Last week, we started reading The Misunderstood Mind together with PART 1: Understanding Human Neurodiversity.
We looked at what neurodiversity actually means, how human minds vary, and how we came to categorize some of those differences as neurotypes and others as disorders.
But that raises a much bigger question:
Who decided what a human mind is supposed to be like in the first place?
That’s where we’re going in Part 2.
This week’s chapters
Chapter 4: How the Rulebook Was Written
Chapter 5: Culture, Power, and the Policing of Difference
Chapter 6: Media as Mirror and Mask
Chapter 7: The Pecking Order of Neurodivergence
This section looks backward before we move forward—at the institutions, cultures, belief systems, families, media, and power structures that shaped our ideas about which ways of thinking and behaving are acceptable.
And it asks us to consider something that isn’t talked about nearly enough:
We don’t value all forms of human difference equally.
Here’s a small excerpt from Chapter 7:
Consider Superman. Is he defective? What about Batman? In the
most literal sense, yes. Their differences set them apart from others in
ways that save the day. Yet Superman, for all his strength, is weakened
by kryptonite, which can render him physically vulnerable and even
kill him. His connection with Lois Lane is defined by secrecy, distance,
and the burden of protecting her from a world she does not fully see.
Batman operates with an intensity, focus, and discipline that place
him far outside the norm. He lives by a rigid code and unwavering
rules, driven by a singular commitment to his mission, often at the
expense of stability and connection. His relationships reflect this.
He keeps people at a distance, struggles to be emotionally open, and
repeatedly chooses his work over the people he cares about.
They are fictional. But the reason those stories keep getting made
is that something in them feels true. We recognize the person who
does not quite fit, whose differences are both their greatest asset and
the thing that costs them everything. We understand, on some level,
that the world needs people like that.
What we are less honest about is what we do with those people
when they show up in our actual lives, without the cape, without the
arc, and without a script that highlights their worth.
The question is not whether society ranks human differences. It
clearly does. The more important question is whose traits rise to
the top, who falls to the bottom, and who pays the price when those
judgments become embedded in education, healthcare, workplaces,
and relationships.
And that’s really the foundation of Part 2.
Who gets celebrated for being different?
Who gets accommodated?
Who gets diagnosed?
Who gets punished?
And who decided?
Paid subscribers can download and read PART 2: The Rules for Being Different below.
If you’re a free subscriber and you’d like to keep reading the book with us before its October 6 release, you can upgrade to paid and get Part 2 today, along with the remaining installments as they’re released. You will also be able to access Part 1 here.
Or, if you’d rather, you can preorder The Misunderstood Mind now.
Next week, we’ll move from the rules society created about neurodivergence to what it actually feels like to live inside a neurodivergent mind:
PART 3: The Unfiltered Neurodivergent Life.