I saw a video the other day that was unsettling. It was a comparison between two children, one of them, they claimed, without ADHD and one with it. They ask the kids the same set of questions, and ask the audience to ‘guess’ which one has ADHD (Though the agenda of the video is shamelessly apparent). The first little boy (without ‘ADHD’) Gives clear concise answers: ‘Do you think you’re smart? ‘Yes’
The second, a little girl answers differently,
Do you think you’re smart ‘I don’t know’
Do you like school?
‘Yeah’
Why do you like school?
‘Because I like to play with my friends, at recess.’
Do you like school?
‘No
Why don’t you like school?
“Because I have to do a lot of stuff and my little sister is really cute and I want to spend more time with my little sister.”
This continues as the questions go on, main difference between the boy and the girl is their deliberation in answering. The Boy answers concisely. With a straightforward clarity, clean cut answers, that would fit snuggly in a scantron. The girl deliberates, pauses, and considers. There are gears turning. She expresses herself in fragmented sentences, clumsy but understandable; all the pieces are there, her ideas are illustrated like watercolors instead of filled in plots on a grid. She expresses her thoughts differently than the cut and clean textbook model of how she’s expected to. And is branded as deficient and afflicted, for doing so. Because she doesn’t fit the mold she’s expected to form to, she’s labeled as inferior.
And because of this her character is poisoned by the doubt of the influences shaping her; sedated by disbelief, and then drugs, and the label is reified. The Sickening irony is that the same voices that condemn whats different glorify the outliers, and anomalies of society in the same breath. They deify those who live unorthodox lives, pushing through the grey to lead culture. Spouting off tidbits like ‘Think Different’ ‘Be yourself’ buying them when they’re printed in checkered ink on ikea art. Art they hang over windows to block out the sun, suffocating the seed with the potential to blossom into these ideals.
The crippling last straw is when the only question the little girl answers with certainty, clarity, and confidence, is this:
‘Why do you like yourself?’
I like myself because I like jesus and god and theyre really important.
In the void left of the personality the world beat down, religion supplants itself, preying like a virus on the weakened spirit. For all the Abounding light that the religion does give to the world, there are cases such as this when it behaves like a parasite, feeding off a crushed self-esteem and an injured soul. It is a tragedy when an insipid God is supplanted in the stead of individuality; in the empty void of a withered personality and lacerated spirit.
You can watch the video for yourself Here