, became obsessed with certain projects, was disorganised, fidgeted and was called retarded.”

Gates reflected, “If they ever invent a pill where they could say, ‘OK, your social skills will be normal but your ability to concentrate would also be normal’, I wouldn’t take the pill. Maybe I’m forgetting how painful it was, but I needed that neurodiversity to write that software.” We need to rethink the stigmas around neurodiversity. Need to harness and champion its creativity, genius and wild alchemy to better this world, for the humans in it.