I remember my dad would tell me his teachers (mean ass nuns) would make him put his knuckles on the desk and smash that shit with a ruler until he stopped using his left hand

Ah since some of us are sharing our childhood experiences with being left handed:

I am ambidextrous, like many lefties. While learning to write my letters in Kindergarten (age 5 for non-US peeps), my teacher noticed that I’d switch hands when the one writing got tired. She didn’t like this at all and kept telling me that I needed to choose one. She actually made quite a stink about it so I chose my left, idk why the left specifically.

I still write with my left, despite trying to retrain back to writing with both at different times in my life. I feel like a mini superpower was taken from me.

Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that my large motor skills are best used with my right side (arm, leg, hand), and my small motor skills with the left. I think it’s a leftover from being truly ambidextrous, or it may be common amongst left handed people. Idk…the very few others I’ve asked seem to be left handed/sided exclusively.

I just read that book about Henry Markram. One of his points is that autism is genetic, but how much and by when it shows depends on the calmness of the upbringing of the child in the first years. Him having grown up in a peaceful African village let his brain grow different from what children nowadays experience with information overflow and just overstimulation in general. So yeah, the environment we create (in general) could lead to more autism in a way.

I’ve thought of this so many times and I agree with you.

As we’ve essentially homogenized human society and the roles required to sustain said society, we (neurodivergents) have indeed become less and less fit for the environment we’ve chosen to make.

I once heard this great take on neurodiversity’s role in creating groups of people with ‘specialized’ functions that served the larger group as a whole (I’m taking pre-modern/hunter gatherer tribes). What we call neurodivergence was simply a brain wired to complement or even enhance neurotypical brain functions and vice versa. The brain was evolving to become as diverse as the rest of our bodies, as equity helps ensure survival.

The way I see it, we are like puzzle pieces that fit together to make each other stronger as a unit. We are not simple shapes that one stacks together in an attempt to make structure. I’m sure there’s a much better analogy out there, but this is what my mind has been working on for some time now.

You could also both be hallucinating.

Collective delusion/hallucination is a real thing. Often reinforced when like minded individuals form a tight social group that serves to isolate them from anyone who might challenged the hallucination, and who seek to reinforce it in each other.

Human beings are prone to mass hysteria because we are social animals, and our 'truth' about the world is largely a construct of our agreement with our peers. Psychological illness and behaviors, like anorexia, paranoia, etc. are transmissible psychological conditions. They are ideas in your head that eventually become the truth of your reality as they are reinforced by the ideas and realities of the people around you, and part of the drive to do that is for people to have their ideals/realities validated by others.

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.

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.

Two psychiatrists have told me that I almost certainly have ADHD but "we don't prescribe controlled substances" so they weren't going to formally diagnose me. It seems the only place I can get a diagnosis as an adult is private specialty clinics. I'm poor and the two clinics in my area aren't sliding scale (which I can't afford for most clinics anyway) so I just get to sit here with a confirmation of what I've known for years and no way to get it treated, or at the very least, put down on paper

Good lord what country do you live in?

Autism and adhd are classified as disorders instead of diseases for a reason. Disorders per definition disrupt normal/expected body functions and don't necessarily have any underlying cause. Neurological disorders are just a collection of issues that disrupt your ability to take part in society as the majority would expect.

And anyone struggling with it will tell you that, while it may have been normal human behaviour a few hundred years ago, its fucking exhausting to get trough life with it in this age.

I know where you are coning from. With how much shits hitting the fan right now I don't know if I'd want that lable on me officially. But at the same time does getting diagnosed open up a way to easier help and accommodation for issues that are 100% real.

That seems disconnected from the point being made here

I believe this idea is gaining traction based on the historical rates of left-handed people (article).

When being left-handed was a cultural faux-pas there were less left-handed people. When the culture shifted away from beating left-handed people, suddenly the number of left handed people sky-rocketed in the short term before settling at its true natural number in the long-term.

This could be a trend in other invisible culturally oppressed groups, though we can't really know for this meme until neurodivergence is culturally accepted

While the graph is not made on any actual dirrctly linked data set I would still say it has more meat to it than just being nice. It's very much over simplified especially the "improved diagnostic and understanding" part.

That metric alone is at odds with its self in that our understanding of neurodivergence vastly out paces diagnostics. When most hear the term diagnosics they think of fancy medical devices that give either a yes or no answer which is completely the opposite of what is actually done. There is essentially a book with a set of "symptoms" that a group of doctors have agreed upon that ones doctor uses to comapre their patient to. While that sounds fine its far from flawless.

• The list of acknowledged symptoms is only updated every X amount of years (iirc its like 5 years but I'm on my phone so hard to check)
• Many of major issues/symptoms people face are completely mental therefore invisible with no way to test for them (atm)
• Much of the "testing" can be very opinion based even if it's based on something objective therefore finding a doctor who is the least bias.

(i could go on but need to stop procrstinating)

All of this doesn't even touch on thr social or economic aspects too.

Back even just 26 years being diagnosed with ASD, ADD, or, ADHD came with heavy stigmas with many parents refusing to get kids tested because if it was "positive that means there's something wrong with my kid"

Also there could be a huge drop in current diagosis due to political persicution.

Depending on where you are it can be cost inhibitive.