GILL DEFICIT

Drop a goat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

You have just given that goat a terminal case of Gill Deficit Disorder.

Evolve for four hundred million years on land and then abruptly try to live in water again and you will experience a 'difficult period of adjustment'.

But guess what? Go back on land and your Gill Deficit just magically vanishes...

...as if it were never really a disordered aspect of you, but maybe just the result of a mismatched environment. Mismatched Environment Disorder, MED?

Take a member of a species that evolved for two or three hundred thousand years in nomadic, egalitarian, foraging societies of 150 related individuals, and drop her/him in the middle of a stationary, class-segregated, hierarchical, capitalist society of 330 million strangers, or indeed, as we move toward a global society, 7.75 billion...

...and there are going to be some folks with attentional issues. Just give us a couple hundred thousand years to adjust, and we’ll be fine (sorry, ten thousand won’t do it).

I'm not as confident as the author of the linked article that it is possible to "go back".

But please at least allow us ADDers the dignity of being wholly human, instead of pronouncing us defective, deficient, and disordered. Maybe we're just a little homesick.

We’ll be OK. Really.

Thanks.

[solidarity.net.au]

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