Within the Western Educated Industrialised Wealthy Democratic (WEIRD) world we dwell in what thinker Man Debord tried to explain as The Society of the Spectacle. The fact introduced to us through the media and public social media has been engineered to suit the exacting requirements of Homo Economicus®. All of the individuals alive immediately in Westernised international locations, i.e. all of the individuals in WEIRD international locations and within the international locations aspiring to WEIRD requirements, have been born into The WEIRD Spectacle of internalised ableism.
Internalised ableism
The much less WEIRD a rustic, the decrease the constancy of The Spectacle, and the extra there may be nonetheless some room for all times past The Spectacle. I’ve lived all my life in The Spectacle, within the ruins of the WEIRD empire. I additionally name it the WEIRDT empire: Western Educated Industrialised Wealthy Democratic Theatre. All the things in this theatre is about notion – there may be little or no substance or connection to the biophysical and ecological context outdoors the theatre.
The establishments of the WEIRDT empire faux that every one elements of life will be categorised and understood by way of normality – by the hump of the bell curve.
However the residing planet doesn’t conform to anthropocentric normality, it’s chaotic, it’s fantastically and awesomely various. Like many neurodivergent individuals, I’m extremely sensitised to the language individuals use, particularly to the semantic chance area that’s created and bounded by way of particular phrases and by the acutely aware avoidance of different phrases. In WEIRD politics the language of financial development and warfare dominates. Development economics is a euphemism for neocolonialism, genocide, and ecocide. Solely 100 years in the past, barely anybody was writing concerning the “want” for “financial development”.
Essentially the most lethal wars immediately are financial wars. Social inequalities, particularly unequal entry to top quality healthcare and lack of entry to wholesome methods of life lead to an increase in power illnesses, a several-fold improve within the dangers of worldwide pandemics, and within the untimely loss of life of tens of millions.
My Autistic thoughts compels me to cut back cognitive dissonance. If I go away cognitive dissonance to fester, it promptly generates migraines or different signs of bodily illness. By way of my work, often within the transdisciplinary context of small teams of individuals with complementary area particular experience, I’ve discovered to ask clarifying questions and to ask for examples, and 0 in on potential misunderstandings and ambiguities. This co-creates bridges of shared understanding throughout self-discipline and area boundaries, that are important for anybody who makes an attempt to do something that (re)connects us to Gaia, i.e. to the sacred residing world past The WEIRD Spectacle.
I used to be lucky to have been uncovered to the foundations of logic, i.e. the foundations of philosophy, after which studied mathematical considering instruments for 4 years earlier than turning into uncovered to the industrial world of The Spectacle.
Indoctrination
By the point I used to be born, the anthropocentric WEIRD Spectacle manifested by way of neocolonialism. It’s fascinating to look again and mirror on how efficient the indoctrination is. I grew up as a WEIRD alien, immersed in much less WEIRD cultures throughout the ruins of the British Empire. This left cracks in my WEIRD indoctrination, and later it helped me to place my training to good use by way of vital considering instruments and habits.
George Orwell had a considerably comparable background to mine in an earlier time. The above biographical clip is worth it listening to – ignore the embedded cringe-inducing industrial promotion. The conclusion is instantly related to our instances.
As soon as we recognize that even our “educated” Western scientific worldview is just not free from ideological bias, we will develop a greater conceptual mannequin of how particular person and collective human perception programs and associated our bodies of information evolve. It’s useful to tell apart the next classes of beliefs and associated information:
- Beliefs primarily based on scientific theories backed by empirical proof that we’re intimately acquainted with. Such beliefs could also be affected by paradigmatic bias and the standard or bias inherent within the supporting proof. We have to be cognisant of corresponding blind spots in our understanding of the world when making use of such beliefs in our reasoning. Solely a small minority of our beliefs fall into this class.
- Beliefs primarily based on scientific theories backed by empirical proof that we aren’t intimately acquainted with. Such beliefs could also be affected by paradigmatic bias and the standard or bias inherent within the supporting proof. We do not know of the potential blind spots in our understanding of the world when making use of such beliefs in our reasoning. Within the few circumstances the place the theories have been developed by trusted mates and colleagues inside our private competency community, we will resolve to depend on their understanding of the boundaries of applicability and potential blind spots. If we’re “educated”, a sizeable minority of our beliefs fall into this class.
- Beliefs primarily based on private experiences and observations. We all know that no human can preserve greater than 150 relationships with different individuals, and that every one our assumptions concerning the lives and desires of people are primarily based on the very small set of folks that we relate to. For individuals who establish as autistic, a big variety of beliefs held fall into this class. By definition, we don’t perceive all of the folks that we “don’t relate to”. Thus, making any selections that probably have an effect on the lives of many hundred to a number of billion individuals with out express consent of all these probably affected (a day by day incidence in authorities establishments and companies), have to be thought-about the head of human ignorance.
- Beliefs that characterize express social agreements between particular individuals concerning communication and collaboration. Such sacred commitments will be verbal or in writing, and so they solely scale as much as the restricted numbers of relationships that we will preserve. As wanted we will collectively replace these commitments to mirror evolving wants or constraints within the wider ecology we’re embedded in. For individuals who establish as Autistic, a big variety of beliefs held fall into this class, particularly agreements with relations, mates, and colleagues. In hierarchically structured societies, agreements akin to legal guidelines issued by regional or nationwide authorities apply to massive teams of individuals, and by necessity have been developed with restricted enter from those that are affected. Such agreements invariably trigger untold hurt that for probably the most half stays invisible to the authorities. People didn’t evolve to dwell in hierarchically structured super-human scale societies. Pretending that we will preserve such buildings with out inflicting untold hurt is a type of anthropocentric hubris.
- Beliefs primarily based on what others have advised us and what we now have been inspired to consider by dad and mom, academics, and mates, … and politicians and advertisers, together with beliefs that we now have absorbed from our social surroundings subconsciously, i.e. beliefs for which we will’t recall the origin. For individuals who don’t establish as Autistic, the vast majority of beliefs held could fall into this class.
All classes of human beliefs are related to some degree of uncertainty concerning the validity and applicability to a selected context at hand. A perception within the universally aggressive nature of people clearly falls into the fifth class. When beliefs associated to neoliberal ideology are mirrored in legal guidelines (class 4. above), they’re internalised as cultural norms by massive elements of the inhabitants, and when the externalities of hyper-competitive revenue maximising behaviour hit with full power, Homo Economicus® has turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I used to be employed for 13 years earlier than I might now not bear to be a part of The Spectacle of the company world, which is an Orwellian world of social notion administration. The Spectacle is just not survivable for delicate neurodivergent people who find themselves unable to take care of “quasi limitless” ranges of cognitive dissonance on an ongoing foundation.
WEIRD indoctrination and enculturation in cruelty and violence goes very deep. I keep in mind being taught at dwelling and at school within the Nineteen Seventies that animals can’t have “ideas”, and that any emotions or consciousness they could have usually are not in any approach similar to human lived experiences. This was taught to us as “science” in biology courses. To high it off, in center college we discovered dissect useless frogs and we got dwell laboratory mice to conduct experiments with. It tells us one thing about so-called WEIRD “normality” that such experiences stay etched into our recollections, and that we will’t ever unsee or unlearn them.
Deep down we all know we’re a part of Gaia. Because of this we take pleasure in immersing ourselves within the pure world. Because of this we’re in a position to construct mutual belief with non-human animals, together with wild animals. Residing beings recognise one another as being a part of the sacred cycle of life. We all know that every residing being enjoys being alive and enjoys exploring the world. In fact as people we most deeply relate to animals which are roughly human scale – it’s at that scale that we will talk, and, if we take the time, construct real relationships throughout species, from domesticated animals to wild birds, octopuses, fish, and mammals of all types.
When animals eat different animals, it’s only to cowl their fundamental survival wants. People have the identical inhibitions. We developed to know intuitively that every one lives and all {our relationships} are sacred. The human capability for tradition and spoken language developed on high of this organic backdrop. That is one thing that to today is just not a part of the WEIRD indoctrination system – as a result of it clashes with the WEIRD neocolonial narrative of technological progress.
The WEIRD indoctrination system makes certain that every one youngsters are indoctrinated in Homo Economicus® from a really younger age, earlier than we be taught something substantial about Gaia and the residing world. That is presumably probably the most merciless, dehumanising, and life denying a part of WEIRD cultures.
The tablet of Homo Economicus® is sweetened by punishing youngsters with rewards for compliance. On this approach youngsters be taught to collaborate solely to compete.
“Pay for benefit, pay for what you get, reward efficiency. Sounds nice, can’t be carried out. Sadly it cannot be carried out, on quick vary. After 10 years maybe, 20 years, sure. The impact is devastating. Folks should have one thing to point out, one thing to depend. In different phrases, the benefit system nourishes short-term efficiency. It annihilates long-term planning. It annihilates teamwork. Folks cannot work collectively. To get promotion you’ve bought to get forward. By working with a group, you assist different individuals. You might assist your self equally, however you don’t get forward by being equal, you get forward by being forward. Produce one thing extra, have extra to point out, extra to depend. Teamwork means work collectively, hear all people’s concepts, fill in for different individuals’s weaknesses, acknowledge their strengths. Work collectively. That is not possible beneath the benefit score / assessment of efficiency system. Persons are afraid. They’re in worry. They work in worry. They cannot contribute to the corporate as they might want to contribute. This holds in any respect ranges. However there’s something worse than all of that. When the annual rankings are given out, individuals are bitter. They cannot perceive why they aren’t rated excessive. And there’s a good motive to not perceive. As a result of I might present you with a little bit of time that it’s purely a lottery.”
If we study Homo Economicus® earlier than we’re inspired to pay attention deeply to our instinct, and earlier than we study Gaia and collaborative ecological area of interest building inside and between species, then we’re primed to view another narrative that deviates from or that contradicts Homo Economicus® with suspicion. In the industrial digital world of Homo Economicus®, the place the very technique of communication have been seized by companies, and the place universities have turn into depending on company funding, it has turn into straightforward to sideline the rising physique of scientific proof that contradicts Homo Economicus®.
Since we’re immersed in data overload, proof akin to what we learn about the innate collaborative inclinations and sense of equity of human toddlers and concerning the pivotal position of extremely egalitarian societies within the evolution of the human capability for language and tradition doesn’t even have to be hidden. It’s utterly ample for algorithms and establishments to deprioritise such proof.
I’m studying that not solely have people lived in extremely egalitarian human scale bands for many of 300,000 years, but in addition that such bands maintained ongoing collaborative and dynamically evolving relationships with different bands throughout massive bioregions, routinely coming collectively for omni-directional studying. Amongst different issues such gatherings additionally allowed new teams to type. Apparently it was widespread for households or people to affix one other group. Essential to notice the absence of a hierarchical super-structure between teams, and the dynamism of ongoing relationships between teams.
All of this matches effectively with my very own expertise with egalitarian human scale employee coops, and with the curiosity from different small teams of neurodivergent and disabled individuals in adopting an analogous mannequin, together with ongoing collaboration between teams.
We nonetheless have entry to all our innate collaborative capabilities. If we care to take heed to our guts, hearts, and minds, we will (re)be taught every little thing we’d like for co-creating ecologies of care past the human.
The ripples of collaborative area of interest building and intersectional solidarity are spreading. Increasingly more small cosmo-local bands of marginalised individuals are coming collectively to catalyse intersectional solidarity.
Truly, the WEIRD empire is just not in management. Gaia has an ideal 10,000 yr monitor document of clamping down on anthropocentric empire constructing makes an attempt, making room for brand new types of life to emerge from the compost heap. She might be asking herself in some planetary language that’s past human comprehensibility: Can this species get better from cultural most cancers? Knowledge from local weather science and biodiversity analysis offers us a glimpse of Gaia’s language.
Wholesome human scale cultural growth
At the very least a number of the developmental patterns of cells and organs inside bugs appear to translate to the developmental levels and metamorphosis of wholesome human cultures. The world of insect metamorphosis is superb. The massive cycle of life inside Gaia is fractal, very comparable phenomena reoccur at very completely different scale and in numerous contexts. On this case patterns at degree of cells and organs inside a metamorphosing insect appear to reoccur on the degree of human scale cultural growth.
The extra I study this matter and weave it along with anthropological proof, and with experiences from employee coops of neurodivergent and in any other case disabled individuals, the extra I get the impression that Homo Economicus® pertains to a most cancers that has arrested the event of human cultural organisms on the larval stage, leading to a perpetual manufacturing of development hormones.
People must (re)discover ways to cease perpetuating hierarchically structured programs of social management, striving for infinite development like a most cancers. We additionally must (re)discover ways to reproduce and evolve peacefully, alongside the traces of what we all know concerning the ongoing lifetime collaborative relationships and a number of the superb battle decision methods practiced inside and between hunter gatherer bands.
The worldwide mono-cult is an empire that has the developmental maturity of a teenager. A person human that retains consuming like a teen will turn into morbidly overweight, develop power illnesses, and find yourself dying prematurely.
The Pentagon Wars is the favorite film of one in every of my former Autistic colleagues who spent a few years in massive authorities departments. This film, which is primarily based on a real story, is an effective illustration of the teenage stage of cultural growth in WEIRD societies. Given all of the lethal wars which are in progress and which have been stoked for many years, this film is simply too painfully near actuality for me to genuinely take pleasure in.
We have to discover ways to deactivate the expansion hormone of Homo Economicus®, which is capital constructed as interest-bearing debt. Gaia is displaying us all of the examples we’d like for absolutely rejoining the sacred cycle of life.
The problem of deactivating the expansion hormone of Homo Economicus® is just not a brand new one. It’s an occasion of the identical Homo Empire® problem confronted by the inmates of the warring states in what’s now China over 2,000 years in the past. Therefore my appreciation for the timeless knowledge embedded in Daoist philosophy.
All indigenous cultures honour Gaia. All of them function on time horizons that span at the least 7 generations into the long run, and draw on collective information and knowledge that extends at the least 7 generations into the previous. How does this evaluate to the WEIRD habit to quarterly outcomes and infinite development?
Each human is a uniquely useful repository of lived expertise and insights.
Dialogues are uniquely useful, they permit us to stroll every others minds, and through clarifying questions and different considering instruments, we converge on shared understanding and shared psychological fashions for particular domains or experiences. Linear language is a poor communication software, however dialogue transforms it into a really highly effective communication and collaboration software.
In fact dialogues solely catalyse shared understanding when sharing freely and truthfully, and it fails miserably as quickly as one or each events have any hidden self-serving agenda – which is the default on this planet of Homo Economicus®. Because of this I’m incapable of shopping for into the aggressive “logic” of markets.
Institutionalised studying incapacity
Institutionalised social energy is the privilege of not needing to be taught, it results in collective stupidity, it’s a type of collective studying incapacity.
Markets invariably generate collective stupidity, as a result of by definition members have incentives to not share limitless quantities of knowledge. By definition, unconstrained markets are the anti-thesis of collaborative area of interest building.
There are encouraging indicators in some much less WEIRD, and extra communally oriented societies. By WEIRD requirements Japan is an financial basket case, with a shrinking and ageing inhabitants, and a GDP development that’s in all probability averaging round zero over the past 20 years. We have to hear extra tales from the much less WEIRD world to know what trendy life will be like in a context of shrinking financial busyness, shrinking inhabitants, and correspondingly shrinking ecological footprint.
Such examples illustrate how the expansion hormone of Homo Economicus® will be deactivated. The referenced instance additionally illustrates the importance of small scale autonomous native communal resolution making, which is the alternative of the centralised fashions that also function within the ruins of the British Empire. There isn’t a want in any respect for wonderful leaders. Acknowledging the extent of the cultural most cancers goes to be onerous for some individuals to swallow. Patriotism and professionalism are key elements of fascism.
Too many professionals have “solely been doing their job” and have been following “orders” or “greatest practices” for too lengthy, with out listening deeply to their innate moral compass, which has been systematically and completely suppressed by the WEIRD indoctrination system.
- The largest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled individuals relate to unmet healthcare wants, their work surroundings, their dad and mom, and disrespect by healthcare professionals. Knowledge from our participatory analysis reveals the big overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.
- Outcomes from our survey on psychological security and psychological wellbeing point out that the most important fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled youngsters – and particularly those that additionally belong to cultural minorities, relate to classmates, dad and mom, and academics. 97% point out typically or all the time having anxiousness, and 80% point out typically or all the time feeling depressed.
- Our individually distinctive nervous programs and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults typically or all the time really feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% typically or all the time really feel disrespected and unsafe. Our total sense of wellbeing is decided by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we’re embedded in (or not).
Advocating for a “higher” command and management hierarchy is not any resolution, it solely sows the seeds for yet one more empire constructing try. Collectively we will work in the direction of revoking the social license for sustaining and strengthening life destroying powered-up establishments.
Delicate Daoist thinkers noticed this clearly over 2,000 years in the past. The documentaries by British movie maker Adam Curtis are additionally glorious academic sources for individuals who have the abdomen to face the fact of poisonous cultural inertia.
Full financial eclipse
In-depth discussions of Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation and Century of the Self ought to be a part of each highschool curriculum, and they need to be necessary menu objects within the curriculum of medical faculties and all different establishments entrusted with any side of human wellbeing.
Acknowledging actuality is barely step one. Financial eclipse is a product of many a long time of WEIRD indoctrination and propaganda. Gaia is nowhere to be seen:
Financial eclipse has been inflicting untold hurt for many years, and it inevitably ends in financial collapse. As we’re collectively transferring out of full financial eclipse, the fantastic thing about Gaia in addition to the delusion of hypernormality is revealed. Sobering up goes to be painful for the addicts who stay in denial.
We want dedication, we’d like group. We have to create areas of belief. However for that, there’s large work that we have to be doing. However I don’t assume that any of that work might be doable, ought to we not have that dedication–that dedication that regardless of how difficult and tremendously troublesome will probably be to reckon with these narratives and to dismantle these narratives. As a result of seeing the horror within the eye of all these narratives that we dwell by comes with large understanding. It’ll go away us very fragile, very weak, and most, after all, usually are not prepared to do this, as a result of we don’t really feel protected. But when we’re in a position to stand the warmth and create these areas, if we decide to do this sort of work for the advantage of the planet, then we might be able to be taught that we will fly.
That is the voice of Gaia, exposing the life denying doctrine of Homo Economicus®:
Understanding a bit about the entire above could make it easier to to stay sane, and to see, take pleasure in, and the place doable, nurture the rising cracks in The WEIRD Spectacle. Most significantly, we should acknowledge that we cannot regain sobriety alone, in self-isolation, and we will solely relearn to be absolutely human at a scale that’s appropriate with our organic cognitive and emotional limits, neither at smaller scales, nor at bigger scales.
Therapeutic
Wholesome cultural organisms don’t encompass:
- Remoted people
- Atomised nuclear households
- Incomprehensibly advanced teams and establishments
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 outdoors 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 completely different expressions of 1 religious interconnected consciousness on this planet.
I’ve studied quantum idea. We realised that the particles on this planet are actually not the fundamental actuality. The fundamental actuality is potential and power, and it’s solely once you try to measure it, then it reveals up as a particle, or it reveals up as a wave, however the actuality actually is that which connects, the non-separability downside. My PhD thesis was on non-separation, non-locality, and quantum idea. We knew [this] 100 years in the past in physics, and but an out of date physics of greater than 100 years in the past is getting used to form and and divide a really interconnected world. So dualism immediately is not only epistemologically so unsuitable, it isn’t simply ontologically so unsuitable, it’s spiritually simply not the appropriate approach to think about the world, however it’s now turning into a menace to human life, stopping individuals from residing with one another in variety with love. And that’s why we now have to unfold the message of non-dualism, of interconnectedness, of oneness by way of love, and we now have to be the apply...
All cultures had economies but it surely wasn’t the primary organising precept, it was a byproduct of fine residing… The place did that wealth come from? It was an economic system, but it surely was not an economic system of extraction. It was not an economic system of domination, it was an economic system of residing. In the event you go to the roots of the phrase economic system, economic system based on Aristotle is the artwork of residing. Our civilisation has very deep religious foundations, and thru spirituality you already know that the range on this planet is actually completely different expressions of the identical oneness… Let all of the beings flourish…
– Vandana Shiva
The relational nature of the massive cycle of life is obscured so long as lengthy as we try and outline cultural organisms as teams of individuals and even teams of residing beings past the human.
Wherever you’re, a lot of the inmates on the grassroots degree are people attempting their best possible. Respect those that are in a position to see and try and widen the cracks in The WEIRD Spectacle, and tread fastidiously when confronted with the institutionalised internalised ableism of Homo Economicus®.
The extra we assist one another to query in methods we in any other case wouldn’t – and correspondingly uncover new insights concerning the world and ourselves, the extra we’re in a position to be taught from one another, and the extra we begin to perceive one another. The present that all of us convey to the world is the (re)generative potential of all of the trusted relationships that we co-create.