Why the Quest for Neurodiversity is Actually about Status

Before getting to the concept of “neurodiversity” itself, I need to give an example of a situation that will hopefully illuminate this whole business with status and tribality.

Say that I am brought up in a large tribe where, in order to be considered “a man” by the men and women of the tribe, I need to beat the tribe’s chosen representative in a fight. The representative happens to be Conor McGregor.

Nursing my wounds, after getting beaten to a pulp in my first attempts, it seems to me that I am now faced with a couple of options:

• Keep training harder and harder in the hope that I will one day be able to beat Conor.

• Wait for Conor to either get knackered out from so many fights, or to get really old, and keep training harder and harder so that perhaps, at aged 70, I will finally beat him.

Neither of these options look too appealing to me, or even especially likely to work. So I resign myself to a life of being a lower-status male and begin to spend my nights consuming alcohol in the low-cost bar that the heads of my culture have created for me and my fellow “losers.”

Then, whilst drinking away my sorrows one night, a way forward suddenly manifests in my mind. Emboldened by my consumption of alcohol, I take to my feet and announce to my fellow failures, “My brothers. Let us not despair. Lend me your ears for I wish to communicate to you that our salvation is at hand. It is not us who are at fault. It is our antiquated social order, run by despots clinging on to power. We are beautiful, intelligent and sensitive creatures, fully deserving of our place in the sun. Whilst that McGregor is little more than a brainless thug, in truth not worthy to wash our feet. Let us rise up together and tear down this tyrannical form of social order. Let us level the playing field and make this world a fairer place where all citizens can enjoy equal status, regardless of their physical attributes.”

My impromptu speech is met with thunderous applause and, supported by our intoxicated state, the group of “losers,” led by myself, storm the hierarchical structures of state and orchestrate our people’s rebellion.

So what has really happened here? Why has this ancient self-maintaning tribal order suddenly collapsed?

It has collapsed not because I have suddenly been inspired by a vision of a more altruistic society. In fact, I am fully cognisant that I will be gaining considerable status from my lead role in vanquishing the old order.

Rather it has collapsed because the bar for social acceptance and status acquisition was set too high. Conor was too tough a test. This meant that the number of “failures” finally reached a critical level of males who collectively had the strength to overthrow the whole system. And one male, myself, saw the possibility of gaining status for himself through orchestrating said revolution.

Okay, that done, now let’s take a look at the concept of neurodiversity. The movement to accept all people as “neurodiverse,” rather than some of them being in any way pathological, mentally-impaired or otherwise sub-typical, has grown from the work of the autism rights movements of the 1990s.

The status-acquisitional standards of modern-day Western culture are rooted in the thinking and behaviour of the generation born post-war and prior to the mid-sixties, commonly known as the “baby boomers,” or simply “boomers.”

This generation demanded high standards and would only grant validation and status to those judged to have risen to the challenge. The social landscape in which adolescents developed might, for example, feature the following:

• the need to be thin

• the need to be well-dressed at all times

• the need to be pass exams

• the need to be physically fit

• the need to consume large quantities of alcohol without falling over

• the need for men to constantly pursue attractive women

• the need for women to considerably test any male prior to granting sexual access

• the need to earn a high income

• the need to buy a house or flat

I am in my sixties. But I believe that were someone now in their adolescence to glance through this list, it would be fair to say that they would consider it a severely heavy lift. As an individual diagnosed with a condition such as autism, ADHD or dyslexia, I believe it would be fair to say that the situation would be seen as worse still.

Given the increase in autism diagnoses, we have arrived at a place where the threshold mentioned earlier has been easily surpassed. The status-acquisitional landscape of modern-day Western culture is both outdated in its focus and possessing ridiculously high bars in those outdated focusses.

Faced with a demand by elders to meet such absurd standards, we now no longer have only two options - working hard to get there or simply dropping out of the game. Instead we can elect to push back against the whole system. When sufficient people on the autistic spectrum, for example, feel like they are never going to be granted equal or high status, no matter how hard they try, they can band together and push for the neurological playing field be levelled, demanding that “neurodiversity” be accepted as the medical norm.

What I believe to be important in all this relates to motivation. It would be easy to take a cursory look at the movement for neurodiversity, for example, and assume that it was being motivated altruistically, as a way to drive prejudice from society.

I do not believe that this is actually the case. To me, it is happening because the status-acquisitional landscape of our society is too focussed and demands too high standards for present day young people. It has failed to adjust such that the correct ratio of passes to fails is maintained.

And this does not apply simply to those diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. All manner of modern-day forms of pushback against societal norms, certainly including the current “culture war” and “wokeism,” appear to me to have a similar root - new generations facing too tough a challenge to acquire status.

But does it really matter whether people are motivated by status-acquisitional concerns, or through more altruistic desires?

Wouldn’t our society anyway be better if we simply levelled all playing fields and granted equal status to everyone?

In my opinion, such a thing could be potentially dangerous. The Western world actually represents only some 13% of the global population. It has been dominant on a cultural level for at least since the protestant reformation of the sixteenth century. Yet it is now visibly in decline. We have entered a multipolar world - no clear hegemon now exists. The global order is rapidly shifting.

To drop the entire status-acquisitional landscape could be risky. It would leave the West dependent on other cultures to follow suit in order for it to survive. If other cultures adopted, for example, more militaristic standards to confer status on their young, they could soon be in a position to overwhelm and enslave the West. This might seem ridiculous, given how dominant we have been for the last centuries. But study empires of the past and I believe it will be seen that just such a thing has happened many times previously.

I want to state that I’m not claiming that neurodiversity, as a concept, is in any way wrong, or that it should not be pursued. Rather I’m saying that the quest for neurodiversity is actually being motivated by a dysfunction in the Western status-acquisitional landscape and that it is this that actually needs to be addressed.