KJCG

Whenever my son’s ADD/ADHD comes up, I think of the classic hunter image: light of foot, highly alert, twitchy with energy, ready to jump at a moment’s notice.

So I can understand how Thom Hartmann, the radio commentator and lay scholar, developed his “hunters and farmers” hypothesis to explain the presence of ADD/ADHD in the human gene pool. He suggests that the genetic code for ADD/ADHD was a matter of survival in prehistoric times: our hunter ancestors absolutely required the alertness and “hyperfocus” characteristic of ADD/ADHD. People with ADD/ADHD are more like hunters. In contrast, farmers—well, the type of people they represent—are what our postmodern society often labels as “normal.” They deliberate, plan, decide, move carefully and intentionally and often linearly through life.

We need farmers. We also need hunters. Both do great work. But our society doesn’t value hunters nearly as much as it does farmers. Why not?

I see this up close in our educational system. It was built by farmers for farmers: people who learn methodically, by traditional methods. My son, on the other hand, learns best when in motion or expending physical energy to clear his mind. Yet he is required to spend all day sitting at a desk.  No wonder his teachers tell me things like “he would be a lot more productive if we could get him to stop moving all the time.”

But they’re wrong. In truth, they are most productive when my son is sitting in his seat. He is not.

In short, my son’s way of processing information has no outlet in today’s educational system. In the last few decades, his difference has been labeled a disorder, and pharmaceuticals promoted to treat it, so children can be “made normal” and “behave in school.” He is not misbehaving; he is simply learning in the way his brain learns best.

Many commentators have noticed that our school systems are failing in nearly every way. This is one more way. We need a new approach—and it has everything to do with the way we approach differences in general.

As it turns out, those of us with ADD/ADHD move through the world in a way that society would find useful. We can generate bright ideas fast and in great quantities. We can get more out of each minute than many other people. We contribute tremendous amounts of energy to every project we touch. We are often quick-witted, curious, comfortable with complexity, and ready to jump in where others may falter. The world desperately needs these traits.

This, in a nutshell, is why our organizations must actively encourage people to bring their differences to work. If all of us were hunters, we would miss out on the productivity and results that the careful planning and preparation of farmers can bring. As it is, our society, which favors farmers, often does miss out on all the ideas and the energy of us hunters. Only by leveraging both perspectives can organizations become even more than the sum of their parts.

Or, to put it more accurately, all perspectives. The distinction between hunters and farmers is not an either-or but rather a continuous spectrum, with people exhibiting many different combinations of hunter and farmer traits within themselves. This argues for bringing as many of these combinations to work as possible. So it is with any set of differences: the more of them we bring to the table, the more perspectives we have, and the better we can co-create the future that is within our reach.

Let’s learn to listen to all perspectives—whether you see them coming from a distance across the well-plowed field, or they jump out at you from behind the next tree.

Selected Traits of Hunters and Farmers

*Hunter traits are adapted from the works of Thom Hartmann, particularly Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception (Grass Valley, Calif.: Underwood Press, 1993) and The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2003).

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