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 truth offered to us through the media and public social media has been engineered to suit the exacting requirements of Homo Economicus®. All of the folks alive right now in Westernised nations, i.e. all of the folks in WEIRD nations and within the nations 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’s 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. The whole lot in this theatre is about notion – there’s little or no substance or connection to the biophysical and ecological context exterior the theatre.
The establishments of the WEIRDT empire faux that each one facets of life may be categorised and understood when it comes to normality – by the hump of the bell curve.
However the dwelling planet doesn’t conform to anthropocentric normality, it’s chaotic, it’s superbly and awesomely numerous. Like many neurodivergent folks, I’m extremely sensitised to the language folks use, particularly to the semantic chance house 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 progress and struggle dominates. Progress economics is a euphemism for neocolonialism, genocide, and ecocide. Solely 100 years in the past, barely anybody was writing concerning the “want” for “financial progress”.
Probably the most lethal wars right now 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 persistent ailments, a several-fold enhance within the dangers of world pandemics, and within the untimely demise of thousands and thousands.
My Autistic thoughts compels me to scale back cognitive dissonance. If I depart cognitive dissonance to fester, it promptly generates migraines or different signs of bodily illness. By way of my work, normally within the transdisciplinary context of small teams of individuals with complementary area particular experience, I’ve realized to ask clarifying questions and to ask for examples, and nil 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 dwelling 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 business world of The Spectacle.
Indoctrination
By the point I used to be born, the anthropocentric WEIRD Spectacle manifested when it comes to neocolonialism. It’s fascinating to look again and replicate 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 schooling to good use when it comes to essential 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 business promotion. The conclusion is straight related to our occasions.
As soon as we admire that even our “educated” Western scientific worldview isn’t free from ideological bias, we will develop a greater conceptual mannequin of how particular person and collective human perception techniques and associated our bodies of information evolve. It’s useful to tell apart the next classes of beliefs and associated information:
- Beliefs based mostly 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 should 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 based mostly on scientific theories backed by empirical proof that we’re not intimately acquainted with. Such beliefs could also be affected by paradigmatic bias and the standard or bias inherent within the supporting proof. We don’t 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 associates and colleagues inside our private competency community, we will resolve to depend on their understanding of the bounds of applicability and potential blind spots. If we’re “educated”, a sizeable minority of our beliefs fall into this class.
- Beliefs based mostly on private experiences and observations. We all know that no human can keep greater than 150 relationships with different folks, and that each one our assumptions concerning the lives and wishes of people are based mostly on the very small set of folks that we relate to. For individuals who determine as autistic, a major 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 choices that doubtlessly have an effect on the lives of many hundred to a number of billion folks with out specific consent of all these doubtlessly affected (a day by day prevalence in authorities establishments and firms), have to be thought-about the head of human ignorance.
- Beliefs that characterize specific social agreements between particular folks relating to communication and collaboration. Such sacred commitments may be verbal or in writing, they usually solely scale as much as the restricted numbers of relationships that we will keep. As wanted we will collectively replace these commitments to replicate evolving wants or constraints within the wider ecology we’re embedded in. For individuals who determine as Autistic, a major variety of beliefs held fall into this class, particularly agreements with members of the family, associates, and colleagues. In hierarchically structured societies, agreements equivalent 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 keep such buildings with out inflicting untold hurt is a type of anthropocentric hubris.
- Beliefs based mostly on what others have advised us and what we’ve got been inspired to imagine by dad and mom, academics, and associates, … and politicians and advertisers, together with beliefs that we’ve got absorbed from our social setting subconsciously, i.e. beliefs for which we will’t recall the origin. For individuals who don’t determine as Autistic, the vast majority of beliefs held might fall into this class.
All classes of human beliefs are related to some degree of uncertainty relating to the validity and applicability to a particular 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 components of the inhabitants, and when the externalities of hyper-competitive revenue maximising behaviour hit with full pressure, Homo Economicus® has change 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 isn’t survivable for delicate neurodivergent people who find themselves unable to keep up “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 residence and at school within the Seventies that animals can’t have “ideas”, and that any emotions or consciousness they could have will not be in any method akin to human lived experiences. This was taught to us as “science” in biology lessons. To prime it off, in center faculty we realized the way to dissect lifeless 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. This is the reason we take pleasure in immersing ourselves within the pure world. This is the reason we’re in a position to construct mutual belief with non-human animals, together with wild animals. Dwelling beings recognise one another as being a part of the sacred cycle of life. We all know that every dwelling 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 every kind.
When animals eat different animals, it is just to cowl their fundamental survival wants. People have the identical inhibitions. We developed to know intuitively that each one lives and all {our relationships} are sacred. The human capability for tradition and spoken language developed on prime of this organic backdrop. That is one thing that to this present day isn’t 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 positive that each one youngsters are indoctrinated in Homo Economicus® from a really younger age, earlier than we be taught something substantial about Gaia and the dwelling 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 method 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 can’t be carried out, on brief vary. After 10 years maybe, 20 years, sure. The impact is devastating. Individuals should have one thing to indicate, one thing to depend. In different phrases, the benefit system nourishes short-term efficiency. It annihilates long-term planning. It annihilates teamwork. Individuals can’t work collectively. To get promotion you’ve received to get forward. By working with a crew, you assist different folks. It’s possible you’ll 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 indicate, extra to depend. Teamwork means work collectively, hear all people’s concepts, fill in for different folks’s weaknesses, acknowledge their strengths. Work collectively. That is unimaginable below the benefit ranking / evaluate of efficiency system. Persons are afraid. They’re in concern. They work in concern. They can’t contribute to the corporate as they’d want to contribute. This holds in any respect ranges. However there’s something worse than all of that. When the annual scores are given out, persons are bitter. They can’t perceive why they don’t seem to be rated excessive. And there’s a good cause 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 hear deeply to our instinct, and earlier than we study Gaia and collaborative ecological area of interest development inside and between species, then we’re primed to view every other narrative that deviates from or that contradicts Homo Economicus® with suspicion. In the business digital world of Homo Economicus®, the place the very technique of communication have been seized by firms, and the place universities have change into depending on company funding, it has change into straightforward to sideline the rising physique of scientific proof that contradicts Homo Economicus®.
Since we’re immersed in info overload, proof equivalent to what we find out about the innate collaborative inclinations and sense of equity of human toddlers and concerning the pivotal function of extremely egalitarian societies within the evolution of the human capability for language and tradition doesn’t even should be hidden. It’s fully adequate 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 frequent for households or people to affix one other group. Necessary to notice the absence of a hierarchical super-structure between teams, and the dynamism of ongoing relationships between teams.
All of this matches nicely with my very own expertise with egalitarian human scale employee coops, and with the curiosity from different small teams of neurodivergent and disabled folks in adopting an identical mannequin, together with ongoing collaboration between teams.
We nonetheless have entry to all our innate collaborative capabilities. If we care to hearken to our guts, hearts, and minds, we will (re)be taught every part we want for co-creating ecologies of care past the human.
The ripples of collaborative area of interest development and intersectional solidarity are spreading. Increasingly small cosmo-local bands of marginalised persons are coming collectively to catalyse intersectional solidarity.
Really, the WEIRD empire isn’t in management. Gaia has an ideal 10,000 yr observe file 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 recuperate from cultural most cancers? Knowledge from local weather science and biodiversity analysis provides us a glimpse of Gaia’s language.
Wholesome human scale cultural growth
No less than a few 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 large cycle of life inside Gaia is fractal, very comparable phenomena reoccur at very totally different scale and in several 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 subject and weave it along with anthropological proof, and with experiences from employee coops of neurodivergent and in any other case disabled folks, 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 progress hormones.
People must (re)discover ways to cease perpetuating hierarchically structured techniques of social management, striving for infinite progress like a most cancers. We additionally must (re)discover ways to reproduce and evolve peacefully, alongside the strains of what we all know concerning the ongoing lifetime collaborative relationships and a few 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 change into morbidly overweight, develop persistent ailments, and find yourself dying prematurely.
The Pentagon Wars is the favorite film of one in all my former Autistic colleagues who spent a few years in massive authorities departments. This film, which is based mostly on a real story, is an efficient illustration of the teenage stage of cultural growth in WEIRD societies. Given all of the lethal wars which are in progress and which were stoked for many years, this film is just 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 exhibiting us all of the examples we want for absolutely rejoining the sacred cycle of life.
The problem of deactivating the expansion hormone of Homo Economicus® isn’t 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 very least 7 generations into the long run, and draw on collective information and knowledge that extends at the very least 7 generations into the previous. How does this evaluate to the WEIRD habit to quarterly outcomes and infinite progress?
Each human is a uniquely invaluable repository of lived expertise and insights.
Dialogues are uniquely invaluable, 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 the earth of Homo Economicus®. This is the reason 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 development.
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 progress that’s most likely 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 may 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® may be deactivated. The referenced instance additionally illustrates the importance of small scale autonomous native communal choice making, which is the alternative of the centralised fashions that also function within the ruins of the British Empire. There isn’t any want in any respect for wonderful leaders. Acknowledging the extent of the cultural most cancers goes to be onerous for some folks to swallow. Patriotism and professionalism are key components 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 most important fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled folks relate to unmet healthcare wants, their work setting, their dad and mom, and disrespect by healthcare professionals. Knowledge from our participatory analysis exhibits 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 largest 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 nervousness, and 80% point out typically or all the time feeling depressed.
- Our individually distinctive nervous techniques 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 general 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 answer, it solely sows the seeds for yet one more empire constructing try. Collectively we will work in 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 truth of poisonous cultural inertia.
Full financial eclipse
In-depth discussions of Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation and Century of the Self must be a part of each highschool curriculum, and they need to be necessary menu objects within the curriculum of medical colleges and all different establishments entrusted with any facet 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 shifting out of full financial eclipse, the great 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 want group. We have to create areas of belief. However for that, there’s great work that we should be doing. However I don’t assume that any of that work will likely be potential, ought to we not have that dedication–that dedication that regardless of how difficult and tremendously tough it is going to 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 great understanding. It can depart us very fragile, very susceptible, and most, after all, will not be prepared to try this, as a result of we don’t really feel secure. 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®:
Realizing a bit about the entire above might provide help to to stay sane, and to see, take pleasure in, and the place potential, nurture the rising cracks in The WEIRD Spectacle. Most significantly, we should acknowledge that we can’t 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 superbly interconnected world, and it’s interconnected by many many layers. It’s interconnected by consciousness, which is why we’re non secular beings in human type. However the vegetation exterior my window are non secular 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 non secular interconnected consciousness on the earth.
I’ve studied quantum principle. We realised that the particles on the earth are actually not the fundamental actuality. The fundamental actuality is potential and power, and it’s solely once you attempt to measure it, then it exhibits up as a particle, or it exhibits 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 principle. 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 right now isn’t just epistemologically so incorrect, it’s not simply ontologically so incorrect, it’s spiritually simply not the best method to consider the world, however it’s now turning into a risk to human life, stopping folks from dwelling with one another in range with love. And that’s why we’ve got to unfold the message of non-dualism, of interconnectedness, of oneness by love, and we’ve got to be the apply...
All cultures had economies but it surely wasn’t the primary organising precept, it was a byproduct of excellent dwelling… The place did that wealth come from? It was an financial system, but it surely was not an financial system of extraction. It was not an financial system of domination, it was an financial system of dwelling. In the event you go to the roots of the phrase financial system, financial system in response to Aristotle is the artwork of dwelling. Our civilisation has very deep non secular foundations, and thru spirituality that the range on the earth is basically totally different expressions of the identical oneness… Let all of the beings flourish…
– Vandana Shiva
The relational nature of the large cycle of life is obscured so long as lengthy as we try and outline cultural organisms as teams of individuals and even teams of dwelling beings past the human.
Wherever you might be, many of the inmates on the grassroots degree are people making an attempt their absolute best. Admire 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 carry to the world is the (re)generative potential of all of the trusted relationships that we co-create.
