Shout out to neurodivergent people who took forever to report physical symptoms because they were too disconnected from their bodies to notice they were in pain until it started to interfere with daily functioning.
does anyone else find themselves assimilating someone else’s opinion if your own opinion isn’t strong enough and you like, trust the person or enough ppl have expressed similar opinions?
trying to figure out- is this an ADHD thing, an anxiety thing, a ‘growing up under the gaslight’ thing, or just some combination of my own personal weirdnesses 
Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”
I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.
I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”
It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.
american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist
So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”
and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions
@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.
The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.
There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.
The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.
Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.
He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
He hums softly and continually.
He never looks at people.
He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.
And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him.
I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.
It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty. No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them. When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities. And people married some of them and had children with them. Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.
We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow. And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.
Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future. They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.
A lot of the “weird things” neurodivergents do would have had really useful and perfectly acceptable outlets in other times: a lot of essential jobs are really “stimmy”, and a person who wants to do them all the time is extremelywelcome to them.
Spinning with a drop spindle? Very much like a fidget spinner
Weaving? Has elements of rocking, arm flapping, and toe tapping, as well as a lovely soothing audio rhythm.
Weeding? Delightful for those who enjoy categorization and sorting.
I had a fatigue flare-up a few weeks ago on the day we were scheduled to clean out the garage, and I couldn’t stand up for more than about 10 minutes. And I thought how fortunate I am to live in an era where most jobs don’t involve manual labor. But then I brought my knitting out, so I could keep my spouse company at least, and you know what? Fuck that attitude. Any society in all of history would have been fucking THRILLED to have someone who is willing to never leave the house, is happy to eat only bread, and just wants to make textiles every waking hour of every single day.
Every society, in every era, needs many different things done. If different people like doing different things, this is to the benefit of everyone in the community. This idea that there’s only one “right way” to be a human, and that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold is “broken” and “wrong” is a very recent invention, stemming from hamburger management and Fredrick Taylor “Scientific Management”, NOTan inherent part of human nature.
As someone who is autistic, I look at most of the monastic Rules, and I think “hey, someone was designing communities for us”. Unvarying structure from day to day, week to week; regular transitions between activities which are well marked; low levels of social interaction; strictly regulated social environments… it’s a wonderful lifestyle for someone who has problems dealing with the whole business of “too many people, too much stimulation”.
Heck, I figure the religious fundamentalism in my mother’s family (they’re Christadelphian) came in via a very canny autistic ancestor, who realised the whole business could be used as a wonderful cover for any strangeness about them. I mean, when you’re part of a religion which discourages eating at the same table as someone who doesn’t believe the same creed as you (and which also gets picky enough about “same creed” to make that capable of meaning “is not part of the same Christian sect or the same ecclesia”), demands you live strictly by biblical rules and so on… well, it’s a wonderful cover for a person who just doesn’t want to deal with other people, and who has a few quirks of their own they want to cover up.
(I have my suspicions about Jean Calvin, the theologist behind all the various Calvinist sects of Christianity, too. Mainly because the theology behind Calvinism is beautifully thought out, logically consistent all the way through, solves the problem of “redemption via good works” quite neatly… and turns into ninety different types of hell the moment it gets run through neurotypical brains).
I am no expert, but as an historian by hobby I don’t think we quite realize how very different our modern concepts of everyday life and of work are from the pre-industrial revolution times and how utterly anti-neurodivergency our lifestyle is nowadays.
Chances are most autistic people would have barely registered as a bit weird.
Like with fabric sensitivity. It’s a noticeable symptom today when we are expected to have a decently big wardrobe and follow fashion trends. It wouldn’t have really registered as an issue when you used to own one or two outfits.
Same with food sensivity. The huge choice of foods available today make sensitivities stand out as problematic. Eating the same few things over and over was just everyday life for peasants.
Neurodivergency and mental illness are still defined in relation to society and society is an ever evolving beast. The kind of behaviors we consider 'ill’ and 'aberrant’ very much depend on what behaviors are considered 'proper’ and 'desirable’.
Don’t forget that today’s schizophrenics are yesterday’s saints and before that oracles and prophets.
Anybody who knows about fabrics want to weigh in?
I have a hunch that home-made clothes would be less hostile to the senses than most clothes bought nowadays. For one thing, they don’t have tags in them.
But with like, a home-made sock, you wouldn’t have such awful bunchy seams at the toes, would you?
Yeah, for most of human history, clothes were made at home by you and your family, or if you had the money, by servants and craftspeople. The point being they were customized to the individual, making it very easy to point out details such as a scratchy seam, and have it altered to be more comfortable.
Now I’m not an expert in historical textiles, but I do have some general knowledge on the subject. People often assume fabric worn by the masses in Ye Olde Times would have been roughly made, but I think you’d be surprised at the quality of craftsmanship. There’s only so many hours you can spend doing something without getting very good at it. If an adult woman has been spinning and weaving several hours a day since she was 10, you can be damn sure she knows how to do it well.
While there are certain common materials that have the capacity to be irritating against the skin, ultimately I think the way they were used probably minimized that quality. For example linen. It’s one of the oldest known fibers, and appears in many cultures across vastly different times and geographic areas. It’s incredibly tough, and is often a bit stiff and scratchy when new. However it can be broken in to create a much softer textile.
For centuries it was the go-to material for lightweight clothing throughout Europe. Prior to the introduction of cotton everyone wore linen undergarments. Heavier materials like leather and wool were usually limited to outer layers. Since undergarments acted as a buffer against sweat and oil produced by your body, they needed more frequent cleaning. So basically, those tough fibers were getting beaten into submission in the nearest river on a regular basis.
TLDR; Yeah textural sensitivities were probably easy to accomodate, even if you didn’t have access to fine silks and the like.
I feel sorry for people that aren’t in fandoms. Just what do you do with your life when you’re not crying over a fictional character or someone who’ll never know you. When you’re not drowning yourself in fandom content as a coping mechanism. Like you life just be boring then or?
My fellow neurodivergents….how are yalls hyperfixations and special interest going. Been listening to “rolling girl” on repeat and nothing else for the past two days now….its not stopping anytime soon. Also unrelated but I turned 17 yesterday
