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.
…interested in social status and are therefore considered “socially naive”, they are very astute observers, and learn to decode competitive social motivations – not intuitively, but intellectually, via careful analysis…
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.
The objectives of the autism and neurodiversity civil rights movements overlap significantly with the interests of those who advocate for greater levels of psychological safety
The tools of civilisation, including money, have undermined our appreciation of interdependence, and within the Western world we have culminated in a toxic cult of competitive individualism.
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