NDP Episode 160: How to Save the Planet With Neurodiversity

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Do you have an opinion about climate change? How about abortion? Or universal basic income?

We all have our concerns and our hills that we’ll die on. This week I will use climate change as an example of a polarizing issue and make an argument about how neurodiversity may provide a model for solutions.

Human beings argue about many polarizing issues, but we often agree about solutions. Most of the solutions involve top-down strategies like voting. We have to change the ‘machinery’ at the top, regardless of the change we seek. 

 Want to make groceries more affordable? We have to change the major food companies. Want to reduce discrimination? Vote in better politicians. Want to ban sensitive books? Elect new state government officials.

Voting, you will find, is a common solution to many human problems. How’s that working out for you? Remember Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickle-down economics’? Yeah, that didn’t work.

Even science has lost the ability to solve our problems. Truly, science has sort of joined the club in trying to regulate our beliefs in a top-down direction. We don’t need to understand our problems any better. We need solutions.

Top-down approaches don’t work. I think it is time for a bottom-up approach.

My work often suggests that we need new solutions to our problems. Currently, humans are plagued by intrinsic problems like anxiety, depression, and suicide. We also suffer from extrinsic problems like health care, equality, and racism. 

Most solutions follow a top-down approach where we believe in following the rules to change the system within the constraints provided. Increasingly we are losing faith in these systems and more people believe the systems were designed to keep us stuck.

Education, government, and economics rely on students, citizens, and consumers who behave predictably. Predictability works best when people are similar. Thus, systems favor sameness and conformity as a means to an end. 

The argument I continue to make, however, is that this approach disagrees with the basis of biological life on Earth.

The problem, then, stems from a dissonance between how we live our lives and the machinery that provides us with life.

Briefly, our DNA has evolved to create diversity, yet we increasingly depend on conformity. Species persistence depends on expressing this DNA as diversity. Our problems stem from our refusal to do this. Rather than embrace diversity, we reject it. 

Why humans would ever design systems that blatantly disagree with basic biological principles is beyond me. Life is diverse. Diversity ensures persistence. End of story. 

I fundamentally believe that most, if not all, of our problems stem from this mismatch.

Unfortunately, top-level systems like science, democracy, and capitalism are too difficult to change. Or, if we did implement changes, they would be too radical and uncomfortable and cause new, unforeseen problems. This is why we can’t just stop using fossil fuels tomorrow and switch to electric vehicles.

All solutions to human problems start with individuals. 

It’s time to try a bottom-up approach. I think we are converging on this realization. To change the world we have to change ourselves. Many of us are doing this work now, and I believe my work contributes to this larger effort. 

Ne

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