Neurodiversity and Neurotypical civilization
I wrote this to a younger friend in his final dissertation for his PhD in urban studies. His committee is pushing him to use autoethnography, a fancy word for lived experience, for his dissertation. A saying common among neurodiversity advocates is "If you have met one autistic, you have met ONE autistic". The spectrum itself is so wide, that being on the spectrum means that you will have little to no overlap in symptoms and difficulties with other autistics, let alone with neurotypicals. Thus, while your difficulties and solutions, both coping and masking, work for you, they may not work for others. An equal method that may help, at least in your notes, is Aquinian Scholasticism, where you state each point from the Neurotypical point of view, and only after explain from your autoethnic point of view why the current system is not working for you- being open to inviting others to come up with solutions, but realizing that ultimately, as all neurodiverg...