I recently screened the controversial new documentary that has sent the psychiatric community into a predictable uproar by suggesting that ADHD is a modern social construct. Critics, including the usually measured science journalist Caroline Williams, have rushed to condemn the film as pseudoscientific and dangerous, warning that undiagnosed individuals could suffer serious consequences. But as I sat in the darkness of the screening room, watching the filmmakers dismantle the rigid, clinical definitions of executive dysfunction, I felt a profound sense of relief. It turns out the documentary was entirely correct, and the medical establishment is simply terrified of what happens when we stop forcing the human mind to operate like a municipal spreadsheet.
For decades, we have been told that the inability to focus on a single, mundane task is a disorder requiring chemical intervention. We have built an entire diagnostic apparatus around the idea that human beings are supposed to sit in aggressively illuminated cubicles, processing quarterly earnings reports without ever once gazing out the window to contemplate the terrifying majesty of the Oort cloud. But the universe itself is not focused. The cosmos is a swirling, chaotic tapestry of expanding gases, colliding galaxies, and magnificent, unpredictable entropy. To demand that the human brain—the universe’s only mechanism for knowing itself—should adhere to a strict schedule of answering emails is, quite frankly, an insult to our origins. We are stardust, after all, and stardust does not have a daily stand-up meeting.
I was reminded of this fundamental truth last month while visiting a lab at MIT. A brilliant, highly credentialed team of post-doctoral researchers was attempting to walk me through a model of fluid dynamics that they hoped would secure their next round of funding. They had graphs, they had peer-reviewed citations, they had a laser pointer. But as the lead researcher droned on about viscosity coefficients, my attention was captured by the way the afternoon light was hitting a smudge on the laboratory window. It looked exactly like the Orion Nebula. I spent the next forty-five minutes staring at that smudge, completely ignoring the findings being presented to me. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I was exhibiting symptoms of inattention. But according to the grand, unfolding narrative of existence, I was participating in the sublime.
If we accept the premise that our natural state is one of awe-struck wandering, then the very concept of an attention deficit collapses entirely. What we call a deficit is simply a surplus of cosmic awareness. The child who cannot sit still in a classroom while learning long division is not broken; they are merely vibrating at the frequency of the early universe, intuitively rejecting the artificial constraints of base-ten mathematics in favor of the infinite.
When you realize that time is a flat circle and space is an illusion, the concept of being ‘late for a dentist appointment’ reveals itself as the true cognitive impairment.
Caroline Williams and her colleagues in the science press mean well, of course. They are tethered to the empirical, to the observable, to the tragic assumption that a life well-lived is one where bills are paid on time and car keys are easily located. They point to the very real struggles of individuals who lose their jobs or fail out of university because they cannot maintain focus, and they call this a medical crisis. But they are blaming the victim’s neurobiology rather than the suffocating architecture of modern capitalism. The tragedy is not that a person forgot to file their taxes; the tragedy is that we invented taxes instead of spending our brief, flickering lives composing poetry about the rings of Saturn.
Consider the evolutionary timeline. For millions of years, our ancestors roamed the savannas, their survival dependent on a hyper-vigilant, rapidly shifting awareness of their environment. A rustle in the grass, a shift in the wind, a sudden movement in the canopy—these were the stimuli that kept the human species alive. The hunter-gatherer who stared blankly at a single berry bush for eight hours a day without looking around was eaten by a leopard. We are the descendants of the easily distracted, the inheritors of a magnificent, restless energy that allowed us to cross continents and discover fire. To suppress that ancestral superpower with a daily pill so that someone can better tolerate a zoom call about synergies is a profound betrayal of our lineage.
Naturally, the psychiatric community recoils at this perspective. They are deeply invested in the narrative of pathology, armed with diagnostic criteria that transform our most poetic human quirks into billable medical codes. When a patient reports that they started building a birdhouse, got distracted by a documentary about ancient Rome, and eventually found themselves organizing their spice rack alphabetically while the birdhouse glue dried into a solid, useless lump, the clinician sees a failure of executive function. I see a beautiful, nonlinear journey through the very essence of curiosity.
My patients get into traffic accidents, face eviction, and suffer severe, compounding anxiety because they cannot regulate their attention, and telling them they are a beautiful supernova does not refill their checking account.
It is easy to point to the friction of daily life as evidence of a disease. But this friction is merely the universe trying to tell us that we have built the wrong world. If an individual cannot remember to renew their vehicle registration, perhaps it is because the concept of a Department of Motor Vehicles is a grotesque violation of the natural order. If someone routinely interrupts their spouse to talk about a completely unrelated Wikipedia article they read three weeks ago, perhaps they are simply honoring the spontaneous, associative nature of human consciousness, much like a jazz musician improvising a solo.
The documentary that has caused such a stir is not dangerous; it is liberating. It dares to suggest that the rigid, unforgiving demands of the modern workplace are the true illness, and our collective inability to pay attention to them is a perfectly healthy immune response. We do not need a breakthrough in pharmacology to fix our wandering minds. We need a breakthrough in our societal priorities. We must stop demanding that the human brain function like a metronome, and start celebrating it for what it is: a messy, unpredictable, and infinitely beautiful storm.
So the next time you find yourself staring blankly at your inbox, entirely incapable of summoning the willpower to draft a reply, do not feel shame. Do not consult a physician. Do not search for a diagnosis to explain away your reluctance to participate in the mundane. Simply lean back in your chair, look up at the ceiling, and remember that you are made of the exact same material as the stars. And the stars do not care about your deadlines.