Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities is a book by Nick Walker. It is a collection of his writings on autism, neurodiversity and Neuroqueer Theory.

In the book, he sets out the case for the neurodiversity paradigm over the pathology paradigm, what we might also call the neuroaffirmative model vs the medical model. Walker argues that just because one way of being seems to be more frequent, that does not mean it is the “correct” way. There are far more Chinese people than British people, but that doesn’t make being Chinese the normal nationality and being British an aberration.

Neurotypical functioning is conceptualised as a social construct: when people were described as “high/low functioning”, what we were really describing was their ability to conform to social standards. Walker makes the case that there is no such thing as a neurotypical brain, but there are people who can conform to neuronormative behaviours in a way that feels natural, and therefore enjoy the privileges of being considered normal. Just as gender is a spectrum, but many people can conform to gender-based norms well enough to enjoy the privileges that are afforded to cis individuals.

Walker also makes the case for a wide definition of neurodivergence. It includes intrinsic neurodivergence, such as autism, but also includes epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, the effects of drugs, or long-term meditation. If our brain diverges from the dominant cultural expectations, it is neurodivergent.

The book explores the difference between disability and impairment: someone may have a specific impairment, but they only have a disability in a social context. If you are deaf and you walk into a room filled with people using spoken language, you are disabled. But as someone who does not know sign language, if I walked into a room filled with people communicating in BSL, I would be the one who was disabled.

Walker suggests that professionals who have spent their lives working in the pathology paradigm find it almost impossible to make the shift to the neurodiversity paradigm. Walker goes as far as to suggest that any professional wishing to work with autistic individuals should have to have training from an autistic person who themselves is well-versed in autistic culture and the neurodiversity paradigm. This seems very reasonable given the importance of lived experience that we now recognise in many areas of society.

The journey here is a familiar one: being gay has gone from a mental illness to acceptance, and then to an understanding of the damaging impact of dominant social ideologies on minorities. Neurodivergence is going through this same process. As a community, we are building a culture, claiming an identity, and speaking out against the deficit model. Walker brings this together in the practice of neuroqueering: queering social norms as to how our brains should behave.

Great little book. I knew we invented film, cement and fizzy drinks. But I didn’t know we invented planes, lifeboats, computer memory, flat-screens or the big bang.

Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland is a book by Marianna Spring. Spring is an investigative journalist with the BBC and the book charts her work exploring conspiracy theories and disinformation. This ranges from some seemingly well-meaning but misguided COVID deniers to the state-sponsored disinformation campaigns being used to interfere with elections worldwide. It also gives an insider’s view on some of the hate that those speaking up for the truth, especially women, can be subjected to.

The conspiracy side of things broadly matches with what I would expect from years of sceptics, Humanism and psychology. Often, conspiracy theorists have these conspiracies as part of their identity, meaning that facts are broadly not important because there is a psychological need to be part of these communities. However, confronting them with the real harm they are doing to other people can be helpful.

In terms of disinformation, it was eye opening to have someone with a deep understanding elucidate how much this is going on. While I generally don’t give much weight to the comments on a political Facebook post, as it is likely to be a vocal and highly active minority, rather than a representative view, it could also increasingly likely to be bots or foreign state actors, while at the same time, the efforts of legitimate journalists are undermined by those in power making these exact same claims.

Spring comes across as someone with a lot of journalistic integrity. Which, in some ways, is annoying. People like and Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell write captivating books, sometimes at the expense of sticking to the truth. Spring’s book is interesting, but not captivating, because she insists on there being complicated answers, rather than one simple but wrong one that is easier to digest. It was a good read, but I was able to put it down for large periods.

I was also aware that I was reading this at a time when multiple peer-reviewed research papers had shown the BBC was biased against the former Labour leadership (Schlosberg, 2016; Wring & Ward, 2020), and over 100 of its own staff had signed a letter saying the BBC’s coverage of Gaza was biased. These issues highlight how difficult it is to have an unbiased view.

Small Space, Big Living: Interior Design to Make Every Inch Count is a book by Sofie Hepworth.

It focuses on designing small space interiors. Most of the book uses the Shila Shed as a case study, which is a tiny home they build in their garden while they were renovating the house. It is fantastic for this kind of maximising space on a blank canvas situation, but the advice for being stuck in a rental property is somewhat limited. That said, I came away with plenty of of tips I could implement in those situations so it was worth a read.

It is also pretty practical in terms of the process of designing. It talks about how to do a draw out a floor plan (and provides ezamples), or build a mock-up model, or find a reliable tradesperson.

Mad about the House: The budget how-to guide for smart home decorating with style is a book by Kate Watson-Smyth.

The book starts with some general advice on colour, then goes systematically though each room in the house commenting on different design elements to consider. It ends with a top ten design ten design hacks. It is illustrated with a mixture of lovely line drawings and photographs. It was an enjoyable and fun read but I might struggle to tell you what crystallised knowledge I took away from it. It might be a book I come back to when I am designing a specific room.

The Interior Design Handbook is a book by Frida Ramstedt.

It’s the best book on interior design for beginners that I have read. I’m brand new to the topuc and I’ve only read three books so far. But this one is my favourite. It teaches a lot of the fundamental theory but in an acessible way. For example, how to vary your light sources, using things like the rule of three, acoustics, and all of the elements you need to bring a design together.

If you are thinking about decorating your house, this book seems to be a great place to start.

Could It Be Adult ADHD: A Clinician’s Guie to Recognition, Assessmnt, and Treatment is a book by Jan Willer.

It provides a a lot of good information for professionals on recognising signs of ADHD in adults. It goes beyond the simple list of ICD/DSM criteria and talks about related problems and offers a bit of guidance on differential diagnosis. It is accessible and comes with vignettes.

It is written from a compassionate perspective, and does talk about ADHD strengths, but overall comes from a very medical deficit-focused perspective. Everything is written as a disorder and there isn’t much attempt to describe the ADHD experience beyond the vignette quotes. As a result, I skim read most of it and skipped the treatment section entirely. That talks about CBT and skills training.

ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction is a book by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey.

It is written for adults who are ADHD or have ADHD children, but could also potentially be a read for clinicians who want to gain greater insight into the ADHD experience. It talks about one of the underlying models of ADHD (default mode network) and then goes on to talk about practical strategies such as building the right environment, exercise, diet, and discusses the use of medication.

From a critical perspective, many of the strategies are simple and common sense. That doesn’t mean they work. But, for example, the authors try to sell us on the benefits of to-do lists. But many ADHD people have told me they can never remember to check their to-do list so more scaffolding is needed. Perhaps the biggest criticism of the book, though, is that it writes in support of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), an approach firmly rejected by the neurodivergent community.

I don’t know how to reconcile these differences. For the most part, it is a very neuroaffirmative book and I’m thinking “these people really get ADHD”. But then when I read other bits, such as ABA or just write a to-do list, I’m thinking “these people have never met an ADHD client”. On the whole, I the whole, it is mostly the former but I don’t think I would recommend it as a resource.

The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being is a book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

In the book, the authors make the case that inequality is both bad, and currently rising. It is bad because it degrades our mental and physical health, and increases a whole host of related issues such as addiction, crime, and social isolation.

Importantly, they present evidence to show that it is causative. That is to say that rising inequality is the cause of poorer well-being, and not the other way around. We know it is causative from a host of factors including a dose-response relationship, a plausible theoretical basis, poorer well-being following inquality, and being able to see this both across countries (Denmark is happier than the UK) and longitudinally (people in the UK were happier when equality was higher).

Status anxiety and its problems

Humans, like many animals, are sensitive to status. Many animals live in hierarchies and are constantly anxious about where they are in the pecking order. When equality is high, we all feel on the same level. When equality is low, those at the bottom feel depressed, and those everywhere else experience status anxiety. As a result, everyone’s wellbeing gets worse.

You might think that because it impacts so many animals, hierarchies are natural. But that is not the cause with humans. For most of human history, we lived in egalitarian societies where humans worked together and shared things, particularly big game kills. Hierarchies only came into fashion with the agricultural revolution: a relatively short time period in the course of human history.

In summary, the reason there is so much misery at the moment is that we have so much inequality.

What about meritocracy?

Some might argue that this is a good thing because it motivates people to work hard and that those who are successful are rewarded. The problem with this idea is that it is wrong. As inequality rises, the strongest predictor of where you will end up is your starting point. Class at birth is a better predictor of where you will end up than ability or hard work.

In fact, the causative relationship works the other way around. Rather than ability leading to a higher social class, the privilege of being born into a higher class (and its associated benefits such as private schools, more free time, more money) means people end up with more developed abilities than those born into poverty.

As a result, the greater the inequality, the less motivation there is to work hard and “improve your station” because it simply does not work.

Impact on climate breakdown

Another problem with inequality is that it drives a lot of climate change.

When we experience status anxiety, we are consume more. We buy more things to demonstrate to our peers that we belong in a certain social class. For example, designer clothes, gym membrships andyoga classes, prestige cars, bigger houses, etc.

If we built a more equality society, individuals would experience less status anxiety, and therefore be less concerned with consumption. We would value time with each other more having physical possessions.

Similarly, the need for consumption drives long working hours to earn money. This leads us with little time: our free time is valuable, which makes it more time-expensive to look after the environment. If he we consumed less and worked less, we would worry less about the extra time it takes to walk to work, rather than taking the car.

What do we need to do?

If you are with me so far, you will hopefully now agree we should make a more equality society. If you don’t agree with me, go read the book, which makes a much more convincing case than I can do in a short blog post. But what do we need to do to make such a change?

The authors argue we need economic democracy.

In the west, we often view democracy as one person, one vote. But that ignores the fact that some people spend hundreds of millions changing election results. Or that most of the media is owned by billionaires who can use this to control the narrative. Or that corporations often have more power than governments do.

A clear example of this is trade unions. If a company mistreats you, you can complain, or even sue them. But realistically, what can you do when you are just one person and they are a multinational corporation with a team of lawyers and enough money that all they need to do is stall you in court until you go bankrupt? Trade unions restore this power imbalance and make the situation fairer.

But the authors argue we need to go much further. Companies regularly say they have to focus on generating returns for shareholders. This is a misconception. But speaks to how they act. Anything for a quick profit.

One of the reasons for this is the changing way in which companies are owned. Shares used to be owned by individuals who would hold them for an average of seven years. Now most shares are owned by institutional investors, often engaged in high-frequency trading where they hold shares for minutes at a time. When a shareholder only cares about the performance in the next 10 minutes, and not the next 10 years, it is easy to see why companies struggle to maintain a long-term outlook. This system is shares is not suitable for the 21st century.

The authors propose that all companies could be mandated to have employee representation on company boards. This is already the case in many countries, including Germany. They also suggest that, as a society, we could do more to promote, facilitate and encourage employee-owned companies.

Critically, all of this points to inequality not being an inevitable product of society, but a political choice made by pursuing neoliberalism. We can choose something else, such as the social democracy that brought such improvements to wellbeing in the 20th century.

One-Dimensional Man is a 1964 non-fiction philosophy book by Herbert Marcuse.

In the book, Marcuse argues that suppression of individuality is presented as rational and efficient in advanced industrial society, but in fact this rationality itself serves domination. That is to say that it becomes logical to drive people to conformity because that scales well in capitalism (literally economies of scale).

New forms of control

This creates what Marcuse describes as “free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects”. For example, if a corporation mistreats you, you can take them to court. But they have millions of pounds and an army of lawyers, so good luck with that. Some of this can be rebalanced with trade unions but both western and eastern countries tend to legislate against this.

Marcuse identifies that we already have the technology to free people from needs and yet we are subject to the grind to survive even more. This is because modern society turns waste into need and we build our identity around commodities. Nobody needs a brand-name shirt. And we have loads of shirts. But we’ve created a world where we work overtime to get the X-branded shirt.

Refusing “to go along” with the system is then pathologised. Too burnt out to work? You have an anxiety disorder.

But why would you even want to rebel? Modern society does not oppress overtly, but rather by offering a life that seems tolerable, rewarding, and comfortable, and then threatening to take that away. By offering us a sense of comfort, it restricts our freedom, because we dare not choose to make our lives harder.

He also encourages to grapple with the concept of freedom itself. Freedom is defined to fit the existing system. You are given a thousand different products to consume but you are not given the choice not to consume.

To me, this brings to mind the question of what is freedom in 21st century society? For example, does freedom include universal healthcare? Libertarians would argue no because then they have to pay tax to fund it. Socialists would argue yes because in what sense are you free if you are too sick to live your life?

Closing of the political universe

Marcuse notes that oppression is hidden behind layers of bureaucracy, management and corporate structures. Workers used to be oppressed by the factory owner themselves, now they themselves answer to a board or shareholders who you will never see.

This is reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath where the farmers are trying to work out who to shoot. Ultimately, they find there is nobody to rise up against because the system is faceless.

Excess capacity becomes a threat to society because if we do not consume it all, the surplus upsets the capitalist balance and this may impact our “comfortable” lives. Thus the threat of this potential upset becomes greater than the threat of losing our freedom, so we meekly sacrifice freedom for safety.

Chapter three and beyond

I managed to follow the book to here. After that, the philosophy became too dense for me to follow. This was very frustrating and I would love to read a more accessible text on the subject.

Conclusion

If you are a philosopher, you will likely find One-Dimensional Man an excellent critique of technological society. If you are a non-philosopher like myself, I still think you will enjoy the first chapter, but may get lost in the text after that.