Autistic human animals – a factor in cultural metamorphosis

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

In the times we live in the demand for peer support and reliable emotional support routinely outstrips the available supply. This is reflected in overall mental health statistics, in the level of burnout, and we also see it in the quantitative and qualitative results of AutCollab Research. This article is motivated by the common reality of Autistic emotional exhaustion and lack of adequate peer support, as well as by the massive trust problems created by homo economicus.

My writing, trying to make sense of the cruel dystopian world we have been born into, and trying to articulate potential avenues that allow us collectively to jointly co-create ecologies of care takes a lot of energy, in particular emotional energy. No one can do this alone. I certainly can’t and I don’t pretend I can. I need faith in humanity to write what I write, and this faith is based entirely on a small number of amazing Autistic human animals in my immediate ecology of care. For this I am immensely grateful every day.

The modern world needs more intersectional solidarity across all dimensions, more dialogues, more transparency, and more compassion. In short we need to invest in deeply understanding each other, and this is what we are increasingly seeing on the margins of society.

In the socially toxic world of homo economicus, many of the basic relationship building, maintenance, and repair skills have been lost or have become rare. To relearn these skills, we need an Autistic Relationship Manual (an ARM), connected to a helping hand and a compassionate heart, which can be only provided by our uniquely amazing Autistic peers. This article can be thought of as an ARM.

Cultural metamorphosis

Cultural metamorphosis is a radical form of collaborative niche construction that requires us to reframe everything we understand about the cultural adaptivity that is at our disposal at human scale. 

Homo economicus has pushed all life affirming human cultures beyond the cut-off points of the anthropocentric bell curve. The hump of the anthropocentric bell curve has become a hypernormative cultural dead zone paralysed by sanctified institutionalised BS.

Cultural healing requires the kind of deep and profound shift in trust from established institutions towards mutual aid and the community co-creation at human scale that indigenous Mexican scholar Yuria Celidwen talks about: 

We need commitment, we need community. We need to create spaces of trust. But for that, there’s tremendous work that we need to be doing. But I don’t think that any of that work will be possible, should we not have that commitment–that commitment that no matter how challenging and tremendously difficult it will be to reckon with these narratives and to dismantle these narratives. Because seeing the horror in the eye of all these narratives that we live by comes with tremendous understanding. It will leave us very fragile, very vulnerable, and most, of course, are not willing to do that, because we don’t feel safe. But if we are able to stand the heat and create these spaces, if we commit to do this kind of work for the benefit of the planet, then we may be able to learn that we can fly.

This shift in trust is already happening outside established institutions. It can only happen via self-selected and self-organising groups. I sense this is what we are already starting to experience on the intersectional margins of modern societies.

The objective of the Autistic Relationship Manual is to get people to start talking again, to catalyse further intersectional dialoges, and to let go of unwarranted fears and unwarranted shame, whether this is due to trauma or inhumane hypernormative culturally imposed expectations.

Metamorphosis back to human scale can be imagined as a cultural development stage for global intersectional and neurodivergent solidarity beyond the human, undoing some of the harm perpetuated in throughout the colonial and neocolonial era, at least for the generations alive today.

In the context of cultural metamorphosis, Autistic human animals are the imaginal cells within human scale cultural organisms. Globally, there are a few hundred million of us, spread across all continents and bioregional ecosystems, and this number does not even include the many hundred million of otherwise neurodivergent human animals. Autistic human animals tend to be highly concerned about social justice and tend to be the ones who point out toxic in-group competitive behaviours. We assist each other in co-creating unique Autistic relationships, households, and human scale cultural organisms. We co-create our unique families in our own space and time.

Yes, real change takes real courage. It shakes the very foundations of people’s understanding of the world. In difference to what Adam Curtis is hoping for, what we are seeing at the grassroots level are millions of beautifully diverse small green shoots at human scale. This is deep change, beyond any centralised powers of control.

In the context of healthy egalitarian human ecologies, Autistic human animals are best understood as the agents of a well functioning cultural immune system within society.

Autistic

The unusual heightened baseline sensitivity profiles of Autistic human animals means that they have a reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance.

Autistic human animals are unconstrained by culturally defined gender norms and have the capacity to relate deeply to other human and non-human living beings. Their sensitivity profiles limit their ability to think hierarchically and engage in transactional human busyness.

In the hypernormative culture that dominates the modern world, it is hard to explain to non-Autistic people what the immersion in healthy Autistic culture feels like and what the development of healthy sacred lifetime relationships between Autistic people feels like. In mainstream society people don’t understand how Autistic human animals support each other, love each other, and care for each other in ways that go far beyond the culturally impaired neuronormative imagination.

Human

It should not require mentioning, but in the hyper-normative modern social world, it must be stated and emphasised that Autistic human animals are fully human.

As humans we share an evolved capacity for developing and maintaining cultures and languages. These capacities allow humans to collaborate in flexible and complex ways based on shared intentions, a shared understanding of each other, and a shared understanding of our ecological context.

Our capacities for culture and language allow us to establish and maintain commitments to each other and commitments across human scale groups. Such verbal or written commitments constitute an effective human scale cultural framework for coordinating human social affairs.

Breaking our commitments makes us physically, mentally, and spiritually sick. Humans evolved this way. This is how we have become cultural organisms. Fully acknowledging this evolutionary heritage we must conclude:

Every relationship is sacred. No one should ever be discarded. This also extends to non-human living beings. No life should ever be discarded. We honour Gaia by appreciating all the living food she provides us with by committing to nurturing and helping all those living beings that sustain us.

Beyond our capacity for culture and language humans have an evolved capacity for pair bonding within the context of human scale groups, which can be understood as networks of sacred relationships, each of which encapsulates unique shared experiences.

Animals

In the anthropocentric modern social world, it must be reiterated that all human are animals.

Just like all other animals, humans engage in sexual activities, and we do so in very diverse ways. As human animals, our capacities for culture and language have greatly increased the complexity of our sexual imagination, and this plays out in the infinite complexity in sexual behaviour and rituals that are found in different cultures.

Please note that Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) cultures have not “cornered the market” of cultural gender identities and sexual preferences. Attempting to impose WEIRD cultural norms on other groups is a form of neocolonialism.

Similar comments apply to the cultures of all super-human scale groups such as modern nation states and corporations. Such modern legal fictions are incompatible with our human evolutionary history, and “universally applicable” social norms defined by such entities are causing untold harm on a daily basis.

Acknowledging that humans are animals includes acknowledging the absolute cognitive and emotional limits shared by all humans. In terms of our cognitive and emotional capacities and limitations, we are all much closer to each other than most of us are ever ready to admit.

Being conscious animals helps us regain some urgently needed humility, and should encourage all of us to honour Gaia on a daily basis.

Relational building blocks

Every relationship between humans is sacred, and every relationship is unique. There are no cookie cutters that work for everyone. However there are relational building blocks that can be used to articulate the unique commitments, preferences, and needs that define a relationship.

The ability to extend trust

The ability to extend trust is defined by the health of the ecology of care we are embedded in. Autistic human animals who are embedded in Autistic culture and a reasonably healthy ecology of care tend to extend deep trust, especially to other Autistic human animals.

In our times this is an increasingly rare sacred gift, which is easily exploited in unsafe environments dominated by internalised ableism. Carefully nurturing and protecting these gifts is a collective responsibility within Autistic cultural organisms. There is beautiful work for us to do.

Too many Autists end up isolated, in particular those who have a calling to be activists, who are so sensitive that they can not bear all the suffering in the world. No one chooses to be highly sensitive. No one chooses a calling. We are born this way. And we are fully human animals, with human needs. We are Autistic. We are not broken. To thrive we need to be embedded in a healthy ecology of care.

Too many of us die completely misunderstood. Many of us remember dear friends who are no longer amongst us. 

Deep mutual trust is a priceless collective asset that is increasingly providing healthy Autistic cultural organisms with a unique collaborative advantage over traditional family systems and organisational forms.

Shared understanding

Some level of shared understanding is a prerequisite for any relationship to even get started. For example in this context it helps to know if the person you would like to form a relationship with is an Autistic human animal, as this can greatly reduce the effort and energy needed for communication.

Shared value priorities

Most humans, even across cultures, share many similarities in values. What really matters for relational health is transparency and clarity about the relative priorities of the values that matter most to us.

Shared interests

Shared interests are part of the bedrock of relationships between Autistic human animals, much more so than between non-Autistic human animals, who tend to have much broader interests in topics shaped by the surrounding culture, and a less deep interest or understanding of the topics they are happy to engage in.

When multiple interests are shared between Autistic human animals, it can result in unique friendships and romantic partnerships that go far beyond the limited neuronormative imagination of what is possible.

Complementary interests

Complementary interests are an optional part of the bedrock of relationships between Autistic human animals, more so than between non-Autistic human animals. Mutual respect and curiosity about complementary interests predisposes Autistic human animals towards collaborative niche construction and the formation of unique human scale cultural organisms.

Sexual preferences

Sexual preferences are an essential building block for all romantic partnerships.

Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) cultures have not “cornered the market” of sexual preferences. Attempting to impose WEIRD cultural norms on other groups is a form of neocolonialism.

Relax! When two Autistic animals meet, be prepared to be surprised and delighted!

Gender preferences

Gender preferences are an optional building block for romantic partnerships with Autistic human animals.

Hardly anything in the biosphere is binary. Yet the entire global digital edifice is built from zeros and ones. What could possibly go wrong? A substantial number of Autistic human animals identify as non-binary and have difficulty comprehending the concept of culturally defined gender norms for ways of pair bonding.

Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) cultures have not “cornered the market” of cultural gender identities. Attempting to impose WEIRD cultural norms on other groups is a form of neocolonialism.

In wider society gender expectations represent a minefield for Autistic human animals. A substantial number of Autistic human animals are equally uncomfortable with the both binary genders and corresponding cultural behavioural expectations. I have no idea of what others expect from me or what to expect from them if they identify as one of the two default binary genders. Every relationship is unique, and develops in a unique way. Cookie cutters don’t make sense to me.

Relax! When two Autistic animals meet, conformance with any WEIRD gender norms are often one of the least relevant aspects of the relationship.

Relational health

Every relationship between humans is sacred, and every relationship is unique.

The health of a relationship can be defined as the absence of cognitive dissonance in relating to the relationship from the perspectives of both parties to the relationship. It is sufficient for one person in a relationship to experience cognitive dissonance for the relationship to become strained.

The WEIRD modern social world many people were born into today has destroyed the collective ability for deliberation at human scale. As a result modern life is experienced as incoherent from the individual perspective, which is subconsciously attempting to generate coherence at human scale. When that process fails, nothing seems to make sense anymore. 

The modern social world we live in can only be understood from the margins, because the very notion of sense making has been confused. This is no surprise, because our capacity for sense making operates at human scale.

Essential sacred commitments

There are no cookie cutters that work for everyone. However there are essential commitments that are part or the foundation of all healthy relationships.

1. Availability – both parties are committed to a comparable level of their availability to the relationship, which is determined by level of intensity of the relationship, which in turn is shaped by agreed mutual commitments.
2. Full transparency – both parties need are committed to full transparency across all aspects of the relationship, which are determined by level of intimacy of the relationship, which in turn is shaped by agreed mutual commitments. Of course full transparency means that some things may become impossible, and then one or more relationships in an ecology of care may need to evolve, including shifts in the circles of intimacy as needed. There is no need to discard any relationship. A binary all or nothing approach is a symptom of living in a toxic transactional culture.
3. Compassion – both parties are committed to mutual compassion across all aspects of the relationship to an extent that reflects the level of intimacy of the relationship, which in turn is shaped by agreed mutual commitments.
4. Fairness – both parties are committed to egalitarian norms of fairness across all aspects of the relationship.
5. Conflict prevention & resolution – both parties are committed to promptly sharing and addressing cognitive dissonance when it occurs in any aspect of the relationship.

Unique sacred commitments

Beyond the five essential commitments, the foundation of every relationships is defined by further bespoke sacred commitments that reflect the uniqueness and the level of intimacy and maturity of the relationship.

Jointly developing and evolving sacred commitment is an important part of collaborative niche construction that requires us to

1. Communicate our needs and preference unambiguously
2. Learn to respect the unique needs and preference of others
3. Use dialogue to arrive at a point of shared understanding that eliminates cognitive dissonance for all parties involved

If cognitive dissonance remains in a relationship, it indicates a difference in sensitivity profiles. Reflect on whether it is conceivable that preferences converge over time or whether the cognitive dissonance is sustainable on an ongoing basis – it likely isn’t.

Therefore resolve cognitive dissonance by increasing your shared understanding, and rely on genuine compassion to adapt your preferences. The result is a unique relationship, defined by a unique set of mutual commitments and mutual respect.

Communication skills

Once relational health is understood in terms of absence of cognitive dissonance in a relationship, it becomes clear that all relationship problems can be analysed and understood in terms of communication failures.

Such failures need to be addressed by mastering and applying the essential communication skills needed to co-create, nurture, and as needed repair relational health.

1. De-powered dialogue – is the skill to engage in dialogue that remains free of social power dynamics, i.e. both parties actively avoid unilaterally imposing arbitrary demands or making use of coercive techniques. This skill can also be understood as the commitment to non-violent communication. Continuous dialogue in combination with commitments to transparency and compassion for each other allows almost all relationship problems to be worked out.
2. Consultation – involves the practice of always asking the other party for advice before making any decision that may affect the other party or the scope of the relationship in a significant way. The practice of consultation does not imply an expectation that all advice received must be followed, it is best understood as a commitment to mutual learning and as a tool for activating the compassion needed to maintain the relationship.
3. Conflict resolution – involves the consistent application of the conflict resolution strategies and tools that have been agreed in mutual commitments. In the case of reoccurring conflicts, it may be necessary to revisit and as needed update mutual commitments to avoid cognitive dissonance from becoming established.
4. Open Space facilitation – is an essential skill when embarking on economic partnerships. Deliberation in open space is the foundation for omnidirectional learning, for arriving at consensus based decisions without generating cognitive dissonance, and it allows groups to address potentially wicked problems.
5. Care circle facilitation – is an essential skill for the activation of compassion and related skills for reducing cognitive dissonance and restoring emotional energy levels.

The social motivation of Autistic human animals is deeply rooted in the desire to share knowledge and in the desire to learn, and this has big implications for the communication protocols that are used in Autistic culture. Very similar to hunter-gatherer societies, egalitarian Autistic cultural organisms are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity.

The topic of communication problems and failures in the context or relationships is broad and deep. It is complicated by internalised ableism, i.e. the communication habits for “success” mandated by homo economicus.

Hyper-competitive cultures value abstract social status symbols more than developing a shared understanding. This leads to entirely predictable yet unavoidable communication challenges that define Autistic social experiences. Ambiguity and plausible deniability is essential to “win” in social games. The objective of clear communication and the desire to be understood gets replaced by a desire to be perceived in a certain way, and a desire to “influence” people in certain ways for personal advantage.

When modern humans spend 8 to 16 hours per day in hyper-competitive work places and in consumer oriented digital spaces, ambiguous and deceptive forms of communication start to bleed into all aspects of life, resulting in a form of spiritual bankruptcy in which human spirits have been fused to the misguided fiction of homo economicus, resulting in chronic “normalised” cognitive dissonance.

Energy management

Our cognitive and emotional limits and reserves can be understood, quantified, and communicated in terms of energy spoons, for example by agreeing that 1 spoon = 1 hour of dedicated time.

Human minds are the tools that connect the physical dimension of our existence to other living creatures, and to a rich internal spiritual world, which integrates our own perceptions into a seemingly coherent representation of the external world around us. Human minds can develop amazing capabilities, but at the same time, our cognitive and emotional capacities are limited.

All our activities affect the levels of three complementary energy reservoirs:

1. Our reservoir of emotional (relational) spoons
2. Our reservoir of creative (internal) spoons
3. Our reservoir of labour (physical) spoons

The above diagram illustrates how these energy reservoirs are connected to dialogues, communication in open space, and routines in the physical environment to regulate emotions and stress.

1. We recharge our creative and emotional (relational) batteries by exhausting our physical batteries
2. We recharge our creative and physical batteries by exhausting our emotional (relational) batteries
3. We recharge our emotional (relational) and physical batteries by exhausting our creative batteries
4. Additionally Our emotional (relational) batteries can also be recharged when all participants contribute comparable numbers of emotional spoons to a dialogue or a dedicated circle of care

Sacred relationships

You have a full relationship driver’s license when you have established one or more lifetime friendships, partnerships, or romantic partnerships.

Sacred relationships are the fundamental building blocks of life. This extends to all living beings that are part of Gaia. When it comes to relationships between humans, there are three different categories of relationships that we can trace back to our evolutionary heritage.

1. Romantic partnerships are the pair bonds that originally served the purpose of sexual reproduction.
2. Partnerships are the pair bonds that originally served the purpose of egalitarian resource sharing within the context of human scale bands of hunter gatherers.
3. Friendships are the pair bonds that originally served the purpose of omnidirectional learning and mutual aid between human scale bands of hunter gatherers.

Note that these categories intentionally avoid the arbitrary distinction between “work” and the rest of life, which has only been invented to make the inhumane fiction of homo economicus tolerable for large parts of our lives. The resulting alienation and required split in our daily modus operandi of social affairs is a major contributor to the so-called mental health crisis, alongside the human created metacrisis that now has become and existential threat for our species and for many other species.

In this Autistic Relationship Manual (ARM) we define relationship driver’s license levels that can help us to incrementally relearn basic relationship building, maintenance, and repair skills and minimise human and non-human suffering during the unique cultural metamorphosis that is unfolding.

Since all human relationships involve two people, certification at any level is incredibly straight forward, a particular level is reached if the two humans that constitute the relationship certify the level to each other.

Certification of a learner license is a simple commitment to each other to learn from and with each other on the journey towards a full license.

Certification of a full license is the set of all the commitments to each other that are reached after seven years on a learner license.

Lived experience shows that any relationship that is still intact after 7 years is a lifetime relationship or has the potential to be a lifetime relationship. This holds for romantic partnerships as well as economic partnerships and friendships.

The guidelines articulated in this article are based on more than five decades of lived experience, including the development of an organically growing number of lifetime friendships, a long term romantic partnership that got reconfigured into a local economic partnership, and over 12 years of nurturing and operating a cosmolocal egalitarian human scale worker coop, i.e. the collective experience of a lifetime economic partnership between close friends.

The key to relational health is mastery of the relationship repair and reconfiguration skills needed to reduce and eliminate cognitive dissonance experienced by one or both humans in the relationship. Cognitive dissonance manifests in emotional pain. If allowed to persist it can become a chronic disease and a silent killer of a relationship.

The three categories of scared relationships usually build on each other, i.e. a friendship can evolve into an economic partnership, which in turn can evolve into a romantic partnership. Evolution is ongoing, and transitions between categories can occur on both a learner license or on a full license, and in both directions, depending on whether the level of intimacy and depth of collaboration is going up or down.

Across the board, along the journey so far, all relationships that completely expired and discontinued were relationships with institutions and humans trapped in the hypernormative world of homo economicus, i.e examples that illustrate the transactional and ultimately self-destructive nature of homo economicus.

Mastery of relationship repair and reconfiguration skills allows mature relationships that have lasted at least 7 years to be maintained indefinitely. It is a matter of being able to identify and address cognitive dissonance in a timely manner, on an ongoing basis, and as needed to step up or step down the intimacy level of the relationship to eliminate cognitive dissonance.

This relational approach to life is incompatible with the transactional cultural frame of homo economicus.

Relearning and mastering the relational approach to life is at the core of the cultural metamorphosis that the human species is currently undergoing.

Sensitive Autistic animals see and feel the pain of others, this compels us to help, this compels us to fight for social justice and for the overall wellbeing of Gaia. We see the trauma behind internalised ableism. We are in pain because we feel the pain of others.

Within the modern world, hypersensitive Autistic human animals are traumatised from a very young age. In particular all children are exposed in Homo Economicus from a very young age, by well intentioned parents and educators, before we learn anything substantial about Gaia and the living world. This is possibly the most cruel, dehumanising, and life denying part of the modern world. 

So far, metamorphosis is confined to millions of embryonic human scale sprouts growing in the compost heap of homo economicus, engaging in omnidirectional learning. Increasingly these sprouts are connecting, resulting in the evolution of cosmolocal networks of friends on the margins of modern societies.

Friendship

You have a full friendship license if you have one or more lifetime friends in accordance with your emotional support needs.

Be honest with yourself and others when your friendship is at risk of expiring.

A friendship only expires if you have allowed cognitive dissonance to fester and become chronic. As needed join a circle or care for peer support in relationship repair and reconfiguration skills. Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your precious friendships, for example by learning how to evolve the commitments that underpin the friendship to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that strains the relationship.

Partnership

You have a full partnership license if you have one or more lifetime friends that you collaborate with on livelihood co-creation and egalitarian resource sharing.

Be honest with yourself and others when your partnership is at risk of expiring.

A partnership only expires if you have allowed cognitive dissonance to fester and become chronic. As needed join an open space for peer support in partnership repair and reconfiguration skills. Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your precious partnership, for example by learning how to evolve the commitments that underpin the partnership to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that strains the relationship.

Romantic partnership

You have a full romantic partnership license if you have one or more romantic partners that you share your life with in accordance with your emotional support needs and sexual preferences.

Be honest with yourself and others when your romantic partnership is at risk of expiring.

A romantic partnership only expires if you have allowed cognitive dissonance to fester and become chronic. As needed join a circle or care for peer support in relationship repair and reconfiguration skills. Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your precious friendships, for example by learning how to evolve the commitments that underpin the romantic partnership to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that strains the relationship.

Therapeutic relationships

You don’t yet have the full relationship driver’s license if you are still on a learner license, i.e. you have yet to establish one or more lifetime friendships, partnerships, and romantic partnerships.

As needed, join a circle of care to learn how to muster the courage to embark on a learners license for friendship or romantic partnerships, or join a creative open space collaboration to learn how to muster the courage to embark on a learners license for economic partnerships.

Therapeutic friendship

A therapeutic friendship is a form of learning by doing in which you incrementally learn how to co-create and nurture lifetime friendships to meet each others emotional needs.

Be honest with yourself and fully transparent with your friend as soon as cognitive dissonance emerges. This is an opportunity for both of you to learn basic relationship repair and reconfiguration skills.

The bedrock of all relationships is the ability to engage in deliberative dialogue to confirm a shared understanding of the shared value priorities and the shared interests that define the friendship, and then to articulate this shared understanding in terms of mutual commitments.

As needed join a circle or care for peer support in relationship repair and reconfiguration skills. Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your precious friendship.

Therapeutic partnership

A therapeutic partnership is an on-boarding process in which you incrementally learn how to co-create livelihoods and nurture lifetime egalitarian resource sharing partnerships.

Be honest with yourself and fully transparent with your partners as soon as cognitive dissonance emerges. This is an opportunity for all of you to learn basic relationship repair and reconfiguration skills.

A partnership only expires if a team has allowed cognitive dissonance to fester and become chronic. Partnership health is maintained by operating an ongoing advice process on an ongoing basis regarding all decisions that can affect others in major ways, and by regularly meeting in open space to coordinate activities and as needed revisit priorities to adapt to changes in the wider ecological context.

As needed join an open space for peer support in partnership repair and reconfiguration skills. Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your precious partnership, for example by learning how to evolve the commitments that underpin the partnership to prevent cognitive dissonance and misunderstandings from building up.

Therapeutic romantic partnership

A therapeutic romantic partnership is a form of learning by doing in which you incrementally learn how to co-create and nurture lifetime friendships that include meeting each others sexual needs and needs for intimate affection.

Be honest with yourself and fully transparent with your romantic partner(s) as soon as cognitive dissonance emerges. This is an opportunity for all of you to learn basic relationship repair and reconfiguration skills.

A romantic partnership only expires in case you allow cognitive dissonance to fester and become chronic. As needed join a circle or care for peer support to learn about relationship repair and reconfiguration skills and, ideally jointly, explore how to apply these skills to your romantic partnership.

Doing this early enough or on-demand can help preserve and nurture your romantic partnership, for example by learning how to articulate emotional needs, manage and regenerate your emotional energies, and jointly evolve the commitments that underpin the romantic partnership to eliminate any cognitive dissonance that strains the relationship.

Toxic relationships

Your relationships are at risk of becoming toxic if you don’t have a relationship driver’s license and are too afraid to embark on a learners license, yet still proceed to establish friendships, partnerships, and romantic partnerships.

In this scenario you need to learn to be more honest and compassionate with yourself and the people you attempt to co-create relationships with.

Be gentle with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. You are a sacred Autistic human animal. You are part of Gaia, and there are always people who deeply care about all aspects of your wellbeing. You may just not yet be clear about who these people are or where or how to find them.

It is when “relationships” become things to acquire and potentially discard that things become toxic. In the fast-paced hyper-competitive world of homo economicus the art of evolving, reconfiguring, and repairing relationships has been lost or is underdeveloped.

Homo economicus takes a transactional approach to all aspects of life, and thereby it fully “normalises” economic and emotional exploitation. This traumatises hypersensitive Autistic human animals and sets them up for recurring exploitation and the disastrous effects of chronic cognitive dissonance throughout life.

A commitment to activism, unlimited compassion for all living beings, and a seemingly self-destructive ability to extend and re-extend deep trust is the only healthy viable survival strategy. In a healthy society hypersensitive Autistic human animals help prevent the worst parts of our evolutionary heritage from overshadowing the strong uniquely human collaborative tendencies that distinguish us from other primates.

To be clear, the emergence and prevalence of toxic relationships is entirely a cultural issue, it is an issue of extreme social inequalities, hyper-competitive social norms, and an issue of (neo)colonialism. It is not an issue that can be blamed on specific individuals. Many people live in seriously toxic cultural environments. The emotional pain of trauma prevents them from being honest with themselves and others. They know of no other patterns, and deep down shame is a big issue. Sadly, in the modern world, psychologically genuinely safe relationships have become rare.

In a genuinely safe relationship there is no need to keep fears to yourself, or to feel ashamed to ask questions or articulate your needs.

As needed join a circle of care to learn how to muster the courage and learn the basic skills to embark on a learner license for friendship or romantic partnerships, or join a creative open space collaboration to learn how to muster the courage to embark on a learner license and learn the basic skills for operating economic partnerships and egalitarian worker coops.

Toxic friendship

A friendship that is at risk of becoming toxic lacks one or more of the essential sacred commitments to meet each others emotional needs.

Don’t lightly throw away your friendships! Learn how to repair, reconfigure, and upgrade your friendships before they become toxic beyond repair.

Toxic partnership

An economic partnership that is at risk of becoming toxic often lacks one or more of the essential sacred commitments towards egalitarian resource sharing.

Embarking on a genuine economic partnership, especially with more than two people, is possibly one of the most difficult ventures that modern humans can attempt, as it involves unlearning all the toxic cultural assumptions that have been shaped by the religion of homo economicus.

And yet, or rather precisely for that reason, it is becoming an increasingly relevant basic life skill within the compost heap of modern industrialised societies.

To avoid partnerships from becoming toxic, it is necessary to learn how go through fire, to have difficult conversations that most people never dare to have, to either come out with all relationships intact at the other end, or to know how to arrive at a consensus about the relationships within the partnership that have become toxic beyond repair. In this process, all affected parties need to come to the table, and appropriate peer support from those with relevant lived experience needs to be in place to bear the emotional load.

Toxic romantic partnership

A romantic partnership that is at risk of becoming toxic lacks one or more of the essential sacred commitments to meet each others sexual needs and needs for intimate affection.

Embarking on a romantic partnership is the second most difficult venture that modern humans can attempt, only slightly behind embarking on a (multi) lifetime economic partnership, as it involves unlearning many of the toxic cultural assumptions that have been shaped by the religion of homo economicus.

Relearning how to co-create, nurture, and repair loving and caring romantic partnerships is becoming an increasingly relevant basic life skill within the compost heap of modern industrialised societies.

To avoid a romantic partnerships from becoming toxic, it is necessary to learn how go through fire, to have difficult conversations that many people never dare to have. In this process, both parties need to come to the table, as needed with appropriate peer support from those with relevant lived experience, to bear the emotional load.

In a genuinely psychologically genuinely safe romantic partnership there is no need to keep your fears to yourself, or to feel ashamed of anything that may have happened to you, that you may have done, or that you may feel.

For Autistic human animals it is important to be fully aware of the beautiful infinite diversity and possibilities of Autistic relationships. This can not be reiterated often enough. We are not limited to the WEIRD culturally defined sexual preference norms and gender norms.

Join us!

Autistic, Authentic, and Autonomous ecologies of care beyond the human grow organically, at human scale, at a human pace, one trusted relationship at a time. Join us!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eytfo-bjaPw%3Ffeature%3Doembed

The world in reality is a beautifully interconnected world, and it’s interconnected through many many layers. It’s interconnected through consciousness, which is why we are spiritual beings in human form. But the plants outside my window are spiritual beings in plant form. But the plant of the lychee is in lychee form, and the tree of the mango is in mango form. They are just different expressions of one spiritual interconnected consciousness in the world.

– Vandana Shiva

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