The Autism Spectrum According to Autistic People

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The Autism Spectrum
According to Autistic People

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The inability to think hierarchically is the ability to think and live relationally

Jorn Bettin November 17, 2024

Many Autistic people have great difficulties to think of the world in hierarchical ways. From what we know about our evolutionary path as humans, this is a reflection of innate human collaborative cultural capabilities in combination with a much reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis, which in turn can be traced to uncommon sensitivity profiles that fall outside the bell curve of hypernormativity.

The inability to think hierarchically is the ability to think and live relationally

Jorn Bettin November 17, 2024

Many Autistic people have great difficulties to think of the world in hierarchical ways. From what we know about our evolutionary path as humans, this is a reflection of innate human collaborative cultural capabilities in combination with a much reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis, which in turn can be traced to uncommon sensitivity profiles that fall outside the bell curve of hypernormativity.

The inability to think hierarchically is the ability to think and live relationally

Jorn Bettin November 17, 2024

Many Autistic people have great difficulties to think of the world in hierarchical ways. From what we know about our evolutionary path as humans, this is a reflection of innate human collaborative cultural capabilities in combination with a much reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis, which in turn can be traced to uncommon sensitivity profiles that fall outside the bell curve of hypernormativity.

Coherent theories of human ways of being

Jorn Bettin September 7, 2023

Autistic people support each other, love each other, and care for each other in ways that go far beyond the culturally impaired neuronormative imagination. It is time to remind the so-called “civilised” world about non-pathologising and coherent theories of human ways of being that are integrated into ecologies of care and the evolutionary flows of life in-formation.

web of life

The evolution of cultural organisms

Jorn Bettin June 9, 2023

Culture may not seem to change much from year to year, but if we look closely in the right places, major changes take place every 5 to 10 years. The toxicity of the industrialised paradigm is not the absence of cultural dynamism, but the systematic channeling of all cultural change into frantic busyness within an established and fundamentally misguided paradigm. For the Neurodiversity Movement this means that engaging exclusively with the pathologising silos of W.E.I.R.D. psychiatry and psychology is a dead end. The futility of cosmetic neurodiversity lite approaches becomes fully visible from a transdisciplinary viewpoint.

mutual aid

Autistic mutual aid – a factor of cultural evolution

Jorn Bettin May 7, 2023

The diagnostic criteria for autism obscure the Autistic lived experience of toxic cultural norms that are ultimately detrimental for all people. Depathologisation of Autistic people as demanded by Autistic rights activists does not negate being socially disabled, and need not prevent anyone from gaining access to appropriate means of communication and other forms of social support.

The possibilities and limitations of human agency

Jorn Bettin May 4, 2023

We are part of the web of life, including our imagination. As agents of the human cultural immune system we can expand the language of life and (re)imagine cultures that reconnect us to biological life and local biological ecosystems. This article can serve as a resource list for an education course on human cultural evolution, with a focus on the current human predicament.

Hypernormative Culture Awareness Month

Jorn Bettin April 2, 2023

April is Hypernormative Culture Awareness Month. Please spare a moment for all culturally well adjusted people, who are unable to speak about their many fears and the many sources of cognitive dissonance in their lives.

Understanding your Autistic child

Jorn Bettin September 17, 2024

In the current Aotearoa New Zealand Autism Guideline the existence of Autistic culture is not mentioned with a single word. Understanding Autistic people and Autistic culture is still a secondary concern. Civil society activists and child rights’ defenders from around the world are now joining together to create the Rights-Centric Education network.

Falling in love with human limitations – healing from anthropocentrism

Jorn Bettin July 7, 2024

Humans are not going to find solutions for the polycrisis, conquer new planets, the galaxy, and the universe, fully understand the human condition, or develop technologies that replace anthropocentrism with technocentrism. Minimising suffering beyond the human translates to nurturing ecologies of care beyond the human, and to falling in love with human limitations.

compost heap

Composting money and power

Jorn Bettin May 7, 2024

Money and social power gradients are abstract cultural artefacts designed to defy compostability – social conventions that we can accept or reject, which are perpetuated by careless and learning disabled societies – creating conditions that are literally hostile to all life. “Build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― Buckminster Fuller

How safe do/did you feel growing up?

Jorn Bettin April 23, 2024

Initial results from a survey on psychological safety and mental wellbeing indicate that the biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled children – and especially those who also belong to cultural minorities, relate to classmates, parents, and teachers. 97% indicate often or always having anxiety, and 80% indicate often or always feeling depressed. We are committed to gathering further data from as many geographies as possible. The data and lived experience reports will flow into our education courses for teachers, and will inform our advocacy work.

Understanding power and de-powering

Jorn Bettin April 7, 2024

The normalisation of social power gradients and powered-up relationships is the terminal disease that plagues all empires. Since we live in the context of the convulsions of dying empires, it is important to understand the cultural dynamics that are unfolding.

Education about Autistic culture, the ND paradigm, and the ND movement – for medical professionals, by Autistic people

Jorn Bettin June 1, 2022

Join Autistic people from all over the world, committed to the de-stigmatisation of Autistic ways of being and other forms of neurodivergence, in support of the development and delivery of education about Autistic culture, the neurodiversity paradigm, and the neurodiversity movement – for medical professionals, by Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people.

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