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Review � ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer’s World by Thom Hartmann, Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2019.
The publisher of this book, Healing Arts Press, requested my review and I found the title an attraction as it reflected two of my deeper interests: my dealing with ADHD as a psychologist, and my interest in the era of the hunter-gatherer. ADHD is so prevalent in our current culture that this acronym may not need to be defined, but to be clear it describes those people, generally young people, with a Disorder of an Attention Deficit with Hyperactive. This behavior is often controlled with the prescription of Ritalin or other related drugs because the behavior can be very disruptive in the school classroom.
I recognize that some of what we consider a mental illness may be elevated to special prominence as a valued personal trait in other cultures, e.g. the schizophrenic hallucinations and hearing of voices can elevate a person to the role of shaman in some cultures. This revised and updated edition of ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer’s World recognizes the advantage of having what we would call an attention deficit for the ancient Hunters who needed to constantly scan and be aware of everything going on around them while stalking game. The Hunter needs to be sensitive to the distractive noises in the forest and respond to these noises with his short but intense attention span to give him what he needs to know to make quick or snap decisions. On the other hand, Farmers need is to focus on the process of planting and tending the garden. They are not easily distracted by environmental noises, sustain a slow and steady effort in attain their goal, and see the long range picture. They are not easily bored, but become team players who attend to details with caution and patience. While the Farmer’s consciousness is very task focused, the Hunter’s consciousness may be considered open or diffused. With these traits the ADHD person is easily frustrated and becomes impatient in our Farmer culture.
Many years ago a psychologist friend explained ADHD to me in this way: “A child comes into my office and touches something. I respond with ‘NO.� With more “NO’s� he is soon racing around the office touching everything, looking for a ‘yes.’� In some ways this child is acting like a Hunter, hunting for a “yes� with an awareness of everything that is in his environment, yet in today’s world he would be considered a problem.
The opposite of a person with ADHD is the person who has the ability to focus attention on one task for an extended period of time. This opposite has been considered normal in our culture, but there is a disadvantage to this ability, i.e. the inability to switch between tasks, a limitation that defines Hartmann’s Task-Switching Deficit Disorder, TSDD. For people who pride themselves on their ability to multitask, their multitasking might be considered a disability.
Though the Hunter has been found on every continent, our western culture came out of Mesopotamia about 10,000 years ago when the hunter-gatherers began to learn the ways of the agriculturists. They gradually moved west across what is now Europe and North Africa, and eventually across the Atlantic into North America. The evolution from the Hunter to the Farmer can be considered an evolution in consciousness as the immigration slowly moved west and the successful Farmer learned to focus on the details of farming, details that the Hunter would have considered boring. Yet, there were/are those who have maintained their Hunter consciousness. But with the Farmers� conquests in moving west they became the dominators and takers of what laid before them. The genocide they inflicted upon the conquered showed them to be amoral and predatory invaders of Europe and North America.
But what is the condition now? It is useful to look at what is called a bell-shaped distribution of these traits with the majority of the population in the middle. If we think of this distribution as lying along a 12 inch ruler, then those with extremely focused consciousness may appear in the 2 to 3 inch area, while those with an extremely open consciousness or inability to focus is in the 9 to 10 inch area. The relaxing average person would fall at the middle or in the 5 to 7 inch area, while the relaxed Hunter would be found in the 7 to 8 inch area and the relaxed Farmer in the 4 to 5 inch area. It has also been suggested that the autistic person might fall at zero to 1 inch and the schizophrenic in the 11 to 12 inch area (pg. 55-56).
In considering the prison and the alcoholic populations, the high proportion of ADHD individuals would suggest a genetic ADHD predisposition for these problems. These populations have learned to believe that their condition is hopeless with the alcoholic and incarcerated giving up on the ability to succeed. What we tell an ADHD child can have a very damaging effect if they are punished for the way they are. The effect of explaining to a child that their problem is genetic or medical vs. a learned behavior that can be modified is an important consideration. Offering a child more constructive ways to deal with or think of the problem such as meditation or that the Hunter’s ADHD behavior can be an advantage in some situations can empower the child in coping rather than experiencing it as a disease or disorder. Defining ADHD as a medical problem that may require a lifetime of taking medication can be felt with a sense of hopelessness. Your confidence will be diminished when you are repeatedly told that you are bad, and your performance will likely fail. The money from pharmaceutical companies continues to suggest that ADHD is a failure of genetics or neurochemistry, but by learning that you have a gene of the Hunter and that it was an advantage to the Hunter, you may become open to a positive side of ADHD.
Another factor in understanding ADHD is understanding the roles of the thalamus and reticular formation. These two brain formations control the sensory input to the brain, the thalamus as a gate to the cortex and the reticular formation as an alarm announcing that there is danger. For some people this gate may be slow to open and for others easily opened. For the ADHD it opens slowly as they look for greater stimulation in order to feel alive, thus they are open to taking risks. For those with TSDD it opens easily, maybe too easily, and they seek stimulation with greater caution. Ritalin as a stimulant that creates a greater sensitivity to sensory input makes risk-taking unnecessary to feel the sought after sense of aliveness.
Part Two of Hartmann’s book is “Living and Thriving in the Farmer’s World.� There are a number of ways for the Hunter to succeed and the book offers many examples. In a positive sense the Hunter is voraciously curious and creative with a broad-base of interests. There are many jobs that require these traits. To fit into the Farmer’s world the Hunter needs to break down a task into smaller tasks to compensate for their short concentration span. The Hunter can also learn various forms of meditation to increase their attention span and needs to create a “distraction-free zone.� This would include removing a radio and other distracting technology from his or her environment. Exercising daily can take the place of Ritalin. Knowing well what you are good at and limit your tasks to those things can lead to success. If the task requires a Farmer find a Farmer to do it. Two characteristics of the Hunter are a serious challenge: impulsivity and craving. Impulsivity can be overcome by partnering with a Farmer and postponing all decision for a day. As for craving wait for an hour or two for the craving to pass or redirect it, attaching the craving to something else.
In considering the opposite side of this picture, what are effective ways that managers, parents, and teachers can work with a Hunter? In the workplace, the expectations of the Hunter need to be defined in measurable short-term goals given when possible only one at a time. Evaluating success in meeting the goals needs to happen daily along with a reward for meeting the goals. For the Hunter school child, again setting goals and rewarding performance in meeting the goals need to be short-term and daily. The child should be encouraged to do special projects for extra credit, and a new label should be attached to the child such as Hunter or Lookout, not disordered. Thinking of the child as “gifted� is also a help. Medication is an option but as a last resort.
As a student at U.C.L.A. in the 1960’s I had the opportunity to work in Frank Hewett’s “Engineered Classroom� at the U.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute. In this classroom the students had a paper cup on their desk in which was place an M&M every five minutes if they stayed on task, and as their ability to stay on task improved the time was extended or switched to a star stuck to a card that was exchanged for a toy at the end of the day, an effective program in training the students to stay longer on a task.
Learning to concentrate can be very difficult for the Hunter without consistent feedback, feedback that can be available in the classroom from the teacher. But for Hunters to read or study on their own such feedback has not been available until the development of biofeedback that measures alpha wave EEG. New biofeedback technology has become available that is affordable and can be effective in the process of learning to concentrate.
The creativity of someone with ADHD has often changed the world. Creativity requires risk taking with motivation from within the person and the belief in one’s own goals. Tolerance for ambiguity, the willingness to stick with the goal in spite of obstacles, and an openness that allows the person to new ways to define the problem are important elements for creativity. With regards to patterns of sleep, an ADHD person is typically known for not get much sleep and may be considered as having insomnia, for going to bed late and waking up in the middle of the night. Again this is a pattern that may have a base in the era of the Hunter. Hunters would have one of their group remain awake for some time while the others slept before being relieved by another Hunter, awake to protect the sleeping hunters from potential predators, whether animals or some other competing humans. Again, Hartmann offers a number to strategies for the Hunter to find ways to sleep in the current Farmer’s world, strategies often hypnotic in nature.
With the prevalence of Ritalin and other similar drugs, Chapter 16 examines the role of these drugs in treating ADHD. Many of the adults who take Ritalin for ADHD swear that they wished they had discovered this medication long before because of how it has made their life so much easier. Yet there are disadvantages. One disadvantage that I found especially interesting is that its long term use affects brain chemistry so that when going off Ritalin other problems surface. One correlate to Parkinson’s Disease is a low level of dopamine. Ritalin increases the level of dopamine so that the natural production of dopamine is decreased. When going off Ritalin the natural production of dopamine may stay diminished thus a possible cause of Parkinson’s Disease. Ritalin can also increase blood pressure, cause weight loss and hair loss, though in general it has been considered safe. Some believe that learning is fastest and best when there is a constant shift between focused and an open state of consciousness. If so, Ritalin may do little to aid learning, but the child’s disruptive behavior in the classroom also limits learning. Again what seems most effective is changing the style of teaching to the style of the Hunter, a style that encourages creativity. A number of medicinal herbs that may also alleviate ADHD including skullcap, valerian, hops, blue and black cohosh, chamomile and lady’s slipper.
Many individuals with ADHD have learned how to cope with being a Hunter in a Farmer’s world and in this world they can find average success and score average on tests but they may also feel or know that they have a much greater potential. But since they appear average they are unable to find the support they need to help them go beyond just being average. These individuals could be a great asset to our society, so we are missing out by not helping them attain their potential creativity with their openness to take risks. They are stuck in being only “halfway to the stars.� Schools, employers and families are missing out on what could be attained if these individuals were provided with what they need to attain their potential.
Hartmann then provides fifteen stories of individuals with ADHD, stories that are very revealing in opening the reader to a greater sensitivity in recognizing ADHD. Following these stories are stories of the lives of six famous people with ADHD and how their ADHD was an asset for all they accomplished in their lives, in their inventive creativity, openness to taking risks, and how their lives changed the ways we now live: Thomas Edison with his more than a thousand inventions, Amelia Earhart with her risk taking and adventurous nature, Benjamin Franklin whose thinking and writings led to his assistance in the writing of our constitution, Sir Richard Francis Burton whose exploration of the many then unknown lands opened the door to the world we now know, Ernest Hemingway whose writings we are all familiar with, and Thomas Carlyle whose written tirades exposed many problems in our modern world.
The Epilogue to the book examines the evolution and migration over the last 10,000 years of the hunter-gatherer from what is now the Near East in becoming the agriculturists of the Western World. Though this evolution has taken different forms in other parts of the world, the Western development of agriculture has gradually led us in our greed to take all that we can from the Earth, greed which has been the cause of global climate change and the impending demise of our society and species as we know it. Our Western religious heritage that has told us that we have dominion over the Earth is taking us to the brink of extinction, a topic I have frequently written about with my interest in the role of our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors. I believe that the hunter-gatherers that exist today who know how to live in oneness with the Earth and respect all that is of the Earth are available to show us how we need to live to return to our rightful place in the evolutionary process, a life that would be much more sustainable.