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Mar 30 2023
Stop blaming minority groups for mass shootings

There is a bitter irony as I begin to write this post. What many of you will not know is how I became a blogger. I wrote for an immensely popular outlet, I won’t name them, but they support Autism Speaks. I think just based on that, you can understand why I no longer write for them.

The very first article I ever published, my first outpouring of disdain at the violent hatred of the world we live in, was about people blaming mass shootings on mental health issues. To my surprise, it amounted to almost 20,000 views in 24 hours. Many felt very validated, but of course, the gun nuts of America jumped to the defence of guns. I assume they read the title and not much else.

So, here we are again. Over half a decade since that article was published. I feel it’s time to draw a line in the sand. The nonsense of the world we live in is taking too many lives.

Hearing about the mass shooting in Texas upset me. Not just because of the unacceptable loss of life, but because of the media reporting around the fact that the shooter was a trans person. I am aware that trans people live a life of near constant threats, and the focus on the shooters gender identity will not improve this.

But I am not Trans. I can’t tell you what this specific event is like because their are cultural privileges that I have, and they prevent me from understanding the reality of this particular shooting. I do, however, feel compelled to comment on the broader issue that this has once again highlighted.

Every time a mass shooting happens, it seems that the media will link it to a minority group. Somehow, there is always an underprivileged cultural subset that the salivating masses can turn their vitriol on. Mental health leads to mass murder, Autistic people are predators, Trans people are apparently indoctrinating children, and Black people are guilty of everything. The list of ridiculous accusations has gone on for so long that I won’t even begin to try and recite the whole thing.

Why does the world need to blame minority groups?

I believe this comes down to normativity and essentialism. When we consider the framing of minority groups in stories such as these, we have to consider that;

  • The world has been taught that there is one most “normal” sort of human. The right colour, brain, sexuality, gender, embodiment.
  • You are only worth as much as the body you are born into.
  • Those that fall out of cultural normality (read as; normative standards) are fundamentally less human than those that don’t.

So now we have a world of minority groups who are already traumatised beyond belief by the inhumane treatment of those with privilege beyond their own. We do become radicalised, to the extent (usually) that we will actively voice and enact dissent against the oppressive power structures of our normative world. Yes, some of us do take part in violence.

No, that doesn’t make us dangerous.

Think about it. Think about it really hard. Every country in the world has innumerable minority groups. In fact, if we measured minority as an identity itself, we would probably no longer be a minority, but instead a vastly diverse majority.

So we have a world full of minorities, and yet the vast majority of mass shootings outside of warzones happen in the US. I would venture a guess that even if you counted warzones, the US would still top the list. What is the variable that is being ignored? What can we change to make a difference.

It’s the guns.

Minority groups are not murderers. We are not the monsters you were taught to hide from as a child. Not once did I ask my mother to check for Trans people under my bed. The monsters are the lawmakers and lobbyists that keep gun laws in the US so lacklustre that a person can walk into a primary school with a semi-automatic and two pistols, ending three children’s lives, and the lives of three children.

The people who are responsible for this are the pro-gun cohort. They have the blood of those children on their hands. They have the weight of traumatised children and families that miss their loved ones. May it rest so heavy on their soul that they are forced to lay down their arms.

Stop blaming minorities for mass shootings. The problem is the guns.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Mar 20 2023
Post-normal childhoods: Neuroqueering education and play

Neuroqueer theory is often discussed in the context of neurodivergent adults. While a helpful tool in the liberation of Neurodivergent people, constraining it to just this section of society limits its potential. Neuroqueer theory, at its root, is a theory that intends to liberate all people rather than just the select few. It does this by teaching us the malleable nature of identity, culture, and the Self.

I personally I have discussed my idea of the Chaotic Self; a Self that is ever shifting and changing. The Self emerges and re-emerges from itself as a factor of our experiences and relationships with the environment and those within it. As we acquire new ways of rationalising and contextualising those experiences, we also learn new ways to subvert our own meanings and understandings, allowing us to fundamentally queer our very existence.

So, how does this apply to childhood education and play?

Current “traditional” education and play is built upon normative standards. Those who provided the knowledge it is built on were unaware of their privilege and acted to uphold systemic oppression, regardless of whether they intended to or not. What we have had in both historical and contemporary contexts is normatively violent and creates a power imbalance between the student and the teacher.

Every aspect of our growth and development is regulated and controlled through the milestones we are supposed to achieve, the times we are expected to achieve them, and the curriculum that a given authority feels is necessary to learn.

The issue with this approach is that it expects all children to adhere to these standards. If one can not achieve under normative standards, we are deemed to be disordered and troubled. We find ourselves undergoing behavioural intervention and medicated treatments in order to achieve what is important to others rather than ourselves.

So, how do we move beyond this cult of normality? Can one be an apostate of normality and still achieve great things? I propose that the starting place is simultaneously a thing of beautiful simplicity, with the potential for profound complexity. We encourage children to experiment with language.

Language defines every aspect of our understanding of the Self. Words we acquire from others move forward to become the words we apply to ourselves. The first thing we must do is gift children language. All language. Access to language is essential to our relationship with ourselves. We then must consider how a child might be empowered to explore and experiment with that language.

Children should not be taught to use descriptive language based on someone else’s view of them. We should allow them to identify themselves in whatever way they please. This can be done as a form of play, and as such, it is a vital part of our development.

Once a child is comfortable with playing through language, we can begin to work with them to consider how they can subvert and reimagine the meaning of language. Once a child is free of objective definition and allowed access to the fluid nature of subjective meaning, they have an infinite number of ways to engage with their Self. It sounds deceptively simple, but the effect of truly unlocking language to a child could be immeasurably life changing.

It teaches us the importance of what we say to children.

This is but one way of applying neurofuturism to childhood, or perhaps more accurately, post-normalism. If we are ever to live in a neurocosmopolitan world, we must explore the ways in which we raise children, and consider them helpfulness of standardising and regulating their development.

In the meantime, let children play with their language and identity. You might be impressed by the way they explore themselves, and it might even teach you a thing or two as well.

David Gray-Hammond 3 Comments
Feb 26 2023
Reclaiming Neurofuturism: An introduction

In some of my recent articles, I have referred to something called neurofuturism. While neurofuturism itself is not a new word (although weirdly, I didn’t know this when I first used it), I do believe that reconceptualising it may allow for a new discourse in the Neurodivergent community. Namely, a discourse around what the future of the neurodiversity movement and paradigm might look like.

With this in mind, let’s start by considering the original use of neurofuturism and take a look at it through a critical lens.

A lot of the discussion around neurofuturism thus far has looked at augmenting human cognition with technology up to, and including, artificial intelligence. This sounds exciting on the surface; fusing the human mind with technology as a way of unlocking our potential. It sounds exciting, but there are two main issues at the forefront of my mind

  • Technology is not universally accessible.
  • Technology can often be created with one purpose while incidentally fulfilling another.

Consider this, technology allowed us to split the atom. Fission reactors meant that we could create huge quantities of carbon neutral energy. It also meant that we were able to create nuclear weapons, fundamentally changing the nature of human conflict. As I mentioned, technology is not universally accessible. It often requires privilege to gain a seat at the table when it comes to research and design. Because of this, it is likely that people creating technology to go on your head either may not consider negative impacts on marginalised communities, or worse, may use it to actively oppress them.

Remember when Elon Musk claimed that neural interfaces could ‘solve’ autism and schizophrenia? We never asked for that, but it’s reasonable to worry that such a technology could be forced upon is if it were to exist.

So, why am I even talking about neurofuturism?

Neurofuturism has a place in human discourse, but it isn’t with the tech world. I firmly believe we should reclaim neurofuturism and reconceptualise it into something accessible and beneficial to all. What better place for such a concept to exist than within the neurodiversity paradigm?

Broadly speaking, neurofuturism as I conceptualise it has existed for some time. Neuroqueer theory could be considered somewhat of a flagship of neurofuturism. The idea that we can queer our identity and embodiment in line with our neurology is liberational, and that is what neurofuturism should be, a school of thought that emancipates us from the chains of the past.

In my mind, neurofuturism is a word to describe ideas that ask us to not blindly accept the knowledge of the past. It is a school of thought that asks us to take a degree of criticality to everything that has been taken for granted, including the ideas that the neurodiversity movement takes for granted.

Consider the ever-present threat of identity politics. We see it everywhere, and the neurodivergent community is not free of this threat. Much of the politics surrounding how people identify and what the embodiment of that identity should look like is based on some form of normative thinking. It’s necessary to consider the uncomfortable truth that even the neurodivergent community has its own normative ideas.

Wherever there is community, there is a status quo.

Thus, neurofuturism can be reclaimed as a way of advancing the community through criticality. This critical thought can be used to surgically cut through the chains of “normality”, shedding the excess so that we can walk unburdened into the future of our community.

This comes with a lot of uncomfortable thinking. It raises questions about objective truth and the social construction of everything from language to our own sense of Self.

Neurofuturism is not a ‘natural kind’. It does not exist without people observing its growth and trajectory. Moreover, it cannot exist without accepting certain truths, chiefly;

  • Human thought and experience should not be pathologised. It recognises that our psychological world is not a matter for medical intervention.
  • Where people experience psychological distress, we must look to their environment and the experiences it has afforded them.
  • That if human experience is not a medical matter, then such branches of medicine such as psychiatry must use social change as a means of support, with medicine being a tool rather than a requirement.

These points to me seem as the necessary first ideas to acknowledge in a neurofuturist approach to neurodiversity.

There is much more to be said on the nature of neurofuturism, and I hope that as this blog series progresses, we can explore what the future can look like together. I hope we can use the reclamation of this concept as a way of accommodating all Neurodivergent people, and not just the select few with the privilege of being platformed in the right places.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 17 2023
Power dynamics and mental health: Neurofuturist discourse of mental health

When we consider power dynamics, we often consider our external environment and how power flows through the various parts of society, and where privilege is afforded by that power. While discussion of intersectionality and power dynamics is important when considering where discourse comes from and how it affects groups of people, we often don’t think about how such discourse injures our relationship with the Self.

Mental health has long been the remit of medicine. Distressing or unusual behaviour has been positioned as a pathology requiring treatment for decades, despite this approach not improving outcomes for those it affects in that entire time. We use a lot of troubling language when talking about psychological distress; disorder, condition, ailment, mental illness, psychopathology. Each of these words conjure up images of a medical emergency. They tell us that a problem is situated with us and that we need to be fixed.

We then also have to consider the militaristic language that surrounds medicine. “Chronic illness warrior” and “lost their battle to cancer” immediately spring to mind. The effect that these co-occurring discourse (see what I did there?) have on our sense of Self is to enter us into a fight with our own experiences. Experience helps shape the Self meaning that the popular discourse around mental health is placing us into a war with our Self. It is no longer okay to be us.

The irony here is that constant fighting with our own sense of identity causes further psychological distress. Perhaps the reason that outcomes in psychiatry have not improved for over half a century is because their methods and discourse are actually escalating our distress.

Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?” We need to shift discourse over to “what happened to me?”. It’s vital that psychological distress be placed in the context of one’s environment and experiences of the complex power dynamics within them. There is a word for systems that require us to fight ourselves into a more socially acceptable place; oppressive.

Current systems within mental health treatment are weapons of the oppressive cult of normal.

As we look to the future, we need to consider how we will emancipate ourselves from normativity of all kinds and what we will accept as freedom. Society has spent a long time pathologising those identities and experiences that do not serve its own goals, and the time has come to stand tall and proclaim aloud; who I am has value, I will not be placed at odds with myself.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 13 2023
Mental health and the diagnostic process: A neurofuturist perspective

As I discussed in my recent article about co-occurring conditions, the diagnostic process in psychiatry is inherently flawed on the basis that we have failed to find any meaningful relationship between the so-called “symptoms” of psychiatric conditions, and physical biomarkers which can be measured. Despite this lack of physiological cause, we are still diagnosing people as mentally “ill”. Despite this model not improving outcomes for around half a century.

So now we are faced with the issue of how diagnosis is not just given, but also how it is given responsibly.

One of the biggest flaws of psychiatry is the circular logic that dominates the diagnostic process. A person is Schizophrenic because they have symptoms of Schizophrenia, and they have those symptoms because they are Schizophrenic. This logic does not allow for a nuanced understanding of why a person may experience this particular cluster of traits, it simply follows that A = B, which is because of A.

If this is the case, how does one escape from circular logic?

We have to look for causes for traits and “symptoms” outside of the realm of medicine. While I have often remarked that external factors are the only thing with a meaningful relationship to these experiences, medicine is yet to catch up. It seems reasonable to assume that traumatic experiences are the cause of psychiatric conditions and not a problem within the body. This has ramifications for the future of psychiatry.

If people are not “unwell”, psychiatry now has a moral duty to advocate for it’s patients. Psychiatry needs to evolve into a tool for social change, and cease to be a weapon wielded by normative society. Beyond this, psychiatry needs an understanding of the relationships between neurodivergence, trauma, and psychological distress. It is not enough for psychiatrists to bandage the wound, they need to remove the knife from the hand of society.

This requires us to radically rethink our entire perspective on normality and cultural normative standards. We can not just medicate people and expect them to assimilate into society. We need to help them understand their own unique space in the environment and how to embrace their journey through that space.

As I discuss in my book A Treatise on Chaos, identity is a shifting and ever changing value. We are, at our core, beings of chaos. Psychiatry needs to be a tool for supporting us in the more challenging parts of that chaos, and not serve as a ring-fence around the Self.

Psychiatry is not completely off the trail. Medication can serve as an important tool to support a person’s wellbeing, and can be very helpful for reducing the more troubling and distressing aspects of psychological distress. The most important thing is that we all put in the work to evolve psychiatry and mental health support into a means to challenge the oppressive systems that exist within our world.

It’s time to stop the navel-gazing, and build a better future.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
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