There is a pervasive feeling in our complex postindustrial society that one thing we are lacking is
a little fucking slack, the sort of thing that might be unavoidably extended on a very regular basis in the primeval human tribe/clan. We get it where we can.
Turning employment and education into an up-or-out pressure cooker that thinks nothing of, for example, firing the bottom performing 10% of people every year, or failing a student who's fifteen minutes late to a final exam, is not what we are built, cognitively/socially/culturally, to tolerate. These people are taking a norm that we DO make a formal attempt to force tolerance on, disability, and trying to extend it to get the system to treat them more like a human being and less like a competitor.
Let's take a more consensus trend: ADHD.
ADHD barely existed as a recognized social phenomenon until the 1990's.
> I didn’t realize how much of a psychiatrist’s time was spent gatekeeping Adderall.
> The human brain wasn’t built for accounting or software engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he can’t sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his colleagues can work so diligently?
> (it’s because his colleagues are all on Adderall already – but telling him that will just make things worse)
> He goes on to give me his story about how he’s at risk of getting fired from his Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers position, and at this rate he’s never going to get the promotion to Vice President Of Staring At Giant Spreadsheets, so do I think I can give him some Adderall to help him through?
> Psychiatric guidelines are very clear on this point: only give Adderall to people who “genuinely” “have” “ADHD”.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
https://youtu.be/xErFsi5AdQ0?si=x0OWNLy07fUr3Cry&t=702