Gaia loves making senses » NeuroClastic


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Core concepts inside Buddhist and Daoist religious traditions are reflective of the commonalities discovered throughout many human scale indigenous cultures. A compassionate body of affection as susceptible mutual understanding is appropriate with a panpsychic relational philosophy. Everybody needs their expertise to be taken critically. We’re embodied spirits, compelled to make sense of this world, and we are able to solely accomplish that in good firm.

Life

Life creates circumstances conducive to life – Janine Benyus

This straightforward definition or statement strongly hints at the truth that dynamic means of life consists of suggestions loops.

Life is solely solely relational, it’s sacred, cyclical, fleeting, compostible, nested, regenerative, and it endlessly stays mysterious for all individuals.

Spirits

Any high-dimensional area that gives an inexpensive description of Gaia, i.e. all of life, together with the potential of homo ecologus, is finest conceptualised solely relationally, from the very backside layers of physics upwards.

Life consists solely of relationships, that are suggestions/studying loops, and these in flip, in mixture, represent the constructing blocks of what in our human animal scale notion is skilled as consciousness. There is no such thing as a scarcity of people that conceptualise life this manner. This turns into very apparent when finding out Jap religious and philosophical texts. 

As people, with our human limitations, we are going to by no means have the ability to scientifically “show” to any quantifiable degree of certainty that consciousness emerges on this method, however science can even by no means be able to disproving that consciousness emerges and exists on this method. This by no means implies that science is ineffective, it merely highlights the boundaries of science, that are a part of the boundaries of human comprehensibility. In the identical method, within the summary symbolic universe of arithmetic there are statements can’t ever be confirmed to be true or false, and we’re not even outfitted to establish all such statements.

On the spatial and temporal scales which might be related for organic and ecological methods, the smallest suggestions loops emerge between molecules, ensuing the thoughts boggling complexity present in cell biology and the molecular genetic code. These suggestions loops scale as much as the most important suggestions loops between bioregional terrestrial and marine ecosystems inside Gaia. The broadly well-liked anthropocentric conceptions of “consciousness” at finest generalise to animals with brains, however exclude all different suggestions loops in dwelling methods from contributing to the lived experiences of consciousness at a lot smaller and far bigger spatial and temporal scales.

Powered-up (optimistic) suggestions loops are these suggestions loops wherein, over time, extra info (whether or not molecules or in a extra summary code) piles up in some dwelling cells or beings than in others. Such powered-up feedbacks are at all times non permanent phenomena relative to the life spans of the dwelling cells or beings concerned. 

The our bodies of human animals develop to a sure scale, after which they keep intact for a human lifetime. Throughout the lifetime of a human animal all of the molecular suggestions loops inside the human physique (between cells, between organs, and so on.) are maintained in a de-powered (balanced) state, fed by exterior power from dwelling meals, leading to “waste” that consists of constructing blocks which might be able to be reassembled into new life by thermonuclear power of the solar.

Equally, social suggestions loops between human animals develop into relationships, and wholesome relationships then keep intact for a human lifetime. All through life, all of the suggestions loops inside a wholesome relationship are maintained in a de-powered state, fed by shared lived experiences and shared understanding, leading to cultural output that consists of constructing blocks which might be able to be absorbed by the native ecology of care, and built-in into new relationships inside the native ecology of care.

Panpsychism

A universe conceptualised solely when it comes to dynamic suggestions/studying loops results in a panpsychic philosophy wherein consciousness is omnipresent, in any respect ranges of scale, which is appropriate with Jap religious traditions corresponding to Buddhism and Daoism. It invitations us to contemplate non-anthropocentric viewpoints, it alerts us to the cultural bias that’s inherent in fashionable industrialised notions of “intelligence” and “success”, and it attracts consideration to the decrease and higher limits of human scale, together with our cognitive limitations and emotional limitations.

Non secular traditions

Buddhism often known as Buddha Dharma, is an Indian faith[a] and philosophical custom primarily based on teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering trainer who lived within the sixth or fifth century BCE.[7] It’s the world’s fourth-largest faith,[8][9] with over 520 million followers, generally known as Buddhists, who comprise seven % of the worldwide inhabitants.[10][11] It arose within the japanese Gangetic plain as a śramaṇa motion within the fifth century BCE, and progressively unfold all through a lot of Asia. Buddhism has subsequently performed a serious function in Asian tradition and spirituality, finally spreading to the West within the twentieth century.[12]

Based on custom, the Buddha instructed his followers in a path of growth which results in awakening and full liberation from dukkha (lit. ’struggling or unease’[note 1]). He regarded this path as a Center Method between extremes corresponding to asceticism or sensual indulgence.[17][18]

Buddhism concentrate on minimising struggling and unease corresponds on to the sturdy lively want of hypersensitive neurodivergent folks to minimise cognitive dissonance. It additionally hints on the social issues that come up when a tradition has normalised and even insists on sustaining excessive ranges of cognitive dissonance over prolonged durations.

Taoism or Daoism is a various philosophical and spiritual custom indigenous to China, emphasizing concord with the Tao 道 (pinyin: dào; Wade–Giles: tao4). With a spread of that means in Chinese language philosophy, translations of Tao embody ‘method’, ‘highway’, ‘path’, or ‘method’, usually understood within the Taoist sense as an enigmatic means of transformation finally underlying actuality.[1][2] Taoist thought has knowledgeable the event of varied practices inside the Taoist custom and past, together with types of meditation, astrology, qigong, feng shui, and inside alchemy. A standard purpose of Taoist apply is self-cultivation, a deeper appreciation of the Tao, and extra harmonious existence.

Taoist ethics range, however usually emphasize such virtues as easy motion, naturalness, simplicity, and the three treasures of compassion, frugality, and humility.

Daoist virtues and treasures align with the sensitivity profiles of many neurodivergent folks and represent a timeless critique of all anthropocentric empire constructing makes an attempt going all the best way again to the early Warring States interval (c. 450 – c. 300 BCE), together with a name for disengaging from and subverting such makes an attempt.

Taken collectively, the core concepts inside Buddhist and Daoist religious traditions are reflective of the commonalities discovered throughout many human scale indigenous cultures, together with the virtues and working ideas present in egalitarian hunter gatherer societies. Foundational Daoist texts corresponding to Zhuangzi additionally emphasise the necessary function of humour in subverting and weakening anthropocentric empire constructing makes an attempt.

Love

All my work is rooted in caring deeply for the Earth, loving her deeply, and subsequently by no means letting hurt come to her… So i made a decision to inform the story of of my love for the Earth, which is staying alive, my love for all times, my deep ardour for all times, as a result of a part of what has been exiled is life itself… I spotted that what connects life to is love. The microorganism is giving like to the plant, the bee is giving like to the flower… The world in actuality is a fantastically interconnected world, and it’s interconnected by way of many many layers. It’s interconnected by way of consciousness, which is why we’re religious beings in human type. However the vegetation exterior my window are religious beings in plant type. However the plant of the lychee is in lychee type, and the tree of the mango is in mango type. They’re simply totally different expressions of 1 religious interconnected consciousness on the earth.

– Vandana Shiva

The extent to which we’re alive emerges from the merchandise of mutual belief, commitments, and shared understanding and experiences in all {our relationships}.

By advantage of their scale and design, so-called “relationships” with summary super-human scale anthropocentric establishments are devoid of real shared understanding and experiences. The extra a tradition forces folks to belief and “spend money on” such “relationships”, the much less capability we now have for real relationships with dwelling beings, the much less our lives are formed by mutual belief, and the much less alive we’re.

As soon as we perceive these dynamics, and consciously reorient our lives in direction of human scale, the prospect of “collapse” of establishments may be understood from a sober perspective – because the expiry of a social license that was inherently invalid all alongside. There may be a lot for us to study from indigenous societies that haven’t but been totally crushed by the lie of homo economicus. This jogs my memory of Eduardo Kohn’s necessary e book on anthropology past the human. Right here is an efficient introduction:

We will perceive relationships as steady multi-modal de-powered dialogues inside ecologies of care, together with the ensuing entanglements of our internal worlds.

A number of days in the past I listened to Richard Watson’s reframing of evolution, similar to what I confer with as collaborative area of interest building and the compassionate framing of aware evolutionary design

It’s refreshing to listen to extra voices arguing for reframing evolution in collaborative phrases. This has turn into uncommon within the fashionable world, regardless that Kropotkin wrote about it fairly eloquently over 100 years in the past.

The compassionate body of affection as susceptible mutual understanding is appropriate with a panpsychic relational philosophy of the universe primarily based on suggestions/studying loops and the life affirmative language of ecologies of care.

Sensitivity profiles

All people have distinctive sensitivity profiles which might be formed by our neurological baseline tendencies in addition to all our lived experiences within the particular ecological contexts we now have been embedded in. That is very true for hypersensitive neurodivergent folks, lots of whom have skilled and been sensitised by traumatic experiences in a social world wherein they’re systematically marginalised, pathologised, and generally criminalised.

Our individually distinctive nervous methods and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults usually or at all times really feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% usually or at all times really feel disrespected and unsafe. Our total sense of wellbeing is set by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we’re embedded in (or not).

The official diagnostic standards for “autism” are deeply entangled with signs of complicated trauma. Those that establish as Autistic and plenty of different neurodivergent folks clearly have unusual baseline sensitivity profiles from delivery, however then traumatic lived experiences within the fashionable hypernormative industrialised world pile on high. Ultimately it’s unattainable to say the place “autism” stops and the place “trauma responses” start.

The conclusion is that each human is a singular repository of lived experiences. The paradigm of the fashionable medical mannequin that’s targeted on diagnosing and treating people is limiting in some ways, and until these limits are totally acknowledged, it can lead to important hurt, particularly amongst those that are intersectionally marginalised.

Everybody needs their expertise to be taken critically. Simplistic and pathologising diagnostic labels and therapies centred on decontextualised people won’t ever be as much as the job. Our distinctive sensitivity profiles, which embody our whole nervous methods, by no means restricted to our brains, form our distinctive method of sensing and making sense of the world.

Those that have been actively concerned within the neurodiversity and incapacity actions for quite a lot of years, particularly neurodiversity activists who’re dedicated in direction of real paradigmatic change, are advocating for intersectional solidarity past labels, and are taking concern with the cookie cutter classes discovered within the DSM that gloss over the distinctiveness of each lived expertise.

I relate to the next dialog with Minna Salami on a number of ranges, particularly given her transcultural context that spans Nigeria, Germany, Sweden, and different cultural environments.

Powered-up relationships (persistent unbalanced suggestions loops) between people generate cognitive dissonance, which is skilled as a dis-ease that calls for to be resolved. There may be ample proof that ignoring or suppressing cognitive dissonance for prolonged durations leads to psychological, religious, and bodily ailments.

I’ve been testing this concept of cognitive dissonance for quite a lot of years. It explains my very own experiences, and it appears able to explaining the experiences of many others I’ve shared the idea with. Curiously, the idea properly suits along with the outcomes of Michael Tomasello’s experimental developmental psychological analysis, in addition to with Camilla Energy’s organic and cultural anthropological analysis.

These people who’re labelled “hypersensitive” appear to be those who’ve a aware consciousness of cognitive dissonance and are compelled to take/keep away from particular actions so as to cut back cognitive dissonance. These people who usually are not “hypersensitive” appear to be those who’re capable of tolerate cognitive dissonance over prolonged durations, and should not have the ability to join the sensation or supply of cognitive dissonance with their psychological, religious, and bodily ailments. 

Hypersensitivities and the distinctiveness of sensitivity profiles hints at variations within the ranges of aware lived expertise of particular occasions, and it leads in direction of a concept of appropriate vs. incompatible sensitivity profiles.

The psychological bell curves related to the Satan’s Sadistic Guide (DSM) successfully outline the bandwidth of “culturally acceptable” human sensitivity profiles, and so they low cost and pathologise “culturally unacceptable” human sensitivity profiles.

Tradition co-evolution

All main evolutionary milestones within the historical past of Gaia have co-evolutionary traits, together with classes from the the emergence and co-evolution of organic cells and the next co-evolution of multi-celled organisms. 

The empirical information we now have about cell biology teaches us loads concerning the complementary roles of summary image methods and semantics in co-evolutionary processes, it teaches us that evolutionary processes are inherently co-evolutionary, i.e. ecological processes relatively than species-specific organic processes.

The semi-permeable membranes of cells present a mannequin for co-evolutionary processes between a number of dwelling organisms that has been empirically “highway examined” for billions of years by Gaia.

With the formal foundations of class concept, mannequin concept, and denotational semantics, we’re outfitted to exactly articulate the interdependencies between summary image methods and semantics, together with the co-evolutionary processes that act on image methods and semantics.

Co-evolutionary processes between a number of cultural organisms are steeped in a paradigm of aware collaborative area of interest building relatively than in senseless and intensely power intensive and wasteful head-to-head competitors.

Tradition co-evolution at human scales entails the next:

  1. The emergence of cultural practices between two often interacting human animals. Balanced relationships and de-powered dialogues are finest understood and visualised as a suggestions loop that leads to a convergence and entanglement of our inside psychological fashions and better ranges of shared understanding and compassion.
  2. Inside a human household or family that features n human animals there are as much as 1/2 n * (n – 1) relationships between human animals the co-evolution of relationships provides rise to extra cultural practices. 
  3. Empirically we all know that wholesome human cultural organisms include a number of households or households that collaborate and dwell collectively on every day or weekly foundation to type a coherent financial useful resource sharing unit, i.e. a human scale cultural organism. Inside a human scale cultural organism that features m households there are as much as 1/2 m * (m – 1) relationships between households that co-evolve and provides rise to extra cultural practices.
  4. Relationships between households include relationships between particular folks. So on the degree of a human scale cultural organism of l human animals and m households there are a complete of 1/2 l * (l – 1) relationships between human animals that co-evolve, plus 1/2 m * (m – 1) relationships between households that co-evolve.
  5. Moreover, empirically we all know that human cultural organisms preserve collaborative relationships with quite a lot of different human cultural organisms, which in flip include relationships between particular folks, ensuing within the co-evolution of interacting cultural organisms.

This offers us with a human scale framework to assume and cause about cultural evolution with a completely collaborative body of omni-directional studying.

From inside a co-evolutionary body it turns into apparent that every one head-to-head competitions are finest understood as short-term and power losing distractions which might be finest clamped down on as quickly as they turn into detectable inside a household, inside a cultural organism, or between cultural organisms.

These are the cultural foundations which might be high of thoughts in egalitarian hunter gatherer societies, and the ensuing cultural practices are the product of 300,000 years of tradition co-evolution. This tells us the whole lot we have to know concerning the priorities of values in wholesome life affirming cultures, and it explains the constantly rising recognition of the Open House method to omni-directional studying launched by Harrison Owen within the Nineteen Eighties.

Hunter gathers and the work of teachers like Eduardo Kohn increase the above co-evolutionary body to relationships past the human. The collaborative body past the human can be clearly seen within the observations and writings of Pëtr Kropotkin from 1902.

The cognitive and emotional limits of human scale turn into seen and apparent within the non-trivial challenges of stopping and de-escalating head-to-head competitions and conflicts between cultural organisms. Nevertheless, there are well-documented examples of egalitarian societies which have apparently been profitable at minimising head-to-head competitions and conflicts between cultural organisms over a whole bunch and 1000’s of years. We’d do effectively to study from such cultures, after which to use what we study to the design of digital communication, collaboration, and design instruments for the subsequent 200 years and past. The variety of initiatives heading on this normal path has been slowly however steadily rising over the course of the final 20 years. The work of Brett Victor is one other instance of an initiative that has been going for 10+ years.

Past human scale, we are able to loosen up and think about Gaia’s knowledge. That is very a lot consistent with the spirit of Open House. The place invited, we are able to present palliative care to the dying super-human scale establishments, together with related training in direction of protected and viable exit paths for the inmates.

The human spirit inside Gaia

People advanced to make sense of the world at human scales:

  1. The human nervous system is a way making organ that advanced to combine at human scale right into a human scale cultural organism, inside which tradition operates primarily as an power saving device. 
  2. Human cultural organisms save power by partaking in collaborative area of interest building with a aware main concentrate on group wellbeing, and this has allowed people to colonise and adapt to almost all terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. 
  3. Collaborative area of interest building usually even extends to relationships between native human cultural organisms, but it surely doesn’t scale past the cognitive and emotional limitations of human scale. Due to this fact conflicts simply emerge when the native group dimension or the native density of teams exceeds these limits. Sustaining egalitarian collaborative relationships between human scale teams is stretching the boundaries of the human capacities for language and tradition.

As a part of an Open Supply human scale heritage for future generations of people, it’s exactly within the context of collaborative area of interest building that clear and appropriately designed digital technological guardrails across the human capacities for language and tradition might turn into the instruments that reach the reliability of human collaborative area of interest building to bigger scales, with out centralising any resolution making powers within the arms of strongmen.

It’s time to change the ten,000 yr outdated misguided religion in energy drunk strongmen by a scientifically enlightened religion in 4+ billion years of Gaia’s advanced knowledge.

Radical egalitarianism is the structure of the adaptive intelligence of the human species. This structure differs considerably from the nervous methods of different primates, as a result of different primates would not have comparable capacities for language and tradition.

  1. The primate nervous system is a way making organ that advanced to combine into small versatile aggressive alliances inside the context of a social dominance hierarchy, inside which tradition operates primarily as a social energy amplifier inside conflicts. 
  2. Primate alliances amplify social energy to weaken the place of social energy on the high of the hierarchy, that is the paradigm of “collaborate solely to compete”, which introduces a component of opportunistic cooperation that’s solely simply enough for sustaining total group coherence.
  3. Primates don’t consciously belief the collective intelligence of the group, and the first focus of their psychological colleges is the navigation of aggressive social dynamics inside a “collaborate solely to compete” paradigm. This limitation, compounded by their lack of symbolic language, prevents them from creating a collective primate group scale repository of cultural knowledge and collective understanding of the native bioregional ecosystem that persists, is transmitted reliably, and evolves over the course of many generations.

If we consider human nervous methods as outlined above, it turns into apparent that:

  1. The course of evolution of the human capacities for language and tradition has optimised for steady collaborative area of interest building primarily based on secure relationships inside human cultural organisms.
  2. Human gene-culture co-evolution could have favoured the size of variability and variety that we observe between particular person people right now. Human neurodiversity is finest studied and understood at human scale.
  3. It solely is sensible to discover adaptive ranges of human range vs maladaptive ranges of human range or uniformity by evaluating human scale cultural organisms.

It’s absurd to try to outline “regular” or “adaptiveness” on the degree of particular person people. 

These observations give us a framework for positioning and reasoning about internalised ableism. WEIRD societies have turn into indifferent from the evolutionary roots of our capability for tradition. We’re surrounded by Man Debord’s Spectacle. Not solely is hardly something ever is what it appears to be, from an atomised individualistic place, surrounded by self-interested homo economicus, we are able to solely anchor ourselves within the non-human organic world, and we now have to deal with all human cultural building with suspicion.

It is a world the place, within the absence of belief primarily based human scale ecologies of care, institutionalised BS within the type of companies led by strongmen is the one accessible anchor level for the social world, particularly given that almost all digital technique of communication have been seized by companies.

In the cultural metamorphosis that’s in progress, Gaia is the one true authority. Yearly she speaks with better authority to all of us.

Changing into conscious of cultural bias

To turn into consciously conscious of cultural bias throughout all human endeavours, it helps to consider as academia as consisting of two subsystems which might be linked through a studying / suggestions loop, roughly as follows:  

Human cultural output as a part of Gaia

  1. the humanities
  2. arithmetic
  3. statistics and engineering

Human makes an attempt at understanding Gaia

  1. world research and political science
  2. the earth sciences
  3. physics
  4. chemistry
  5. ecology
  6. all of biology minus WEIRD bias in evolutionary biology
  7. the medical sciences minus WEIRD psychiatry
  8. the social sciences minus WEIRD psychology

With these distinctions in thoughts we are able to critically study our understanding of Gaia when it comes to the humanities, the mathematical disciplines, and the statistics and engineering which might be framing our scientific investigations. We will turn into specific about all of the cultural assumptions that underpin the sciences. Arithmetic stands out because the one self-discipline that’s religiously targeted on making all assumptions specific.

Distinguishing human cultural outputs from empirical scientific human makes an attempt of understanding Gaia brings internalised ableism into the focus of a vital lens, linking it to the fashionable human predicament, and exposing the damaging ranges of pseudoscience at the hours of darkness triad of “scientific” disciplines hinted at within the dialog “Synthetic Intelligence, Darkish Patterns, and the Digital Economic system”  with Stuart Mills:

  1. WEIRD economics (economics & enterprise administration)
  2. the psychologically “regular(ised)” WEIRD human (psychiatry & psychology)
  3. digital automation of WEIRD behaviour (pc science & information science)

The questionable social license of this triad of WEIRD disciplines primarily tends to be constructed by referencing outcomes from the opposite two parts of the triad, and manifests in a language that normalises violence.

The cultural problem in engineering is an lively disinterest in making all assumptions specific, and as an alternative, as wanted, counting on WEIRDly handy assumptions baked into the darkish triad of “scientific” disciplines to advance the arrow of “progress”. That is mirrored in the “shut up and calculate” perspective to unknowns and the obtrusive absence of any smart scale conscious precautionary precept.

A maybe much less apparent dimension of fully “regular” internalised ableism manifests within the age bracket wherein homo economicus is taken into account to be “productive” or “helpful”, i.e. employable and exploitable for revenue, roughly the interval between the ages of 20 and 65. Everybody exterior this age bracket is by default thought-about to be an financial burden in fashionable society, together with the “prices” of teaching the underneath 20s and taking good care of the over 65s.

The faith of economics has legitimised an obsession with maximising the quantifiable financial “utility” that may be extracted from a human life. How else might anybody ever provide you with the absurd notion of “web price”?

Inside the body of maximising financial utility, in-depth intergenerational dialogues past these which might be a part of the indoctrination system are undesirable. Homo economicus thrives in environments of stratified age cohorts (generations X, Y, Z, …)  which might be competing towards one another, thereby decreasing precious bidirectional intergenerational studying, and creating alternatives for advertising and marketing and promoting age cohort particular industrial providers and merchandise.

Reviving belief in humanity

Nothing within the atomised fashionable social world is sensible anymore, as a result of human scale cultural organisms, together with understanding of the life sustaining and adaptive significance of such organisms have been eroded from dwelling reminiscence. The human spirit has been damaged, i.e. religion in humanity and religion in Gaia has been shaken to the core.

All of the dynamics that characterise a breakdown of trustworthy communication in good religion, or an absence of expertise with de-powerd dialogue / non-violent communication manifest in pretty apparent signs:

  1. Utilizing persuasive strategies to encourage one other to undertake an opinion (ABA and the whole behaviourist bag of methods) – relatively than listening and interesting in deeper compassionate dialogue to know the opposite.
  2. Casting doubt on observations and assessments of one other, in domains or contexts wherein the opposite is extra intimately accustomed to the context – relatively than listening and respecting the contextually knowledgeable observations of the opposite.
  3. Ignoring questions that specific a want from one other to know motivations and expressed emotions – relatively than overtly sharing motivations and emotions.
  4. There are probably additional signs …

The aggressive body of homo economicus totally normalises the compulsion of being seen as “impartial and powerful”. Fears of exposing vulnerabilities pave the trail for a tradition of ubiquitous distrust and psychological well being issues. That is the cult(ure) of internalised ableism.

This state of affairs leaves fashionable people in a desolate, remoted place from which extending deep belief to different people has turn into seemingly unattainable for a lot of. Amongst different issues, we see this mirrored within the AutCollab Analysis information, which clearly exhibits how a lot Autistic and in any other case neurodivergent folks would love to assist others, together with strangers in want, however on the identical time many are [very] afraid to dare ask for assist.

The deep indoctrination within the delusion of homo economicus has additionally made fashionable people distrustful of themselves. The overwhelming majority of makes an attempt that folks undertake to turn into “profitable” inside the dominant cultural body leaves folks to conclude deep down that “there have to be one thing unsuitable with me” and certain “I didn’t strive arduous sufficient”

The result’s an epidemic of self hate and disgrace. 

The results of self hate are amplified by the social requirements and pathologising labels documented within the Satan’s Sadistic Guide (the DSM). David Mackler focuses on self hate inflicted by mother and father on kids, however there are various different avenues inside the poisonous social system that lead in direction of self hate.

To make issues worse, on the few events the place folks “succeed inside the system”, they have to discover a method of rationalising and justifying their “success”. This entails suppressing any unfavourable emotions they might have developed on the trail in direction of success, which in lots of instances concerned moral corner-cutting and grandiose notion administration so as to “win” the culturally prescribed aggressive social recreation. In different phrases, turning into profitable often includes suppression of our innate human compassion for others and in some instances knowingly inflicting hurt on others so as to “win”. 

The result’s an epidemic of deeply suppressed guilt hidden beneath outwardly narcissistic behaviours so as to survive in a poisonous life denying society.

Yet one more perverse impact of the predicament of internalised ableism is seen in a few of the WEIRD therapies devised to deal with the pathologies listed within the DSM, which principally train therapists strategies for:

  1. Making folks really feel higher about themselves by figuring out different individuals who have harmed them, which inevitably includes some attribution of blame, and thereby to some extent it distracts from clearly seeing the systemic patterns of intergenerational trauma which might be at work.
  2. Encouraging folks to imagine that engaged on “themselves” will finally enable them to turn into “profitable”, and thereby pushing folks again into the surroundings that’s dominated by the poisonous guidelines for “success”.

These poisonous patterns won’t ever seize to be perpetuated till the ideology of homo economicus is discarded. Rising numbers of WEIRD therapists are leaving their “professions” or are searching for to go away their “occupation”. Through the years I’ve provided peer assist to fairly quite a lot of therapists and recovering therapists. I deeply really feel their ache.

Everybody within the WEIRD world is to some extent entrapped by the system. Even those that are (re)studying native human powered subsistence degree methods of communal dwelling and surviving, minimising their consumption, usually depend on some degree of economic “investments” to maintain themselves, and thereby find yourself with one foot or at the very least a number of toes within the poisonous system, contributing to its continuation.

A more healthy method to consider our remaining entanglement with homo economicus is to know it as a type of palliative take care of dying establishments, by incrementally equipping the inmates with viable exit paths. We will encourage the dying means of establishments as they’re incrementally deserted and turn into solely out of date.

2025 is the UN Worldwide 12 months of Cooperatives. Cooperatives Construct a Higher World, showcasing the enduring world influence cooperatives have in all places. This theme places a highlight on how the cooperative mannequin is an important resolution to beat many world challenges.

Buddhist and Daoist values and virtues can present overarching steerage alongside the best way:

  1. Minimise the human and non-human struggling on the downwards slope of homo economicus, and 
  2. Maximise pleasure as a part of the metamorphisis of human scale cultural organisms within the cultural compost heap.

An apparent method of minimising human struggling is to share the framing and reasoning outlined above with rising human scale ecologies of care:

  1. to equip folks to be extra light with themselves
  2. to reassure them that you already know that they’re doing the perfect they will inside the bounds of their human cognitive and emotional limits, 
  3. and to remind them that everybody can contribute to the metamorphosis by letting go of internalised ableism, by appreciating and actively supporting the work of those that are the brokers inside the metamorphosis, and by counting on non-violent resistance as wanted to stop avoidable hurt and to assist the dying means of the system.

Our nervous methods are deeply linked at human scale. We’re embodied spirits, the whole lot is linked. Interfaces restrict our humanity. We advanced to be totally current with one another, with out interfaces.

A variety of what I’ve been writing about over the course of the final two years may be understood as an try of making the insights of neurodivergent folks like DJ White with distinctive life paths extra accessible to a considerably broader viewers, i.e. the viewers of all those that are a part of one of many hundreds of thousands of emergent human scale cultural organisms which might be rising within the cultural compost heap. Past alignment with DJ White’s recommendation on committing to a sacred mission at human scale, I relate to his issues for the oceans.

My re-examination of social methods transcends outdated classes. It makes use of a brand new technique of study (the research of relational dynamics) that pulls from a bigger information base than typical research. It seems to be at a a lot bigger, holistic image that features the entire of humanity, each its feminine and male halves; the entire of our lives, not solely politics and economics however the place all of us dwell, in our household and different intimate relations; and the entire of our historical past, together with the 1000’s of years we name prehistory.

Taking a look at this extra full image makes it doable to see interactive relationships or configurations that aren’t seen in any other case. There have been no names for these social configurations, so I referred to as one the domination system and the opposite the partnership system.

As soon as we perceive these configurations, it turns into clear that the actual wrestle for our future just isn’t spiritual vs. secular, East vs. West, South vs. North, proper vs. left, and so on. If you concentrate on it, societies in all these classes had been, and are, repressive, violent, and unjust.

The true wrestle is inside societies in each one among these classes, between individuals who wish to transfer to a extra caring and equitable world and people who nonetheless imagine insensitivity, cruelty, and destructiveness – and all of the distress they result in – are “simply human nature” – the inevitable results of authentic sin or egocentric genes.

We’re all accustomed to relations of domination and submission from our personal lives. We all know the ache, worry, and rigidity of relations primarily based on coercion and lodging, of jockeying for management, of attempting to govern and cajole after we are unable to precise our actual emotions and desires, of the tug of warfare for that illusory second of energy relatively than powerlessness, of our unfulfilled craving for caring and mutuality, of all of the distress, struggling, and misplaced lives and potentials that come from these sorts of relations.

Most of us have additionally, at the very least intermittently, skilled one other method of being, one the place we really feel protected and seen for who we actually are, the place our important humanity and that of others shines by way of, maybe just for a short while, lifting our hearts and spirits, enfolding us in a way that the world can in any case be proper, that we’re valued and precious.

Our human craving for caring connections, for peace relatively than warfare, for equality relatively than inequality, for freedom relatively than oppression, may be seen as a part of our genetic gear. The diploma to which this craving may be realized just isn’t a matter of adjusting our genes, however of constructing partnership social buildings and beliefs.

Within the domination system, any person needs to be on high and any person needs to be on the underside. Individuals study, beginning in early childhood, to obey orders with out query. They study to hold a harsh voice of their heads telling them they’re no good, they don’t deserve love, they should be punished. Households and societies are primarily based on management that’s explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, worry, and drive. The world is split into in-groups and out-groups, with those that are totally different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.

In distinction, the partnership system helps mutually respectful and caring relations. As a result of there isn’t any want to take care of inflexible rankings of management, there’s additionally no built-in want for abuse and violence. Partnership relations free our innate capability to really feel pleasure, to play. They permit us to develop mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That is true for people, households, and complete societies.

From Partnership 101, Riane Eisler, 2021

Making sense of the world

We’re all compelled to make sense of this world, and we are able to solely accomplish that in good firm at human scales. We advanced to expertise cognitive dissonance as discomfort and to attempt in direction of eliminating it at human scale.

It’s only when trying on the time scale of human evolutionary historical past that we are able to recognise powered-up civilisations as a cultural illness as an alternative of complicated them with a misguided “arrow of progress”, and within the course of tricking ourselves into believing that “progress” may be the results of homo economicus and instruments designed within the picture of homo economicus, amplifying the worst doable human impulses.

The time period “intelligence” has been shoehorned into a really WEIRD anthropocentric notion of “success” or “progress” that’s designed to compel people to “dwell as much as” the doctrine of the cult leaders of homo economicus. When “intelligence” (synthetic or in any other case) has been diminished to something that helps us justify and preserve our addictions within the face of rising ranges of cognitive dissonance, can we sink any decrease?

It’s terribly simple to design instruments that surpass human capabilities. We have now been doing this for a number of hundred thousand years. It appears this has been forgotten. We’re “nice” device makers, and at all times have been. Nice in quotes, as a result of our cognitive and maybe even extra so our emotional limitations can get in the best way of us understanding the complete ecological implications of deploying our powered-up instruments.

Superior instruments within the arms of energy addicts have at all times been a foul concept. Because the saying goes, “a idiot with a device remains to be a idiot.” We have now have made the error of worshipping the human functionality for superior recursive device design as “intelligence”. The result’s a human social world devoid of knowledge and rising ranges of cognitive dissonance.

Knowledge is the capability to know the distinction between the human functionality for superior recursive device design and human ecological understanding.

Gaia is asking for a aware paradigmatic shift within the design of our instruments away from the life denying faith of homo economicus in direction of a life affirming faith of homo ecologus. In the identical method that badly designed digital instruments can amplify the worst human impulses, effectively designed digital instruments maintain the potential to amplify the noblest of human impulses on our 200+ years journey of coming down from the carbon pulse.

Fellow Autist DJ White urges us to at the very least attempt to gently land the airliner of industrialised civilisation in a suitably flat corn subject as an alternative of hoping for some miracle to refill the gas tanks whereas persevering with at full throttle.

Be a part of us!

Autistic, Genuine, and Autonomous ecologies of care past the human develop organically, at human scale, at a human tempo, one trusted relationship at a time. Be a part of us!

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