Hello again, I am an
individual with ADD, I wanted to talk about this condition. Some
people say to me, “oh, ADD is just a condition where people don't
pay attention to what there doing, and that is all it is”.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case. It is a condition of the human
brain where the frontal lobe is a sleep, and the brain component that
is acting as an information filter is not doing what it is suppose to
be doing. When I say information, I mean neurological data that your
senses pick up (seeing, feeling, hearing, etc), anyway this
information is not being filtered as to what is relevant and what is
trash.
Imagine yourself
sitting in a classroom listening to your teacher talk about something
science related. There are a lot of things going on in that classroom
that most people are not going to notice. Things like how hot/cold
the room is, the light intensity of the surrounding, the buzzing
sound that comes off of florescent light bulbs, and someone
whispering in the background when they're not supposed to since the
teacher is talking. Someone without ADD is going to tune all this out
so that what is relevant (the teacher talking) can pass through and
be processed deep into there minds, where as someone with untreated
ADD is not.
ADD isn't something
that has to be a bad thing either, it just makes people different. I
personally like to compare someone with ADD to a special Olympics
athlete, mainly the wheelchair races. Have you ever seen them with
all that muscle on their upper bodies? Some of them look strong
enough to punch a whole though a brick wall like it was Jello, but
unfortunately some may have trouble walking. These individuals are
compensating for something there bodies lack in, mainly the ability
to walk. So what happens if you can't walk? You make your upper body
strong enough to keep up with your surroundings to be on the same
playing field as everyone else. Same goes for the fact if by example,
you had lost your left arm in an accident of some kind. You would go
on in life finding a better way to cope by using the right arm
perhaps in different ways from which most people are not a custom to.
Well guess what? Your brain is no different. When your brain lacks in
an ability of some kind that it needs, your body starts to find ways
to cope with the defect over time. Perhaps by not having a functional
information filter, the individual will start to place more emphasis
on a different aspect of the brain. This may explain why an
individual might start to exert an ability in stronger mathematics,
artistic abilities, creative thinking, or even heightened sensory
perception (extremely sharp hearing, sense of smell, or feel, etc.).
Either way, the brain is something that still leaves us puzzled and
can do strange things sometimes.
Unfortunately people
such as myself will always face problems of acceptance in society.
ADD can cause problems with employment, leave an individual open to
being bullied in schools, organizations, as well as work
environments. It is a fact that people can't and wont accept someone
who is different. I have personally encountered to many individuals
who have an over excess of pride and ego to ever allow someone else
to out do them. The sad thing is, it is not the person with ADD who
is the problem, but the person who is fighting against them that is.
Oddly enough, if the person fighting the individual with ADD would
stop fighting and fearing them, but rather find a way to incorporate
the other individuals ideas, they may find ways to implement better
financial gain by combining ideas and results. I'm not saying this is
an easy task, some individuals may even lack in social skills making
it difficult to even tolerate them for a second. This goes back to
the last paragraph I wrote on how when your brain lacks one thing, it
compensates by boosting something else. This is why it takes patients
and training to work with these individuals.
Ok, I know what your
thinking, “Matt, this is very interesting, but what does this have
to do with making a better fighting soldier?” The answer is, lets
look at the special abilities someone can develop in the brain when a
defect is introduced. I shall use myself to fill this example, I have
an ability to work with programming in a way some can not. I know
this for a fact because I did Electronic Engineering Technology at
Red River College and was able to develop microcontroller C code a
great speeds, completing one assignment after another in great
detail. I have completed programming assignments in a matter of hours
when it can take people months, and I don't know why, I just see the
solution in front of my eyes. Take this ability, apply it into the
field, and you may get these benefits:
-
Intelligence gathering
-
Field engineering
-
Electronic system security
-
Defusal of IED's
-
Special operations where creativity and out of the box thinking are required to complete mission tasks
The fact is many
individuals who do have ADD can safely be considered “operationally
ready” and with a slight modification to how training is provided,
you may find that a more effective soldier can be financially
feasible in creating. It is a well known fact that training a soldier
right from basic to operational deployment costs hundreds of
thousands of dollars when you look at wages, resource consumption,
equipment, food, water, energy, shelter over the long term which adds
to a government expenses. So why not create a more cost effective
soldier? These individuals who have ADD are going to most likely have
unique gifts that can assist in military operations. How this can be
done, is training these individuals in smaller groups that can be
occasionally pulled out of larger groups, trained in smaller ones
then placed back in larger ones they once started out with. This can
help with things like basic training when your first learning drill,
physical fitness, firearms training, and perhaps class work.
When more detailed
operations are necessary, finding individuals who are open minded
enough and work nicely together create better operational sections.
You might find that using the same group of people that everyone
works well with all the time will make operations function
effectively and cleanly. Introducing to much change to the group,
like change of management, pulling someone out of the group and
replacing with someone new will bring on many uncertainties.
Keep in mind, as I
mentioned before, it won't be the individual with ADD that will
necessarily need the extensive training but the people who are
commanding the individual that will. It is highly probable that
someone without ADD will be calling the shots, and for most
individuals without this condition, it is a very difficult concept to
understand how to “walk in someone else's shoes.” I have often
tried to describe what it is like to have ADD to many people in the
past. It is a task very difficult to accomplish as it almost seems to
lack words to describe. The only way to truly understand it would be
to get a 4 year degree in psychology or work with someone who has the
condition already. In other words, sometimes “it takes one, to know
one”.
With the right
working groups, proper training, acknowledgement of ones abilities,
it is possible to have a very powerful (maybe even super) solder
under your command. I know that when I'm working with the right
people who truly understand who I am and what I can do, it's like
downloading a program into a computer. “Please insert commands
followed by the enter key”, it really can be that simple, if you
want it to be.
It maybe easier for
the United States Forces to accept this experiment. It is a very well
known fact that they are driven to be technologically innovative to
an extreme scale. Who knows, perhaps someone in DARPA or the NSA
somewhere may stumble across this information and consider it. The US
owes lots of money on a global scale, perhaps the idea of a “cheaper,
stronger soldier” may just seem appealing. As for the Canadian
Forces, implementing this idea would prove very difficult to
accomplish. Canada is driven by it's old traditions and does not
embrace technological innovation to the same degree as the US does.
Reasons for this is because of the lack of financial backing, many
layers of politics, and an endless mound of policies needed to cover
the actions of others. I'm not saying this is an impossible task, but
it is a very challenging one.
The fact is, if more
of society is willing to accept these people, then put them together
and you have a hailstorm of innovative power.
