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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, by delivering professional education to medical doctors, allied health professionals and educators, and by curating useful tools developed by neurodivergent people for neurodivergent people.

Reader feedback:

Powerful writing that cuts deep and right through.

The whole world should have to read this article. Our systems are so flawed.

This made me feel less alone.

Thank you so much for writing this article. I’m 47 and just figured out I’m autistic 6 months ago. You put words to an understanding that has been unfolding in me since that diagnosis. I’ve spent my life trying to force myself into the mold of “normal.” I’ve failed at that over and over again. It’s a huge unwinding to no longer blame myself for that, to celebrate myself as one part within the vast and infinite reality of neurodiversity and biodiversity. It’s such a giant reframe. Such a relief. I’ve been struggling to put cognitive words to the emotional experience and this article does that for me. I am grateful for you as the author and for this brilliant, kind community of neurodivergent minds.

Perception management… whoa. 😱 So accurately stated it’s scary.

This should be required reading for all teachers!

Amen. A million times over.

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. Your lived experience shapes our interactive professional education courses.

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.

If you appreciate our articles and the tireless community building efforts of our volunteers, your donations go a long way to keep us going and grow our peer support capacity.

By becoming a sponsor of the Autistic Collaboration Trust (reg.no. CC59262) you help us catalyse Autistic Collaboration projects, coordinate Autistic peer support, document Autistic culture, conduct Autistic research, develop and deliver education based on lived experiences, and host events that celebrate Autistic culture.

The art of living in a world that is completely out of control

There is a co-evolved natural pace to the flow of life at each of the different scales within the kingdoms of life. We currently live in a social world of magical thinking shaped by the cult of technological progress. Co-creating ecologies of care beyond the human allows us to experience beauty in a world that…

Gaia loves making senses

Core ideas within Buddhist and Daoist spiritual traditions are reflective of the commonalities found across many human scale indigenous cultures. A compassionate frame of love as vulnerable mutual knowing is compatible with a panpsychic relational philosophy. Everyone wants their experience to be taken seriously. We are embodied spirits, compelled to make sense of this world,…

Autistic human animals – a factor in cultural metamorphosis

Autistic culture is a world of infinite diversity beyond the neuronormative imagination. Every Autistic relationship is unique, and many of us are traumatised. We need appropriate tools to invest in deeply understanding each other. Cultural metamorphosis requires radically reframing everything we understand about cultural adaptivity in terms of co-creating ecologies of care.

The ability to relate deeply is the inability to conduct transactional busyness

Underneath the surface of internalised ableism, no one wants to be seen and heard by many. Everyone prefers to be understood and loved deeply by a few, and everyone wants to love and help. This is what makes us sacred human animals. Continuous dialogues about commitments make life sacred. This is the experience of life…

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

Many Autistic people have great difficulties to think of the world in hierarchical ways. From everything that we know about our evolutionary path as humans, this is simply a reflection of innate human collaborative and cultural capabilities in combination with a much reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis, which in turn…

Healing – Resisting internalised ableism

In the Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) world we live in what philosopher Guy Debord described as The Society of the Spectacle. The reality presented to us via the media and public social media has been engineered to fit the exacting standards of Homo Economicus®. All the people alive today in Westernised countries, i.e. all…

Understanding your Autistic child

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.

Being part of the Earth in good company – our shared humanity

The human capacity for language serves to improve understanding and trust, fostering collaboration instead of competition. This contradicts capitalist interpretations of evolution and supports the notion of human collaboration. Society’s hierarchical structure and wealth creation methods perpetuate exploitation, leading to societal sickness. To heal, we must rediscover faith in humanity and focus on building trustworthy,…

The massive cognitive and emotional blind spot at the core of modernity

In our modern world the notion of tribalism is associated with many negative connotations, and especially with tribal bias, which is assumed to be an undesirable trait. A closer analysis reveals that the modern bias against tribalism is the result of conveniently sloppy research and a collective cognitive and emotional blind spot related to the…

Sowing the seeds for ecological and intersectional communal wellbeing

Many scientists don’t acknowledge the extent to which their disciplinary paradigms are influenced by the cultural frames of the colonial era. The so-called mental health crisis is a symptom of a terminally diseased institutional landscape. Neurodiversity and disability activists have been collaborating on coherent theories of human ways of being. Collaborative niche construction is the…

Neurodivergent nervous systems and sensitivity profiles

Our individually unique nervous systems and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults often or always feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% often or always feel disrespected and unsafe. Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care…

Ecocide® – Clearance sale! Buy now. Pay later.

Corporations are best understood as externalising machines that perpetuate a landscape of psychopathic institutions that are exclusively concerned with perception management. As life on this planet is being liquidated, more and more humans are engaging in collaborative niche construction, retreating into human scale cracks within the dying mono-cult.

Appreciating the beauty and the limitations of human scale through the art of non-doing

More and more people are discovering the timeless wisdom curated by Laozi for survival within the mono-cult of busyness. The Chinese concept of Pu is a Daoist metaphor that points us towards earlier times, to the qualities of small scale societies that have survived on the margins of empires, in some cases for many millennia.

Falling in love with human limitations – healing from anthropocentrism

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.

How much cognitive dissonance is in your life?

The Autistic Collaboration Trust has been active in researching cultural and psychological safety from an intersectional perspective. We now explore the level of cognitive dissonance that is generated by the societies that people are embedded in. You are invited to contribute! The results of this research will inform the education services we provide to healthcare professionals…

How (the lack of) diversity in the way we collectively think about the future shapes the futures that are (im)possible

The NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity offer a rich opportunity for omni-directional learning across cultures and geographies. The diversity in the way we collectively think about the future shapes the futures that are possible! There is an urgent need to catalyse intersectional ecologies of care all over the world, and to expose and oppose the internalised…

Decolonising education

Image from https://indigenousx.com.au The April NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity catalysed a range of conversations, with many threads weaving through the topic of education. Several topics resulted in in-depth discussion and new emerging ongoing collaborations, which is beautiful to see. Changes towards a more egalitarian culture that deeply and fully appreciates cultural, biological, and ecological diversity…

Composting money and power

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?

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…

Trust in Human Scale

Autistic ways of being are part of a culture that deserves the same respect as any other culture. Over the course of months and years, de-powered dialogue and omni-directional learning amongst Autistic, Artistic and otherwise Neurodivergent people results in trustworthy relationships, and in a diverse network of evolving intersectional ecologies of care.

How unsafe do Autistic and intersectionally marginalised people feel in your presence?

The biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people relate to unmet healthcare needs, their work environment, their parents, and disrespect by healthcare professionals. Data from our participatory research shows the large overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.

Understanding power and de-powering

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.

Co-Creating NeurodiVentures and A♾tistic Whānau

There is an urgent need to catalyse Autistic collaboration and co-create healthy Autistic, Artistic, and otherwise Neurodivergent whānau all over the world. Autists depend on assistance from others in ways that differ from the cultural norm – and that is pathologised in hypernormative societies. However, the many ways in which non-autistic people depend on others is considered “normal”. The endless chains…

Therapy and beyond in a Post-WEIRD world

We are inviting neurodiversity and disability rights activists, Autistic psychotherapists and other Autistic health professionals, indigenous rights activists and scholars, as well as Buddhist and Daoist scholars. All these perspectives are highly valuable for the conversations and the omni-directional learning that is needed in these times. Over the last 3 years, as a result of…

Bringing human imagination down to Earth

Over the last 5,000 years the ambiguities of linear written narratives and convenient interpretations have played a big role in amplifying social power gradients. The story of infinite economic growth and technological progress portrays a completely delusional and scientifically impossible world, which not only ignores biophysical limits, but also human cognitive and emotional limits. Nurturing…

Celebrate the diversity of humankind – Embrace your weirdness

4th of March is Weird Pride Day. This is a day for people to embrace their weirdness, and reject the stigma associated with being weird. To publicly express pride in the things that make us weird, and to celebrate the diversity of humankind.

Celebrating the infinitely diverse ways of being human

The objectives of the neurodiversity and disability rights movements overlap significantly with the struggles of indigenous peoples. All people are fully human. Neurodiversity Celebration Week is not only about neurodivergent students, it is also about the many neurodivergent teachers, parents, artists, and professionals and entrepreneurs in all sectors of our economy – who are unable…

A visual language for describing wellbeing

In indigenous societies human scale groups are those who we regularly rely on for mutual aid and assistance. In small societies without abstract formal authorities, everyone learns from everyone. The relational complexity of life, and the effects of the current de-humanising economic paradigm can’t easily be condensed into words. Instead, a visual language provides more…

Life defies the dehumanising cut-off points of the bell curve

The global mono-cult pretends that all aspects of life can be categorised and understood in terms of normality – by the hump of the bell curve. But the living planet does not conform to anthropocentric normality, it is chaotic, it is beautifully and awesomely diverse.

Life is relational and beyond human comprehension

Life is a highly dynamic system. Reflecting deeply on the relational nature of life allows us to become reacquainted with human emotional limits. Powered-up relationships are inherently incompatible with healthy ways of being human. Along the way we also begin to re-appreciate the limits of human comprehensibility and sense making.

From artificial scarcity to ecologies of abundant care

Autists learn and play differently, because our senses work differently, and because we make sense of the world in different ways. Our sensory profiles don’t allow us to push cognitive dissonance out of conscious awareness. We feel and know that a way of life that traumatises large segments of the population and the non-human world…

Life in the compost heap of the industrialised mono-cult

It is impossible to recover from Autistic burnout within the established institutional landscape. The emergence of ecologies of care is the emergence of a beautiful diversity of human scale cultural species and organisms in the cultural compost heap of the industrialised mono-cult.

The ecological niche of A♾tistic peoples

Surviving on the edges of modern society is an Art. The Arts and regular immersion in genuinely safe Open Spaces help us imagine and co-create ecologies of care in which care and mutual aid are the primary values. Within the context of the polycrisis that shapes the modern human predicament, the urgency of cultural evolution…

Intersectional solidarity and ecological wisdom

The objectives of the Autistic and neurodiversity civil rights movements overlap significantly with the struggles of indigenous peoples. All people are fully human. Especially those who are systematically marginalised have developed distinct cultures and ecologies of care beyond the human. Much of the deep collective ecological wisdom and the sacred relationships that we can develop at human scale transcend…

De-powered dialogue

The smallest unit of learning is a feedback loop. Power is the privilege of not needing to learn. The dynamic process of life is best understood in relational terms. At human scale, all healthy relationships, independently of the level of intimacy, are characterised by the maintenance of de-powered dialogue – by a mutual deep desire…

Nurturing ecologies of care, healing, and wellbeing

Social power is best understood as a highly addictive and socially corrosive drug. Meaningful education in the era of the sixth mass extinction event has to focus on the majority of the human population that is not power drunk, and on the humane treatment of those who are ready to confront their addiction to power…

unWEIRDing Autistic ways of being

In the cult of busyness the simplistic logic of finance acts as a universal linguistic and psychological security blanket. The world of finance feels comfortable because it conjures up the illusion that all eventualities can be calculated and quantified, satisfying the human need for certainty. The more obscure the financial tools, the more layers are added…

Surviving + De-powering + Thriving

Ingredients for slowing down to the relational speed of life and cooking up de-powered social operating models. Many Autists realise that the best we can ever hope for in this hypernormative civilisation is acceptance of our existence in bare survival mode, performing the function of a mindless busy cog and consumer in the sensory hell of…

Bringing our gifts to life

In energetically and socially powered-up societies, the public is governed by the opinions of those who are addicted to wielding social powers rather than by local collective intelligence. In powered-up societies paradigms change incrementally, if at all, one funeral at a time. Our institutions have become the drug of choice for addicts. We have replaced…

Life is not a performance

Life is an ecological process. This is the case for all living organisms. In a healthy habitat, organisms experience life as being part of an ecology of care. This is the case irrespective of the scale of the organism. Ecologies of care An ecology of care is a local mutual aid network that transcends many…

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 When people are asleep, their spirits wander off; when they are awake, their bodies are like an open door, so that everything they touch becomes an entanglement. Day after day they use their minds to stir up trouble; they become boastful, sneaky, secretive. They are consumed with anxiety over…

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 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

UPDATE 2024: We are currently co-creating a comprehensive support model for Autists and otherwise neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised people that is grounded in our collective lived experience, informed by what we are learning from the results of our ongoing participatory research.  For an autistic person the pathway towards good company is distinctly different from the life trajectory mapped…

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