Many autists reject all forms of social power. Unless we have autistic people in our environment that nurture our sense of agency and intrinsic motivations, trauma may prevent us from learning how to trust others and build eye level relationships.
In a W.E.I.R.D. culture where autistic people are pathologised, it can be helpful to point to reflections on culture made by outsiders and members of minorities who are marginalised and often persecuted.
The definition of normality in the industrial era is based on the metaphor of society as a factory and on the metaphor of people as machines. Our laws and social norms have been shaped by these metaphors to a far greater extent than most people are able to comprehend without an in-depth explanation.
As I have been pointing out for the last few years, the commodification of neurodiversity and the exploitation of autistic people is in full swing.
As long as society confuses homo economicus with homo sapiens we are more than “a bit off course”. The exploitative nature of our “civilised” cultures is top of mind for many neurodivergent people. In contrast, many neuronormative people seem to deal with the trauma via denial, resulting in profound levels of cognitive dissonance.
Our world is changing: pandemics, climate change, technology. Will society respond to these crises with revolution or with collaboration?
The Autistic Collaboration Trust is currently engaging with the autistic community and the wider neurodiversity movement to solicit input, to jointly develop a trustworthy and globally accessible employer rating service that is administered by autistic and otherwise neurodivergent volunteers. You are invited to contribute.
If neurodiversity is the natural variation of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species, then what role do autistic traits in particular play within human cultures and what cultural evolutionary pressures have allowed autistic traits to persist over hundreds of thousands of years?
The Autistic English Dictionary (AED) is the principal dictionary of the English language for autistic people. In order to be comprehensible to autistic people, the English language needs to be updated with explicit definitions of the continuously shifting unspoken semantics that neurotypical speakers attach to specific words and phrases.
We are starting to experiment with ways to reduce interactions to human scale and are starting to learn. We may even learn that there are many different ways to contain the virus, but a focus on human scale and a bias against super-human scale busyness will be the common thread through all these approaches.
Many autists reject all forms of social power. Unless we have autistic people in our environment that nurture our sense of agency and intrinsic motivations, trauma may prevent us from learning how to trust others and build eye level relationships.
In a W.E.I.R.D. culture where autistic people are pathologised, it can be helpful to point to reflections on culture made by outsiders and members of minorities who are marginalised and often persecuted.
The definition of normality in the industrial era is based on the metaphor of society as a factory and on the metaphor of people as machines. Our laws and social norms have been shaped by these metaphors to a far greater extent than most people are able to comprehend without an in-depth explanation.
As I have been pointing out for the last few years, the commodification of neurodiversity and the exploitation of autistic people is in full swing.
As long as society confuses homo economicus with homo sapiens we are more than “a bit off course”. The exploitative nature of our “civilised” cultures is top of mind for many neurodivergent people. In contrast, many neuronormative people seem to deal with the trauma via denial, resulting in profound levels of cognitive dissonance.
Our world is changing: pandemics, climate change, technology. Will society respond to these crises with revolution or with collaboration?
The Autistic Collaboration Trust is currently engaging with the autistic community and the wider neurodiversity movement to solicit input, to jointly develop a trustworthy and globally accessible employer rating service that is administered by autistic and otherwise neurodivergent volunteers. You are invited to contribute.
If neurodiversity is the natural variation of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species, then what role do autistic traits in particular play within human cultures and what cultural evolutionary pressures have allowed autistic traits to persist over hundreds of thousands of years?
The Autistic English Dictionary (AED) is the principal dictionary of the English language for autistic people. In order to be comprehensible to autistic people, the English language needs to be updated with explicit definitions of the continuously shifting unspoken semantics that neurotypical speakers attach to specific words and phrases.
We are starting to experiment with ways to reduce interactions to human scale and are starting to learn. We may even learn that there are many different ways to contain the virus, but a focus on human scale and a bias against super-human scale busyness will be the common thread through all these approaches.
Many autists reject all forms of social power. Unless we have autistic people in our environment that nurture our sense of agency and intrinsic motivations, trauma may prevent us from learning how to trust others and build eye level relationships.
In a W.E.I.R.D. culture where autistic people are pathologised, it can be helpful to point to reflections on culture made by outsiders and members of minorities who are marginalised and often persecuted.
The definition of normality in the industrial era is based on the metaphor of society as a factory and on the metaphor of people as machines. Our laws and social norms have been shaped by these metaphors to a far greater extent than most people are able to comprehend without an in-depth explanation.
As I have been pointing out for the last few years, the commodification of neurodiversity and the exploitation of autistic people is in full swing.
As long as society confuses homo economicus with homo sapiens we are more than “a bit off course”. The exploitative nature of our “civilised” cultures is top of mind for many neurodivergent people. In contrast, many neuronormative people seem to deal with the trauma via denial, resulting in profound levels of cognitive dissonance.
Our world is changing: pandemics, climate change, technology. Will society respond to these crises with revolution or with collaboration?
The Autistic Collaboration Trust is currently engaging with the autistic community and the wider neurodiversity movement to solicit input, to jointly develop a trustworthy and globally accessible employer rating service that is administered by autistic and otherwise neurodivergent volunteers. You are invited to contribute.
If neurodiversity is the natural variation of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species, then what role do autistic traits in particular play within human cultures and what cultural evolutionary pressures have allowed autistic traits to persist over hundreds of thousands of years?
The Autistic English Dictionary (AED) is the principal dictionary of the English language for autistic people. In order to be comprehensible to autistic people, the English language needs to be updated with explicit definitions of the continuously shifting unspoken semantics that neurotypical speakers attach to specific words and phrases.
We are starting to experiment with ways to reduce interactions to human scale and are starting to learn. We may even learn that there are many different ways to contain the virus, but a focus on human scale and a bias against super-human scale busyness will be the common thread through all these approaches.
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