The stereotype that Autists have difficulty with collaboration is the result of a fundamentally different perspective on the purpose of social interaction.
The Autistic understanding of “social”
- Naive assumption: “social” refers to interaction to learn from each other
- Naive assumption: “social” refers to collaborating with others towards a shared goal
- An Autistic individual may take decades to decode the typical meaning of “social”
The prevalent neuronormative understanding of “social”
- Unspoken assumption: “social” refers to negotiating social status and power gradients
- Unspoken assumption: “social” refers to competing against each other using culturally defined rules
- A typical individual may take decades to appreciate non-social interests
Aut Collab has been set up as a platform for Autistic collaboration and as a platform for sharing the results of Autistic collaboration.
I have never read this point more aptly and concisely put. The grand poetic vision that is Finite and Infinite Games, a book by James P. Carse, refracts this sort of idea in many different directions, wonderfully I think, but here you’ve made it manifest. Thank you! I would love to collaborate in some way. For a couple of decades I’ve struggled to find some little bit of success as a creative writer, but again and again I’ve encountered this dichotomy/disparity between “social” understandings.
Yes! I just read Carse’s book. Exactly!!!
[…] collaboration involves sharing of knowledge and working towards a shared goal of generating new levels of knowledge and understanding. The individual innate moral compass […]
[…] collaboration involves sharing of knowledge and working towards a shared goal of generating new levels of knowledge and understanding. The individual innate moral compass […]