No one is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.

Rebuilding The Village – Google Docs

What should we do to survive the current state of the world?

“Engage in collaborative niche construction at human scale.”

The human capacity for language would not have given us any adaptive ecological advantage if it did not primarily serve the purpose of improving our ability to understand, trust, and rely on each other, and thereby to enable us to engage in collaborative niche construction at human scale – such that every human in a cultural organism to some extent contributes unique capabilities and lived experiences to the cultural organism.

Healing from cultural cancer | Jorn Bettin

We have work to do. We will support each other. We will build our own ecologies of care and our own competency networks. We will build communities and network rhizomatically.

Definitions

niche construction = directly modifying the environment in such a way that it enhances someone’s chances for success.

human scale = the scope of trusted relationships as constrained by human cognitive limits; according to Robin Dunbar’s research, a human can maintain a maximum of 150 relationships at any point in time; it is becoming clear that only human scale organisations are understandable for individual humans and have the potential to provide psychologically safe and healthy environments for humans. (The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations)

autistic rhizome = a growing and evolving network of Autistic communities with no hierarchy or dependence on another’s existence (@AutisticRealms); an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, mutual aid, and support. (Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy)

competency network = network of mutual trust and complementary skills; a competency network can be formalised as a directed graph of experience-based pair-wise trustworthiness ratings in relation to various domains between the members of a group; you can think of it as the gifts that people bring to life by relating to each other. (The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations)

Collaborative Niche Construction

Egalitarian societies are focused on group survival and collaborative niche construction, and they are underpinned by consciously designed collaborative social norms. The dynamics of local environmental conditions allow everyone to viscerally understand the group as the smallest unit of survival. Mutual aid and an appreciation of unique individual talents, strengths, and limitations is baked into foundational social norms and daily routines. Human collective compassion and intelligence ensures that life is enjoyable for all. Hence it makes sense to think about the adaptation of egalitarian societies to changing environment conditions in terms of collaborative niche construction, and to conceptualise the resulting social structure as an ecology of care.

The following characteristics clearly distinguish egalitarian societies from other societies:

• Competition is a secondary effect that operates over multiple generations (hundreds of years) between groups.
• Everyone intuitively understands human scale – super human scale is recognised as a dangerous collective learning disability to be avoided. Explicit social norms prompt large (super human scale) social groups to split into two collaborating groups.

Collaborative niche construction | Autistic Collaboration

Ecologies of Care

The neurodiversity, disability, and indigenous rights movements are part of the cultural immune system of human societies, responding to the mechanistic, hypercompetitive, and rule based approach to social arrangements imposed by the learning disabled mono-cult with a holistic social justice approach. The key element that holds together all the threads, which has been systematically eroded in Westernised societies is the notion of trust, including the role of trustworthy, sacred relationships within the context of life affirming ecologies of care.

Ecologies of Care | Autistic Collaboration

Rebuilding The Village

Now is the time for action and radical imagination. 

Imagination. Radical imagination. We have to have an idea of what we are fighting for. We have to be able to picture it. We have to be able to smell it. We have to be able to dream about a just world when we lay down at night. (I can never express how much I love this poem by Aurora Levins Morales for this)

And then we need to wake up and create it. 

Rebuilding The Village – Google Docs

The idea is this: In the kinds of small communities and towns our ancestors lived in, every person played a role. More resources stayed in community because the goods and services you needed were there. People had skills, and passed them onto younger people. People were more likely to socialize in third spaces that weren’t their work or home. People watched each other’s kids and showed up for families that just welcomed a baby. People cared for one another. 

Rebuilding The Village – Google Docs

People have also been taken from our villages. Mentally ill people, disabled people, queer people, people in the prison industrial complex, in particular. We cannot rebuild interdependence without finding a way to hold people that our societies have decided are not worth our care. 

Rebuilding The Village – Google Docs

Village Values:

• We need each other.
• Everyone is deserving of care.
• All of us are negatively impacted when people in our village aren’t getting their needs met, so we are called to take action and make sure people are cared for.
• Everyone has something to offer, so we have to challenge our own assumptions.
• Everyone is valuable, no matter their level of education, size, ability, or age. When people aren’t valued, our community loses something, collectively.
• We can share, barter, trade, and repair.
• We offer support when we can and ask for support when we need it.
• We don’t aspire to live ideal lives as individuals, but to be a part of a thriving community.

Rebuilding The Village – Google Docs