Beneath the heavy veneer of internalized ableism, a profound truth about human nature often goes unspoken: very few people genuinely desire to be seen and heard by the masses. Instead, the vast majority of individuals yearn to be understood and loved deeply by a select few, while holding an innate desire to love, support, and help others. This relational orientation is what defines us as sacred human animals. Continuous, open-ended dialogues about mutual commitments are what infuse life with a sense of the sacred, allowing human beings to create meaning with and for one another. Through this lens, life is experienced not as a rigid corporate ladder to be climbed, but as an ongoing, fluid process of becoming.
This perspective has taken on renewed urgency following recent discussions surrounding the inability of many autistic individuals to think in terms of traditional social hierarchies, opting instead for horizontal, relational modes of existence. Amid these ongoing community dialogues, a timely submission for the upcoming NeurodiVerse Days of Intersectional Solidarity arrived in the AutCollab inbox. The inquiry, sent by the founder of a neurodivergent community who also works as a therapist and identifies as indigenous, posed a fundamental question facing modern marginalized spaces: how can communities effectively promote mutual aid when interpersonal trauma runs deep and foundational trust is frequently fractured?
The social challenges highlighted in this inquiry have been foreseen by cultural critics for decades. The dystopias described in the works of thinkers like Guy Debord and George Orwell have increasingly manifested as a deeply disturbing reality, particularly for cultural minorities and intersectionally marginalized populations. Early cultural indoctrination into the belief system of homo economicus—the economic model of humans as purely rational, self-interested actors—attempts to transform living people into soulless cogs in an industrial machine. In contrast, particularly for autistic individuals and arguably for all reflective humans, the capacity to form genuine, deep connections with other humans and non-human living beings stands in direct opposition to transactional business-as-usual behavior. The more deeply one relates to the living world, the less capable one becomes of navigating a purely transactional existence.
Beneath the surface layers of internalized ableism, a fundamental principle applies to all sober human beings: no one truly wants to be consumed by the gaze of the multitude. Everyone prefers the deep understanding and affection of a few, coupled with a fundamental drive to love and assist. Recognizing this core reality provides the blueprint for navigating modern alienation.
Commitments Make Us Uniquely Human
There is a viable path forward for communities grappling with trauma and distrust, one that relies on mutual trust, shared values, and a deliberate shift toward sacred commitments maintained at a human scale.
Unlike the sweeping, top-down mandates of bureaucratic institutions, sacred commitments between specific individuals or small, human-scale groups can be articulated either verbally or in writing. Crucially, these commitments only scale up to the limited number of relationships that an individual human brain and nervous system can genuinely maintain. As circumstances change, these agreements can be jointly updated to reflect evolving needs or constraints within the wider ecology in which people are embedded. For those who identify as autistic, a significant proportion of the beliefs and agreements they hold naturally fall into this category, particularly when it comes to explicit understandings with family members, friends, and trusted colleagues.
The massive trust deficits characteristic of modern society are largely cultural artifacts inherited from the worldview of homo economicus. These are cultural beliefs absorbed subconsciously from a hyper-competitive social environment—beliefs whose origins are often untraceable. For individuals who do not identify as neurodivergent, a much larger proportion of held beliefs may stem from this unexamined cultural conditioning.
In contrast, unilateral commitments made with oneself act as a spiritual pledge to life and to Gaia. History and human evolution suggest that breaking these core commitments makes individuals physically, mentally, and spiritually unwell. Humans evolved as cultural organisms bound by a deep-seated need for integrity.
Similarly, bilateral commitments offered by one party function as sacred invitations to another, honoring the sanctity of relationships with all living beings. Both parties can extend these invitations, bringing them together through deliberative dialogue grounded in love, mutual respect, and understanding. Rather than relying on the simplistic, cookie-cutter contracts typical of industrialized society, every human-scale commitment is tailored specifically to the unique contours of a relationship, whether with oneself, the wider natural world, or another person.
Sharing these personal and collective commitments within an established ecology of care allows people to better understand, trust, and rely on one another. Of course, this work is notoriously difficult in a wider cultural context dominated by extreme individualism and institutionalized mutual distrust.
Deliberative Dialogue
Continuous dialogues surrounding commitments form a vital part of lived indigenous traditions, such as those found within Māori culture, offering a blueprint for how communities can honor life and the natural world. This practice is what renders life meaningful and sacred, enabling humans to co-create significance and navigate life as an ongoing process of becoming.
Explicit social agreements that stretch far beyond human scale—such as national laws or corporate policies—possess severe and inherent limitations. In hierarchically structured societies, rules and regulations are imposed upon vast populations with little to no meaningful input from those directly affected. These sweeping decrees invariably inflict untold harm that remains entirely invisible to the distant authorities who draft them. Human beings simply did not evolve to thrive in massive, hierarchically organized super-human scale societies, and pretending that such structures can be sustained without causing systemic damage is a manifestation of anthropocentric hubris.
Trauma is frequently propagated across generations, making it imperative to find ways to break the cycle without crushing the most sensitive members of society—the very individuals who are uniquely capable of nurturing ecologies of care free from coercive power and manipulation. The destructiveness of coercive power has long been recognized as a root driver of societal harm. Those who routinely rely on coercion are often the primary actors driving ecological degradation. Historical precedents suggest there is timeless wisdom in social norms that actively prevent the emergence of power gradients. When civilizations erode these safeguards, widespread suffering inevitably follows.
Autistic individuals frequently establish strict sacred commitments with themselves at an early age to minimize cognitive dissonance. However, when attempting to extend these sacred commitments to the broader social world, they often discover that not everyone honors their word, or that many people navigate life entirely devoid of firm convictions or genuine commitments. In a socially hyper-competitive environment, opportunities to practice de-powered deliberative dialogue are scarce, leaving many individuals adrift in a system that generates lost souls searching for meaning without a solid foundation.
Co-Creating Ecologies of Care
Sacred commitments rooted in deep mutual trust and shared values serve as the bedrock of all healthy, sustainable cultures. De-powered dialogue designed to deepen shared understanding acts as the primary tool for maintaining and evolving these commitments over time, fostering love, compassion, and trust in a virtuous cycle even through severe adversity. Indigenous cultures have long understood this dynamic.
Today, practices rooted in indigenous frameworks and intersectional solidarity—spanning indigenous rights, the neurodiversity movement, and disability advocacy—offer essential pathways for healing from the cultural fractures driving the modern metacrisis. This approach is not merely theoretical; it is mirrored in the lived experiences of egalitarian worker cooperatives. Daily operations shaped by de-powered dialogue, omnidirectional learning, and consensus-based decision-making provide a tangible counterweight to a society dominated by transactional economics. Hunter-gatherer societies have similarly relied on deliberative dialogue and consensus for millennia, demonstrating the beauty and viability of living at a human scale as integrated cultural organisms.
Engaging in de-powered deliberative dialogues within safe, intentionally co-constructed environments allows individuals to truly understand one another’s inner worlds, sharing thoughts, reasoning processes, and core beliefs either verbally or in writing. This ongoing commitment to mutual sharing runs entirely counter to the tenets of homo economicus, yet it aligns precisely with what human nervous systems evolved to handle. It is little wonder that many autistic individuals frequently operate at or beyond their emotional capacities in modern society.
Furthermore, as society spends more time isolated behind digital interfaces, the fundamental human capacity to extend deep trust has become an increasingly rare gift. Human nervous systems are deeply interconnected embodiments of living spirit, whereas digital interfaces are non-living tools that inherently limit full human presence. Reconnecting with the capacity to co-create ecologies of care remains essential sacred work that can only be accomplished together.
