all of the reasons to hate ai and to love ai are valid, to a point. it does things for us that are helpful to have done for us. it does things to us that are harmful to have done to us. the main thing we should focus on is what it requires of us.…
How Making Sense of My Child's Cannabis Use Helped Me Understand The Beauty of Human Adaptation
Does Domestication of the Human Species Really Represent Our Shared Future on the Planet? My almost-adult child is a gifted and challenged person, navigating the transition to adulthood in post-industrial American society. They’re a systems thinker, who aces every test, and who also can’t sit still or conform to the demands of a quiet workplace…
In part one, I explored my mother’s life and work, relative to the social conditions she experienced as a low-income, self-directed woman navigating the public health and housing systems, and asked whether, viewing her life through the arc of 76 years of continuous productivity in the fiber arts, different decisions could have been made resulting…
i got this letter from my nana today. i thought id share it with you. it made me cry, she’s such a sweetheart. i miss her so much, but i thought you might get something out of hearing how she talks to me. take care, rag hey, baby, i hope you’re settling in nicely. i…
I’m not sure we should even be studying autism in the United States. My mother just turned 82 today. She has faced challenges in every measurable area of her life, that I won’t go into—that’s a different story. Her diagnosis has changed with the trends of the healthcare industry, and she has only recently been…
Framing gender, sexual, and relational preferences as choices does real harm. These choices are the result of a culture built around a specific origin story, that by now is clearly a failed metaphor. When the beauty of human variation has been forced through binary tunnels for centuries, who we are has to make a choice…
Saying that autistic people who question the current paradigm of neurodivergence are seeking proof of a superpower does real harm. Diagnostic criteria are a snapshot. To refer to the snapshot as reality, without considering the hand that crafted the lens it was taken with, and for whose benefit, or what it distorts, cannot be seen…
this is one kind of harm caused by the abled/disabled binary when it is applied as a permanent designation to people: it erases from view the environment that enables or disables a person, and it makes invisible all of the ways that the environment is designed to enable the abled person. it functions to other…
Two people in a boat. One can row, but cannot navigate. The other can navigate, but cannot row. If we view each as a whole, each has both an asset and a liability—each is both abled and disabled. If we view the relationship as a whole, we can describe things differently. If participation and cooperation…
continue reading complementary adaptation: toward a kinder view of neurodiversity and disability
be honest:
is culture the ability
to sing the same songs together
in joyful abandon
with your neighbors?