We are documenting Autistic culture in our articles, and we are centring Autistic lived experiences via participatory Autistic research, by actively supporting Autistic research projects, by coordinating Autistic peer support, by catalysing the co-creation of NeurodiVentures, and by curating useful tools developed by neurodivergent people for neurodivergent people.
Autists depend on assistance from others in ways that differ from the cultural norm. We support each other, love each other, and care for each other in ways that go far beyond the culturally impaired neuronormative imagination.
There is the saying that “It takes a village to raise a child.” The Autistic translation of this saying is “For an Autistic person it takes an extended Autistic family to feel loved and alive.”
In a healthy culture Autistic children are assisted in co-creating their unique Autistic families. In many indigenous cultures children with unique qualities are recognised, are given adult mentors with similarly unique qualities, and grow up to fulfil unique roles in their local community, connected to others with unique knowledge and insights, perhaps even in other communities. If we are embedded in an ecology of care, we can thrive and share the pain and the joy of life.
Life without the false God of Normality
If you are culturally well adjusted to modern society, your sense of “normality” is shaped by the things you don’t notice and by the things that you take for granted. “Normality” is like the air you breathe as a mammal, or the water that you’d be swimming in if you were a fish. The hump…
Coherent theories of human ways of being
Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people have been comparing notes on the diversity of human ways of being via the internet for over twenty years. Lessons from the social model of disability and the disability rights movement apply. Neurodivergent people have come to realise that we live in hypernormative societies. Background Neurodiversity is the diversity of…
Autistic survival tools – Daoist philosophy
Spoon conservation strategies within hypernormative societies The Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi are the primary foundations of Daoist philosophy and religions based on this philosophy. The former book contains a timeless collection of critical thinking tools, and the latter book elaborates these tools in terms of concrete examples based on the experiences of living in…
Co-creating comprehensible ecologies of care beyond the human
Nurturing bioregional and planetary health The moon is greeting the Matariki sunrise Today is Matariki, the start of the Māori new year. The days are getting longer again in the Southern Hemisphere. Traditionally, Matariki was a time to acknowledge the dead and to release their spirits to become stars. It was also a time to…
Life is, at bottom, diversity
All living systems, from the smallest forms of life to the planetary ecosystem are best understood as complex systems of feedback loops. Metaphors we live by Attempting to articulate “solutions” to the current human predicament within the simplistic religious frame of the invisible hand helps so-called leaders maintain the illusion of contributing towards a better world in…
The evolution of cultural organisms
The evolution of human cultural organisms can be understood in terms of the axioms of collaborative niche construction. The concepts of cultural organisms, cultural species, and collaborative niche construction are abstract, but they relate to more than ten years of lived experience with the NeurodiVenture operating model, an emergent cultural species that is able to survive…
The relational nervous system of open knowledge flows between human societies
The relatively sparse local distribution of Autistic people and the diversity amongst Autistic people, i.e. sometimes very different sensory profiles – and needs, and different areas of core interests, conspire to make it difficult for Autistic people to form thriving local communities in any given location. That said, even though the Autistic interest profile tends…
Autistic mutual aid – a factor of cultural evolution
The diagnostic criteria for autism cover a broad and diverse umbrella of people, and they obscure the Autistic lived experience of toxic cultural norms that are ultimately detrimental for all people. The inappropriate pathologisation that results from the hypernormative medical lens gets in the way of providing Autistic people with optimal support throughout the lifespan.…
The possibilities and limitations of human agency
We are part of the web of life, including our imagination. An important commonality that many Autistic people share with members of other marginalised groups is a deep desire for social justice and a corresponding preference for genuinely egalitarian social operating models. This week the Irish president Michael D Higgins condemned neoliberalism and urged the…
Hypernormative Culture Awareness Month
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. Diagnostic criteria…
Coming back to life
This article reflects the foundation of Autistic collaboration between Jax Bayne, Jorn Bettin, Sam Davis, Star Ford, Svanhildur Kristjansson, and a growing human scale neurodivergent team. We are all travelling through life at human scale, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Whether we like it or not, we are all subject to…
Nurturing shared understanding in a deceptive world
Social construction of neuronormative reality Many medical doctors, engineers of all stripes, economists – and all other professions that serve the established social order, as well as celebrities, are co-opted into the cult of individual busyness, where they all defer the most important decisions to power drunk “leaders” in industry and government. I have yet…
Collaborative niche construction
Psychiatry is slowly catching up with the concept of neurodiversity amongst animals, including humans, taking clues from animal biology/psychology and from the neurodiversity movement. The language used is still compliant with the language of the pathology paradigm, but if you are unfamiliar with the emerging discipline of evolutionary psychiatry, the presentation by Adam Hunt will…
Nurturing healthy Autistic relationships
Relationships between Autistic people are often more intense than relationships between culturally well adjusted neuronormative people. Healthy Autistic relationships include intensive collaboration on shared interests, overlapping areas of deep domain expertise, and joint exploration of unfamiliar terrain. The intensity of Autistic relationships is based on our ability to hyperfocus and our unbounded curiosity and desire…
Healing from Autistic trauma
The ocean is my natural habitat. I feel more at home in salt water than on land. My mind does not rest until all new experiences have been consolidated into my current understanding of the world, which is facilitated by spending time in and on the water. Extract from ‘Uncovering the Words of the Wordless…
Convergent and divergent cultural evolution
With the concepts of ND / Autistic whānau and ND / Autistic communities we are exploring new terrain, in which the artificial and toxic distinction between the industrialised concepts of “work” and “family life” is completely dissolved, and is fully replaced by the concepts of human scale ecologies of authentic, non-competitive mutual care that extends…
Co-creating ecologies of caring and sharing
Instead of the individualistic perspective, mental health can only be understood in a way that is meaningful for humans at the level of a biocultural organism at human scale. People are connected via all the many ways in which we communicate, enjoy doing things together, help each other, and share food and other resources. The…
Cultural evolution towards human scale
Genuine non-superficial change is never easy. It takes effort. It takes time. There are no short cuts. Naive incrementalism can easily make things worse. This is why so many people have completely given up any hope of genuine change. The neurodiversity movement is a human rights movement. No one and no organisation can genuinely claim…
Autistic people are not for sale
The actual effect of the myth of meritocracy, which is used to normalise and rationalise head to head competition, is a consistent bias to over-represent capabilities, and to actively avoid thinking about externalities. This is familiar to anyone who has ever been exposed to advertising. The cult of busyness undermines attempts at creating a shared…
The timeless and universal architecture of safety
Picture by Ulku Mazlum It is wise to ignore discipline boundaries when engaging in knowledge archaeology. Many of the observations resulting from a transdisciplinary or anti-disciplinary approach don’t neatly fit with the siloed W.E.I.R.D. ways of knowing. Old rock paintings and diagrammatic representations illustrate how important knowledge can be transmitted reliably in otherwise largely oral…
Repairing the human cultural immune system
Do you want real change? Becoming conscious of human cognitive limits and recognising that these limits are just as real, immutable, and relevant for our survival as the laws of physics is essential for neurodivergent people to navigate sensory and emotional overload, and for (re)creating safe environments for ourselves and our peers. Given that human…
Panel discussion: the 5th International Day of Protest Against ABA
31 August 2022, 3:00 pm to 5 pm CST / 8:00 pm to 10: pm UTC, 8:00 am to 10 am NZST This online panel discussion was hosted in collaboration with the Neurodiversity Activists at MSU, Mankato. It is part of an ongoing series of discussions within the Autistic community to progress towards comprehensive bans…
Co-creating a Centre of Autistic Culture in Auckland, Aotearoa
Photo by Sulthan Auliya on Unsplash The Autistic / ND whānau concept and Autistic / ND communities are important and essential building blocks of a new emerging reality. The social model of disability applies. We need to actively encourage environmental engineering, and we need to push back against toxic social expectations, and equip future generations…
Education about Autistic culture, the ND paradigm, and the ND movement – for medical professionals, by Autistic people
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. Fill in the form…
Autistic ways of being, trauma, and diagnosis
Living in our global industrialised society is traumatising, especially for hypersensitive Autistic people, and this has increasingly been the case since the earliest days of industrialisation, even before the term “autism” entered the vocabulary of the medical profession. Adults seeking a diagnosis of autism are often looking for an explanation of their lived experience, which…
Co-creating Autistic / ND communities
By Jorn Bettin & Ulku Mazlum A savage is not the one who lives in the forest, but the one who destroys the forest. – Ulku Mazlum The sickness of civilisation The exploitative nature of our “civilised” cultures is top of mind for many neurodivergent people. In contrast, many neuronormative people seem to deal with…
Depowered feral Autistic relationships
By Jorn Bettin & Ulku Mazlum The need to be resilient is something that Autistic people unlearn over time. We need to learn to be gentle with ourselves. With the concept of Autistic whānau we are exploring new terrain and new possibilities. It’s something that we can incrementally weave into the Autistic collaborations that are…
Open letter to the Lancet Commission on the future of care and clinical research in autism
14th February 2022 We wish to address the Lancet Commission on the future of care and clinical research in autism on behalf of the Global Autistic Task Force on Autism Research, a committee comprising autistic advocates, researchers and representatives of organisations by and for autistic people. As the Commission emphasised the importance of collaborative participation,…
The Autistic pace of life in the ocean
Thanks to wonderful Autistic conversations I think I am beginning to understand why I feel so much at home in the ocean. To date I had not connected it to healing from Autistic trauma, but now I see the connection with increasing clarity. Firstly, that much I knew already, besides the air and remote mountain…
From pseudo-philosophical psychiatrists to openly Autistic culture
The medical model in the diagnosis of Autistic people focuses entirely on the identification and “treatment” of symptoms, and fails to acknowledge the obvious underlying causes, i.e. the sources of trauma in industrialised societies, which are core features of the economic ideo-logic of “growth”, and which connect – via the red arrows in the diagram…
Onwards: International panels on banning all forms of conversion therapies
This series of panel discussions is part of the global Ban Conversion Therapies project, which keeps track of all the bans of conversion therapies that are already in place and of all initiatives towards bans. “Conversion therapies” are pseudoscientific practices of trying to change an individual’s behaviour to conform to the social expectations of a…
Understanding human collective behaviour
Individually and collectively neuronormative humans are prone to developing a bias towards thinking they understand more than they actually do (Kruger and Dunning 1999), certainly in the context of modern industrialised societies that are built on the myth of meritocracy. The extreme global loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis, both triggered by collective human…
The continuously shifting justifications for pathologising non-conformists
Recently I have come across a treasure trove of interesting references on the continuously shifting justifications for pathologising autistic people and all those who are not culturally well-adjusted to “civilisation”. I’m bound to weave in a few references into the book on collaboration at human scale before publication. Following the trail of where Hans Asperger…
Good company in an era of peak cognitive dissonance
I prefer to co-create good company rather than business – to focus on the people and things we care about rather than what is simply keeping us busy. Often this is easier said than done, as we live in an era of extreme cognitive dissonance. This article describes common symptoms of collective cognitive dissonance in…
Countdown towards a ban of all forms of conversion therapy
Today we have presented our submission to the government’s Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. From today we will will start counting the days until all forms of conversion therapies are banned in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our hope is that this page will only need to be appended a few times with further activities to remind…
Include all Conversion Therapies in Legislative Ban
Media release: 7 September 2021 Include all conversion therapies in legislative ban, says autistic community Although the government’s Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill is welcome progress, it should be extended to ban all conversion therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand, say members of the autistic community. In a submission to the Justice Select Committee, members from…
The purpose of human cultures
To appreciate what makes human cultures unique, and to understand the primary purpose of symbolic (spoken) human language, an obvious starting point is a comparison of basic parameters with the cultures of other primates, our closest living relatives: Chimpanzees live in large groups of 30 to up to 150 individuals called “communities”. Within these groups…
Reclaiming the essence of humanity
Searching for the remains of human potential in industrialised societies Before I comment on the characteristics of the institutions that operate and influence industrialised societies, I want to be clear about my background and the experiences that shape my observations. I always work at the boundary between people and technology, and at the boundary between…
Nurturing good company, one trusted relationship at a time
The logo of this website symbolises trusted collaboration at eye level, without social power gradients. Autistic people know intuitively that this is the only route to creating good company. Relationships Eye level relationships are intrinsically motivated by curiosity and a life affirming outlook: the need for sharing experiences and offering assistance, and the desire to…
Te Hapori Whai Takiwātanga o Aotearoa
An initiative of the Autistic Collaboration Trust Te Hapori Whai Takiwātanga o Aotearoa (Autism Aotearoa New Zealand) (https://autismaotearoa.org) is a new website that is designed as an access point to the New Zealand Autistic Community. The autists who are curating and jointly developing the educational material and services of the website are involved in the…
Replacing control with ecologies of care
The focus on economic performance and the subordination of all other dimensions of life in industrialised societies has profound effects on human behaviour. Different cultures focus on different primary time horizons, and often this is the biggest source of challenges in being able to understand each other. On a related note, linguist and cognitive scientist…
Panel discussions towards a ban of all forms of conversion therapies
This series of panel discussions is part of the global Ban Conversion Therapies project, which keeps track of all the bans of conversion therapies that are already in place and of all initiatives towards bans. You are invited to join our series online panel discussions to progress towards a ban of all forms of autistic…
Autistic Life, Trauma, and Disability
Autistic people are anthropologists by birth in a very literal sense. The “feedback” that we get as small children, for example a brick being thrown at me from behind in the playground, being regularly ignored, labelled as weird, too quiet, withdrawn, rude, scary, hypersensitive etc. leaves us no choice but to spend a lot of…
Rediscovering the purpose of learning
Complexification is the civilised© operating model for normal™ human primates®. I remain an uncertifiable life form in a perfect® world. This stance sums up my experience with Western education systems, having been “educated” within such systems, having some experience teaching within such systems, having acted as a coach and mentor to students within such systems,…
Banning autistic “conversion therapy” in NZ
We ask the New Zealand government to investigate the consequences of all forms of conversion therapy, including conversion therapies that target autistic children, which are often branded as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) or Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). Inquiry into the consequences of conversion therapies for autistic children Please sign our petition: This initiative is part…
Making the world a safer place for everyone
To assist schools, universities, and other organisations in preparing for Neurodiversity Celebration Week (15 to 21 March 2021) I have compiled a list of learning resources that allow people to familiarise themselves with the way in which neurodiversity and neurodivergence play out in people’s lives. A great place to start is by celebrating Weird Pride…
The book on collaboration at human scale is available for peer review
The book project The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale is now in the peer review stage, with all the content in place, including an extensive bibliography. All feedback is welcome!
The social architecture of collective intelligence
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. Capacity for independent thought The following observations describe the foundations of autistic culture: I just…
Active disablement of minorities
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, whose educational diet was not limited to the W.E.I.R.D. education system, and those who have spent significant times of their lives outside their…
What would a healthy society look like?
It is easy to point out the flawed assumptions and circular reasoning that underpin the justification for the institutions and social norms in W.E.I.R.D. societies, especially from an autistic perspective. It is much harder for neuronormative people to fully take in the implications of overly simplistic assumptions about human nature and life on this planet,…
Rediscovering the language of life
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. Corporate “Neurodiversity @ Work” and “Autism @ Work” initiatives are largely scams to procure domesticated corporate workers that can’t afford to ask uncomfortable questions about the purpose of the organisation.…
Pathologisation of life and neurodiversity in W.E.I.R.D. monocultures
W.E.I.R.D. stands for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. 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,…
From collective delusion to creative collaboration
If you consider any potential outcomes beyond a ten year time horizon the current path of industrialised “civilisation” must be described as a form of collective delusion. When I use the term “collective delusion” I am referring to a the most extreme form of cultural inertia that can affect a group of people. A couple…
Autistic people – The cultural immune system of human societies
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 benefits of Autistic traits such as Autistic levels…
Autistic analysis of COVID-19
You may have read articles like this one that point to different ways of recording COVID-19 mortality in different jurisdictions. The concerns raised about variability in data collection are mirrored in commentaries by pulmonologists and other clinicians who have observed many flu seasons. This perspective is easily missed by those who focus on the characteristics…
In search of psychological safety
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 in the workplace and in society in general. To appreciate the significance of the overlap the following working definition of psychological safety comes in handy: Psychological safety is a condition…
Celebration of interdependence
The notion of disability in our society is underscored by a bizarre conception of “independence”. Autists depend on assistance from others in ways that differ from the cultural norm – and that is pathologised. However, the many ways in which non-autistic people depend on others is considered “normal”, or rather it is brushed under the…
The evolution of evolution
Cultural evolution allows human society to evolve much faster than the speed of genetic evolution, which is constrained by the interval between generations. However, within any given society, the vast majority of people only experience a very limited sense of individual agency. Gene-culture co-evolution has led to a mix of capabilities in a group where:…
Pathways to good company
For an autistic person the pathway towards good company is distinctly different from the life trajectory mapped out by the expectations of mainstream culture. The most appropriate pathway for an autistic person depends significantly on the surrounding social environment and the stage of life: Isolated adult who is unaware of being autistic Amongst the adult…
Autistic collaboration for life
Autists are acutely aware that culture is constructed one trusted relationship at a time – this is the essence of fully appreciating diversity. Autistic people relate to specific people, and primarily to other autistic people, and not to group identities. In contrast, contemporary human societies are characterised by abstract group identities, from local communities, to favourite…
People management and bullying
It is interesting that the mainstream media occasionally does get concerned about manipulation techniques used in people management, and is much less concerned about the common use of bullying and manipulation techniques such as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) as “therapies” for autistic children. Many autistic people who have been subjected to ABA and similar “treatments”…
Organising for neurodivergent collaboration
Collaboration as an evolutionary force If autistic people can’t always see the depth of the “bigger picture” of the office politics around us it does not in any way mean that we don’t see the big picture. In fact we are aware of the big picture and often we zoom in from the biggest picture…
Beyond peak human standardisation
In some geographies the prevalence of autism within the population is now estimated to be 1 in 35. Overall, in the US, according to CDC data, 1 in 6 children has a “developmental disability”, and in the UK, according to the Department of Education, 15% (roughly 1 in 7) of students have a “learning difference”.…
Guidelines for future autism research
From the perspective of the autism rights movement ownership of the definition of autism is a practical question of human rights and social power relationships in the here and now, and not an abstract philosophical problem. Across the board most autistic people recognise the disabling characteristics of autism, which are socially constructed, exactly in the…
The future is neurodiversity friendly!
The topics that generate conversations around the Autistic Collaboration community increasingly overlap with the topics that participants are bringing to the quarterly CIIC unconferences in Auckland and in Melbourne, which draw in many people with autistic cognitive lenses. I have recently summarised the multiple crises of civilisation on the CIIC website, so there is no…
Myths that help keep the autism indu$try in bu$yne$$
Currently the most visible way in which autism contributes to the economy is by providing a substrate from which a growing autism industry can extract profit. What CAN be misunderstood WILL be misunderstood. Unless you are autistic there is no difference between “cure” and cure. Sadly, there is no shortage of “autism professional advice” and…
Genuine appreciation of neurodiversity
Society should be moving beyond autism awareness and autism acceptance towards appreciation of all forms of neurodiversity. However, the label of neurodiversity is being co-opted. I cringe when I read statements and absurd goals like this one: “SAP has announced an intention to make 1% of its workforce neurodiverse by 2020″—a number chosen because it…
What CAN be misunderstood WILL be misunderstood
Autistic social motivation is deeply rooted in the desire to share knowledge and in the desire to learn, and this has big implications for the protocols that are used in autistic communication. In contrast, the societies we grow up in and live in value abstract social status symbols more than developing a shared understanding, and…
The dynamics resulting from the interplay of neurodiversity and culture
Why do humans cooperate? This week Nature published a focus issue on human cooperation that brings together research from evolution, anthropology, ecology, economics, neuroscience and environmental science — to spark interdisciplinary conversation and inspire scientific cooperation. Cooperation lies at the heart of human lives and society — from day-to-day interactions to some of our greatest…
Taking ownership of the label
Autism is a genetically-based human neurological variant that can not be understood without the social model of disability. Members of the autism civil rights movement adopt a position of neurodiversity that extends the LGBTQIA+ kaleidoscope of identities by recognising autistic traits as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species.…
Autistic cognition decoded for earthlings
Just for a minute, imagine … not getting pleasure out of successfully copying the behaviour of others, and instead experiencing discomfort when copying others; and not getting pleasure out of social status or out of exerting power over others, and instead experiencing extreme discomfort when expected to exert power over others. Then try to imagine…
What society can learn from autistic culture
Autists are acutely aware that culture is constructed one trusted relationship at a time – this is the essence of fully appreciating diversity. Society must start to move beyond awareness and acceptance towards appreciation of cognitive diversity. The topic of culture is a double edged sword. On the one hand a shared culture can streamline collaboration,…
Social – The big misunderstanding
The stereotype that autists have difficulty with collaboration is the result of a fundamentally different perspective on the purpose of social interaction.